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!