He's coming!

You better watch out. You better not pout. You better not cry, I'm tellin' you why!
Santa Claus is coming to town!

I sincerely hope that stays in your head all day! And I encourage you to sing it to all the young children you know. They need all the behavioral advice possible! If fear of Santa can't make them behave, what else will?

Mitchell is still pretty scared of Santa, but we talked him into going near him to tell him what he wanted for Christmas! He wanted blocks! "Santa" had to hurry to the present factory and get some for him today!

Mark loved Santa's beard! Who wouldn't? Is he not just the cutest thing you have ever seen? I took Mark to the mall to get a "professional" picture with Santa too! It is really cute! We have pictures of Mitchell, Mark and Neil with Santa on their first Chirstmases at about 8 months old!
I didn't take Mitchell this year because I knew it would be a waste of money to have a picture of my little sweetheart crying on Santa's lap! We have one from last year and it is actually pretty funny! He is throwing an all-out fit, complete with arched back and red face! We have it framed and on the mantle! Really we do! I get a kick out of crying baby pictures! I enjoy laughing at their turmoil. Sick huh? What else can you do? Cry with them? That looks really cool!

Christmas parties

Mitchell's school Christmas party!

This is Mitchell and his friend Runa opening gifts from their teacher and Mitchell and the only other boy in his class, Tyler, eating cake at their "Happy Birthday Jesus" party at school. They even had ice cream cake that said, "Happy Birthday Jesus" and they sang to him!

Church Christmas Party!


My mom put Mark in the manger of the live nativity scene! As for the pic of Neil and the boys, I have no idea what happened to Neil's forehead in the pic! Pretty funny huh? I am just really excited to have pictures of Neil to put on the blog!

This was Mark's first taste of chocolate! I think he really liked it!

We had lots of nativity crafts which I think was pretty neat. They used the gym as the "party room" and filled it with nativity activities and had Santa in a different room! It was a good change from last year when the whole thing was about Santa!
The family helping us with the craft is a special family to us! The Roses. Jennifer, in the back, is one of Mitchell's baby sitters and the mom, Renee, was the first one to invite us over for dinner and then invited me to aerobics with her the next week! You know that got me excited!

houdini

Mark's new nickname is Houdini! We started using it a few weeks ago after the bouncer incident and them Mama Lou used it without knowing we had! So now, it is his name and he is living up to it! Here is his latest escape! There was, again, no crying just an adventurous struggle to get his foot out and get going!

my birthday!

Today is my birthday. I am now 29! Yikes! I am not doing anything this morning in honor of the occasion! I mean I am sitting at home relaxing as my birthday treat! A friend came and picked up Mitchell to take him to visit her daughter's school for lunch and Mark is sleeping! It is shaping up to be the perfect day to relax! Except for this afternoon when I have to take Mark to the Dr for his 3rd and final antibiotic shot! It is the last effort to clear up his ear infection before we get referred to the ENT. Neil says tubes are next, so pray that these shots do the trick. Or in faithful terms, pray for God's healing! Tonight the boys and I are going to church; Neil will be working. I have chorus practice for the Christmas program that our church is hosting. It is Monday night and I think it will be really nice! I will be my first chorus performance in a few years so I am looking forward to it!

For my birthday my sister bought me a really cute new shrug sweater and two new necklaces that are really cool! Neil surprised me with a pair of shoes that I have been wanting for forever! Yesterday we went out to dinner with a friend whose birthday was Monday.

I hosted a Christmas party at our house yesterday for the Bible study group of medical school and residency wives that I am a part of. We ate lots of great "brunchy" food and talked. There were several small children there, 4 under the age of 1 and one 2 year old. Mitchell was at school, thank goodness, or we would have had a really crazy time! Here is our group picture!

Mitchell in "The Christmas Star"

Thursday Mitchell performed in his 1st Christmas program! Boy was it exciting! I was probably more nervous about it than he was! What if MY SON was the one doing something completely random, not singing, running off the stage, whatever! Well, I got over my jitters when I figured out that he wasn't really that concerned about it. At the program he was supposed to sing a song about following the star to baby Jesus and do hand motions. The girls were wearing feather boas and the boys wore sunglasses. Mitchell just stood on stage in the mass of 2 year olds and put his sunglasses on his forehead! He even stuck the sunglasses up his nose a few times! He did no singing and maybe one hand motion! At least he was not an "attention getter" like one 4 year old girl who stepped forward from the line and was swinging her boa around her head like an adult dancer! After the program we went out to lunch! Aunt Shell had come down to see the program and Daddy had escaped from the hospital! We had a great day!

new pictures on old posts

I have added some new pictures to old postings!
Neil and I in costume in Ocotber's "green cat and fuzzy bear" entry.
Mitchell at his Thanksgiving feast on November's "fun activities" entry.
I just can't have things out of order, and I just got these pics!

crawling for Christmas

Its official! Mark is crawling!! I actually lost him yesterday in the living room! I left the room for a minute and when I came back he had crawled into the corner! His favorite place to go is right next to the toy box and the entertainment center! He also frequently ends up near the rock fire place scraping his head on the rocks as he tires to turn over! I now spend a good part of my day rescuing Mark from the precarious places he has slithered to! I am really excited to see him progressing. I have to remind myself that he started life 2 months ahead of schedule and that puts him two months behind the game! He is doing so great! Today, Mark was practicing his escape skills. He was sitting, strapped in, in a bouncer seat. I left the room, once again, and when I returned, Mark was out of the bouncer, it was turned upside down, and he had crawled back on it and was pulling at the bar that is usually the base! I guess he flipped the whole thing over and crawled out! I was surprised that I did not hear any crying in the process! That boy's gonna be trouble!! But isn't he cute?

oh! Christmas tree!

We have had quite a time getting our tree up this year! We started on Tuesday night. We had our holiday music blaring, we had our video camera and still camera ready, we had even put on picture worthy clothing! It's Mark's first tree experience and Mitchell is big enough to start understanding the traditions of Christmas decorating. So here we go! Neil and Mitchell start opening the boxes and sorting the limbs by their colored tags(we have that really nice kind of tree that you get to assemble each year) and I am taking pictures! We got the tree put together and the lights strung on it. Then we had to call it a night because of a tired and fussy Marky, a curious and not really helpful Mitchell, and two fruatrated parents!

Wednesday morning, Mitchell and I tried to decorate the tree and about 20 ornaments into the process the tree fell over! I was able to get the tree back to a standing, but unstable position, and luckily none of the ornaments were broken! Here was the scene: me on my stomach under the tree trying to fix the tree stand, Mitchell standing near my legs asking, "Mommy what you doing?" "WHAT YOU DOING?!!", me saying "Mitchell move away, move away from my legs! Please don't be near the tree! Just stop talking for a minute!" We tried to finish decorating the wobbly tree, but the smallest ornaments were setting it off balance so we just quit!

Wednesday night at about 10:30 after we had all gone to bed, I go downstairs to get something and I find our Christmas tree lying in the middle of the floor of our dark living room with the lights on! You see the plug that the lights are in is loose so I has wiggled it earlier to turn them on but it had wiggled out and turned off and I had just forgotten about it. When the tree fell it pulled the plug into the magical position to make the lights come on! I woke up Neil to see the spectacle! We re-balanced the tree and picked up the ornaments, still none broken! At this point we were about to call it quits on having a tree this year and just wanted to put it back in the box!


Thurday, I buy a new tree stand and Neil puts the tree into it that evening.

Friday, I finally get to finish the tree, but by now there is no joy left in the process! I am just randomly picking ornaments, not even trying to reminise about the sentimental ones. Mitchell is trying to help me but is making more of a mess than being helpful. Finally it is done and we pack up all the extra stuff and clean up the living room! I am not too excited about the tree, but a least we have one, right? I half-heartedly trun on the lights to see if that helps it look any more complete and, surprise of all surprises, it actually looks nice with the lights on! So I like the tree, I really like the super heavy duty new tree stand, and we have a pretty funny story for this year! For a while I felt like the Kranks in Skipping Christmas (or for those of you who saw the movie Christmas with the Kranks)!

Neil even put some Christmas lights around our house! We inherited the lights from Neil's parents, so Neil has had lots of practice with them! Thanks Dave and Eileen! The really neat thing about the lights is that all of them stay lit constantly except for just a few bulbs near the top of the tree that blink!

8 months old

I can hardly believe Mark turned 8 months old last Sunday. It seems so old! He is rolling all over the floor (and off a few beds). He is almost crawling! He gets his knees up under him and rocks a little and then takes a nose dive or does a belly flop! He is experimenting with his voice; we get to hear all sorts of squeals and grunts and yells, even da, ga, tttas, eeda, and heea. He loves to eat handfulls of hair, mine, Neil's, whatever he can find on the floor! He went to the Dr. last week for a cough that two rounds of antibiotics didn't stop. After a chest x-ray and and an oxygen reading and a breathing treatment, we came home with three new prescriptions to clear up his cough and wheezing and ear infections! One of the medicines is a steroid and he is crazy!! Eating every 2 hours through the night. He has been sleeping through the night for the last 5 months so this is a shock to the system! He is also taking an inhaler that caused him have a few shaking episodes for a few seconds yesterday while he nursing. That was kind of scary. Tonight and last night he has cried for about 1 1/2 hours straight. We are so sad that his medicine is making him so miserable! We only have a few days left of the medicine and then I hope we can get our sweet Marky back. The one who hardly cries and loves to laugh and shriek at his brother!

Isaac saw it first

It would not be fair if we did not share this picture of Meredith and Jeremy and Isaac who actually went to see the Chicken Little before we did! Isaac is Ben and Melissa's other favorite nephew! From the story I heard Isaac did better during the movie than Mitchell. I heard he sat in his own seat the whole time eating popcorn and watching in awe! Mitchell sat in a variety of seats, mostly mine and Mom Mom's, and even had to take a trip to the bathroom even though he was wearing a diaper! Well, it is just not fair to compare sometimes! Isaac is 6 months younger than Mitchell. Isn't it cute that they both have glasses! What an odd coincidence!

our famous family member

Every family has to have one claim to fame! Our fame right now is Neil's sister Melissa who works for Disney. She is so famous her name is listed at the end of a long list of credits following (read in cheesy announcer voice) your favorite movie and mine . . . Chicken Little!! Saturday Neil's parents came back home with us and we all went to see Chicken Little! It was Mitchell's second movie and Mark's first! Mark slept through most of the movie and Mitchell, being the sensitive kid that he is, covered his ears through most of it! Well we liked the movie and liked seeing Aunt Melissa's name at the end too! Melissa is working with Toy Story 3 right now and we really can't wait for that one! Mitchell already loves Buzz and Woody. When he plays pretend he always gets to be Buzz and I have (get) to be Woody. Mitchell gets the cool line, "To in-i-fin-i-tee and beyond!" Mark is the horse, Bullseye. No, I don't let Mitchell ride on Mark's back, and neither do I for that matter! Neil is prospector, "that old man in the box", as Mitchell described it!
Well I got a little off subject! If you see Chicken Little watch the credits for Melissa Bradford! We are so proud of her!
Pretty creepy pictures huh? Well, they were taken in the dark! It looks like our kids don't get out much by the looks on their faces at seeing a movie! The stairs picture was taken post movie, they look a little tired! Mark is actually throwing a fit! And finally, if you don't make it to the movie, I will show you Melissa's name! Can you tell I have a new camera that I just can't put down?

Thanksgiving and vomit?

Can you believe our sweet little Mitchell threw-up at the table during Thanksgiving dinner? Yes folks its true! Neil and I were catching it in our hands! The culprit was GiGi's homemade cranberry sauce with a little too much ground orange rind! To GiGi's cooking credit Mitchell was recovering from a stomach virus. He had been throwing up all night Monday and Tuesday and had not eaten much Wednesday to prepare for Thrusday's feast! Other than fevers and coughs and vomiting and trying to keep a very zealous big brother away from a very tiny baby brother to avoid contamination, we had a pretty plesant and uneventful Thanksgiving Holiday! Neil and I even got up early on Friday to catch the sale at Target! We left the sleeping kids home with Mom Mom and Grandad! It was like a date, only very early in the morning! We came home with a new digital camera at, I am sorry to say, not a price worth getting up that early for, but we were already up and at the store and the really cheap one in the ad was just that. After we got home at 7:30 am the rest of the family got up and we went to the Opryland Hotel for breakfast and a stroll to look at the Christmas decorations! We had fun walking around together, and I got to try out the new camera!

fun activities

This week was filled with quite a few fun activities. All of which I do not have pictures of but really wanted to share. On Tuesday, the ladies at church hosted "A taste of Homewoood" to celebrate the release of the new church cook book. Everyone made and brought one dish that they had submitted for the cookbook. The food was great! How cool! I usually only use the recipes of people I know, so this was a great way to expand the use of my book. Also sometimes you read a recipe and go, yeah right, that sounds awful! My favorite was Mountain Dew Apple Dumpling! The ladies here are so good at making occasions "special". I am sure it is a "suthern thang dawlin"! There were small table clothed tables with center pieces and candle light to gather your friends around and a few "table scapes" of fully decorated tables for holiday decorating ideas! I felt like I had had a wonderfully special girls night out! The night out feeling was quite unexpected due to the fact that Neil was working Tuesday night and I had to bring the boys with me. Nothing new really, I drag them everywhere by myself, but I got smart/brave/fed up this time and asked a friend's high school daughters to watch them in the nursery while I dined! I had such a good time!

Another fun thing this week was Mitchell's 1st Thanksgiving party at preschool! They made stew and the parents got to come and see the fun fall things they had been making! His favorite is a macaroni necklace! He is still wearing it around! I have one or two pictures to add when I get them developed.


Friday night Neil and I went to a fondue party at our preacher's house! We took the boys to a friend's house! What a treat, an evening alone! By alone I mean without having to chase a child, or feed a child! We had planned on going on a real date but the party came up instead. I only ate one piece of fondue cooked meat. I stayed very near the "heavy hors d'oeuvres " table, it required less work and provided instant gratification! Another highlight was the chocolate fountain! Yes, you read that right! A fountain of chocolate accompanied by strawberries, pound cake, and marshmallows! Wow! good stuff!

Busy week! And as it worked out free babysitting! What could be better?

leaf rain

Thursday Neil was raking the back yard when we came home from the store , and Mitchell begged and cried, literally, to go and rake with daddy. So after the crying fit, Neil graciously took Mitchell outside even though he was really finished raking! Who can resist a pile of leaves? And what mommy can resist pictures of their cuties playing in them? I was slow at getting the camera ready so by the time I could get a picture, Mitchell had lost interest. I had to bribe him with candy to go back to the leaf pile and throw leaves so I could get a picture! All the while Mark was lying in the middle of the floor crying because it was time for him to eat! The question is, "Was it worth it?" Of course! Crying babies and candy bribes are a normal part of every day. My philosophy? A little crying won't hurt anyone and we would have eaten candy anyway, so why not get a cute picture? Oh! and Neil was quite dismayed after working so hard to clear the lawn for it to be completely covered again by Sunday! Such is Alabama in the fall! We love seeing the trees change colors and the leaves fall. We even love the really loud sound of nuts falling and rolling down our roof! Ah Nuts!!!

fall fun playtime

We spent some good quality time outside today! The weather was great, in the mid 80's, so as soon as we parked the car in the garage from picking Mitchell up from school we went straight outside. We did not even go inside to unload our things! I was trying to think of something new to post so I got out the camera and decided to share our afternoon! Aren't they cute? Mark went for his first ride on the scooter today. I held him on it and pushed him. The picture is not a correct representation of the ride! While Mark rested in the car seat he decided to try some acrobatics. Mitchell and I had to run over and rescue him several times from falling out! Of course the afternoon would not have been complete without a few wagon rides down the driveway. Mitchell was the rider and I was the puller. He made me sit in the wagon and as a kind gesture tried to pull me too, but needless to say it was a very short ride! Ahh, someday soon he will be bigger than me, and then I can ride!

a visit to GiGi's

Last weekend we went to visit GiGi (AKA Lucile, Neil's grandma) and had a great time! Mitchell helped her pick spinach in her back yard garden, and Mark was just glad to be included. We do have a pic of Mark smiling while being held by GiGi but she was not looking! I chose to let GiGi look pretty instead of Mark. GiGi's wagon was a hit. Mitchell and Ian loved riding and begged any adult they found to pull them! They also loved swinging and playing in the yard, but they had to watch out for Pepper's droppings! Ian is Neil's cousin Edward and Alicia's son. He is 4 months younger than Mitchell. They get along well! They played chase and tackle in the house and then stopped and sang a few songs for us! It was really cute. Neil and Edward are just one month apart, so it is neat that they also have kids close in age! They are expecting another son in February so Mark will have a playmate too! Pepper is the newest addition to Lucile's household. She is a one month old Siberian Husky! Lucile and James take care of her, but she lives at Lucile's house. I have included their 1st "family" picture together!