Happy 2010

Somedays its still crazy to imagine that just a few years ago we didn't have children! What an enormous gift they are. I've been able to keep up on this blog for the majority of their childhoods, thus far. So at the end of this year I will be making their blog into a book of the last 3 years. And then I plan to make a book for each additional year. I better start working on it though!
Anyway, have a great 2010. :)

Christmas 2009

Celia loving her dress from Grandma Maus (with spandex pants underneath)

Back in maybe early november Jason and I found a great wooden kitchen on amazon.com for a great price. We had been shopping online for wooden kitchens for months and finally settled a nice one with a wonderful sale price. For 3 days last weekend Jason snuck down to the utility room or basement at night to build the kitchen so we could surprise Nicholas and Celia on Christmas morning. So Christmas Eve after they went to bed we put it in the playroom, turned off the light and shut the door. All the gifts were under the tree in the basement all set for the morning.
So morning comes and at about 7:30am I thought I heard one of the kids get up, but being 1/2 asleep I figured maybe they were getting up to pee (that happens where they go on their own if its an emergency in the morning). I did hear whoever it was go back in their room, but I was 1/2 asleep so I didn't know the time frame. And I didn't have my glasses on to peek (I'm about blind as a bat without contacts or glasses) so I didn't peek to see who it was.
Anyway... 7:50am and both kids are awake and we get ready to go downstairs. Jason grabs the video camera and I the picture camera and we go down. The plan was to open gifts and then have them go take their new gifts in the playroom and they would be surprised by the kitchen. Jason was going to be in the playroom with the camera on so we could record their faces.
Well. . . as you'll see in the video. Someone had snuck down there first and scoped it out. The lights we on and the door was open to the playroom. That stinker was Celia. LOL! She was not surprised to see the kitchen as she waltzed right in to the playroom. ha! You can hear Jason and I whispering about 'what happened!?' at the end.



They had fun opening their gifts. It's funny how they love the Gear toy that was for Aaron.

Aaron thinking "Why are they taking my toys away!?"

Nicholas' automoblox (very cool cars!). They make big automoblox and I think N&C would both LOVE a big one. Celia loves cars. We should just buy her cars too. lol

Celia's wooden cookie set (she has had a lot of fun with these too)

And we learned that Aaron has an extremely long tongue! He is getting his first tooth and he was playing with it with his tongue. We were laughing so hard that we were crying when we were taking these pictures. He is too cute!

He reminds me of a little puppy. ha ha

Below is a picture of one of their 'Potato Head' toys. The hilarious thing is I hear, "WHERE is my mashed potato!?" or "WHERE is my tomato head" LOL

We also made a birthday cake for Jesus. After a delicious dinner at my parent's house (Dad/Papa ROCKED that prime rib!) we sang 'Happy Birthday' to Jesus and N&C blew out the candle.
Happy Birthday Jesus! :)

Christmas Eve 2009

*UPS went above and beyond this year.

Last year the kids opened their christmas gifts all at one time. We came to find out that it is slightly over-whelming to toddlers when they open multiple presents at once. So this year, they opened some on thursday (our trip to Grandma and Grandpa Velicer's was canceled due to icy roads) and on friday morning and friday evening. It seemed to work out much better. The gifts included:
a Drum for each of them, a wooden kitchen, wooden cookies for pretend baking, pretend pots/pans (one set is wood and one set works perfect for playdough), 'click' cars (automoblox), mini horse figurines, books, potato head accessories, hopscotch, racing motorcycles, teething toys for Aaron, a gear toy for Aaron (which N&C love), board games (hi ho cheerio & cooties), savings bonds, pajamas and towels. . . and i think i'm probably forgetting something. Wow! That's a lot, but they really love it all. Really perfect gifts for them. Grandma and Grandpa Velicer gave us money to buy them something they would like and we may use that to buy more swim lessons or something at the YMCA. They love that sort of thing too. And swimming is a great skill to learn of course.

Thursday gift opening:

"What did you get?"

"What did YOU get?"

Aaron & I. . .
Nicholas says "that doesn't look like you, Mommy" But I assure you, it is me.

Aaron with Grandma Maus

Doing Hopscotch


This is what happens if you fall asleep. N&C's first Christmas Eve joke on Daddy.


My brother Matthew arrived from New Mexico Christmas Eve and then we had lasagna for dinner and played Wii at our house a bit after dinner when the kids were in bed.

A teething Aaron

Our snowman has slowly been shifting backwards each day. He's looking like he is doing the limbo out there. ha ha

Aaron is getting his two bottom front teeth already. I can't say how long until they break thru, but his left bottom front tooth is moving the fastest. Nicholas and Celia didn't get their first teeth until 10.5 and 11 months, so this is a surprise as he has only just turned 7 months old. He's a general kind of fussy - wants to be held, doesn't know what he wants, short naps, waking a time or two extra at night... nothing major. He does the best when I give him infant's motrin. He likes to chew on things more than he usually does. This could explain the excessive drool he has (though he's always been a big drooler) and him pulling on his ears here/there.
He likes to chew on a cold washcloth or the mesh teethers with an ice cube inside for relief. We did find a new camera for $100 on a black friday sale and its So much clearer!!! It was worth it!

In this video he was making a big pouty lip watching Nicholas eat a Christmas cookie. I offered him some baby puffs right before this video and he squished his lips closed and turned his head. Sorry Aaron... can't have a christmas cookie at 7 months old. ha ha Watch for him to roll his eyes in the end... really looks like he does. ha ha!

Jesus gives us Happy Birthdays

This morning Nicholas and Celia were enjoying a Christmas cookie (it was after breakfast at least!) at the kitchen table while I cleaned up the kitchen counter. I was talking to them about what to do when they open a Christmas present. I pretended that I was opening a box and that I say 'Thankyou! I really like it!". This was the conversation that followed:

Nicholas said "Santa is coming to give us presents"
Me "Yes he is. But we also get presents because we remember that Jesus was born on Christmas and he is the biggest present of all. Jesus is more important than Santa. A lot more important'
Nicholas "Because Jesus gives us a warm house"
Me "yes! He does! Can you think of anything else Jesus gives us?"
Nicholas "Happy Birthdays!"
Me chuckling "He sure does Nicholas. Any thing else you can think of?"
Nicholas "He gives us 'nummies (aka yummies/food)"
Me "Thats wonderful! He does give us a warm house, Happy Birthdays and Nummies"
Nicholas "I'm all done [eating cookies] mommy. I'm going to go downstairs"

I think he came up with the warm house and 'nummies (food) because we thank Jesus for those things when we pray at meals, but how sweet of an almost 3-year old to come up with 'Happy Birthdays'. Can you tell what he is excited for?

Caught Red-handed

Yesterday I had my game-on and worked on a little lesson with nicholas and Celia. I want to be able to spend some time each day working on different skills and teaching them... but often between feeding them breakfast, cleaning that up, nursing aaron, putting aaron to nap, getting N&C dressed, etc, etc... then its time for lunch. Whew. Our mornings are a whirlwind, and then before I know it, dinner is supposed to be started and everything is still frozen. Ay yi yi
Well, this morning I woke up early so that i was all dressed and ready for the day. So I quickly got N&C all set for the day and while Aaron was taking his morning nap I had them come sit at the computer with me and we worked on 'letter Aa' on starfall.com (great website). Then i had them come to the table and i carved a letter 'A' out of a 1/2 an apple (so they each had a 1/2) and they dipped it in red paint and made letter 'a' prints with Apples. Soon they ditched the apples and were slathering up their hands and forearms in red tempera paints. ahhh to be 2 again (well...almost 3). What can you do but savor the simplicity of the moment and photograph it...

A big mess, a growing baby and a sleeping princess

Nicholas and Celia like to play with different types of sensory stuff at the table. It makes a mess. Somedays more than others, but it keeps them busy and they like it. We do shaving creme sprayed on the table with different tools to play with it. And play dough. And they also like some little bowls of cornstarch, sugar, salt, etc. This is one of the particularly messy days. They dump, pour, spoon, transfer their dusty messes. This one was a big mess...

Aaron is growing so fast! This week he is banging toys together more. He is starting to do clapping movements. And he was trying to back-up from all-4's crawling position into the sitting position a couple times last night. Wow!



And this picture is so precious to me. Celia fell asleep in our bed one afternoon when we had to move her cause she and Nicholas were not napping. She looked like a perfect little princess sleeping in our bed that I had to take a picture. How sweet is she??

Winter Storm.... and Daddy's troublesome day

We had a snowstorm! It was a big one. A 'wallop' as our neighbor, Mr Dave, stated. We got about 12 inches or so of snow. And tonight it is dropping to single-digits and very windy... so everything will have a nice layer of ice on top of it. Jason/Daddy had a very rough day today, though. He woke up to be at his paper route at 3am, his car got stuck at 5pm, so he walked to his friend Matt's house and woke him up. Matt helped Jason pull his car out and then let Jason use his truck to finish the route. Then Jason got home at almost 8am (usually he gets home by about 5:30am and has left for his 'real' job by 7:30am). So since the freezing stuff was coming he wanted to get the driveway cleared before he left for work. But then the snowblower wouldn't start. So he grabbed a shovel to clear a path and that cracked in half. He was not so happy.
So my Dad came over and got it started, but then Jason ran out of gas shortly after. So, Jason went to work and then came home a while later and with new gas he realized it was not starting before because it had old gas in it. So he was able to clear the driveway finally. He was going from about 2:30am to 5pm and was in bed shortly after 6pm. He works SO hard. I think in the last 2 days he had 8 hours of sleep total. I was noticing that the kids were playing today and they were talking about Daddy being at work all the time. When they see his car, they get excited that he is actually home. The paper routes are great since they make up the income since I have to be home, but it will be fabulous some day when he can be home like a regular person.

So Jason had a rough day, but the kids and I had a nice day. Once Aaron went to sleep for his first nap at 9am, i put the monitor in my pocket and Nicholas, Celia and I went out to build a snowman with Grandma. It's the CUTEST snowman EVER! We have it facing the house, not the road. That way the kids can look out their window and see it looking at them. With the ice coating it tonight, it'll probably be there until May. ha ha. Tonight when I closed their shade in their room I saw this giant snowman staring at me in the dark... and I'll admit I sort of pictured a horror movie. ha ha. It's sweet in the daylight though.
Grandma helped N&C trudge to her house while I carried Aaron and we had hot chocolate and helped Grandma decorate her Christmas tree (Grandma was home because school was canceled).

Aaron's Milestones this week

I don't have pictures, but I need to record this somewhere before I forget! Aaron's milestones in this last week include:

1. He can take a toy in each hand and bang them together.

2. He shakes his head 'no' when he is silly and playing.
(I looked this up and it's normal, I guess. ha ha)

3. He can be propped up on all 4's and stay that way.

4. He can open and close his mouth like a big 'ol fishy and he copies me when I do it.

5. He takes baths in the big bath-tub - no more infant bath tub.

6. I went in to get him from his evening nap and he was on his tummy peeking over the bumper smiling at me.

7. I put cheerios on his highchair tray and he surprised me by almost having his pincer grasp perfected! He doesn't want to put them in his mouth though.

He is growing up too fast! What a sweet boy he is. :)

Oh, and in the midst of all this loveliness, we are in the throughs of toddler-dom this week. Oh my. I'm a patient person, but this week I look forward to bedtime almost as soon as we wake up. Seems they get in these difficult times here/there. Thankfully they aren't always difficult.

1. Celia took a glue bottle and drizzled it around the trampoline multiple times. Thank goodness she didn't put it on the carpet.

2. Celia took her chocolate milk and shook her straw cup so it dripped a bunch into the box of the boots I was returning. She also dumped her milk into the pirate ship toy they have.

3. N&C both drizzled their sparkling water all over the livingroom floor.

4. General whining, arguing and crying all week.

5. Dumped their cereal on the table (with milk included) and smeared it all over. They haven't done that for about a year.

6. Nicholas, with his continuing grasp of the english language, has now begun the debate team. He argues his point all the time. I'm afraid we've created a monster.

I tell ya, Jason and I both need a vacation! Between rough days with N&C this week and Jason working all the time. BUT I know its (hopefully) a phase and they'll be back to their normal selves soon. I don't usually complain, but sheesh... it's been a week, alright. Thankfully while N&C are having a tough week, I can play with Aaron who smiles and doesn't argue back at me. ha ha