Round and Round

Round and Round is a game from an episode of Charlie and Lola. Lola makes a new friend, and this is his favorite game. The boys decided that they wanted to make the game so they could play together. Taye drew the game board, and they both colored in the squares. I fashioned the dice out of rocks, since we couldn't find any real ones, and they each chose an animal to play with. In the show, Lola complains that she doesn't like this game because "all you do is go round and round!" Well, the boys must not have read the rules because their animals went all over. I watched them play, and they hardly stayed on the board at all. I think Lola is playing with the wrong kids!

Pigtails

The next chapter in the great quest for Mya's new look.

These stayed in way longer than the clippies, and raise the cuteness factor by about a hundred. Sadly, she is much less willing to stay still enough to have them put in.

QT

Taye is working on a list of presents he wants for his birthday. He asked me to tell him how to spell everything. At one point, I told him to write an 'S'. He stared at the paper for a second and then said, "But, I don't know how to make an 's' - I'm not that kind of kid!"

Getting Away

This weekend Luis and I got to go on a date. For the entire weekend! We have not been away overnight since before Taye was born, it was about time. With Luis' birthday this week, and our anniversary next week, this seemed like the perfect time. We went out to eat, we saw a movie, we took our time poking around stores just for fun. We got to talk uninterrupted, and best of all, we got to hold hands (and even kiss!) without Mya screaming at us, and pushing Luis away. (The nerve of him, trying to touch me. Thank goodness I have her to guard me.) On Sunday, before heading home, we went to Quincy to get one of our favorite pizzas, and then went for a walk along Wollaston Beach. The whole weekend was perfect, we had a wonderful time. We're planning to stay overnight again in about 6 months for our friend Jen's wedding, we're just hoping Mom and Jim will have recovered in time!

Daddy's Birthday

We celebrated Daddy's birthday with the kids a day early, since Luis and I weren't going to be home for long on his actual birthday. The night before, the kids and I baked a cake and worked on gifts. Darius had picked out a huge Transformer at the Salvation Army to give Luis. When we got home, we realized we had no wrapping paper, but we did have tissue paper, so Darius got to work making his own pretty wrapping paper.



Mya "helped."



When it was all done, Darius wrapped the present (almost) all by himself. The finished result:



While he worked on that, Taye worked on a poster for Luis. He has been writing non-stop lately, and decided to make a sign that said "Happy Birthday Daddy Love M." I imagine you're wondering who "M" is. It stands for one of Taye's new favorite characters - Mario. He watched me play on my new DS, and it is all over. I suggested he write his real name, and he told me he was being Mario, so Mario was his real name. He also wrote '34' on the sign, since Luis can't seem to remember how old he is (early senility kicking in).



In the morning, they gave Luis his present, and we had cake after lunch. All in all, I think Luis was happy with his birthday celebration.

Clippies

This girl has got some crazy hair. Every morning is like a whole new 'do. Sometimes it's curly, sometimes straight, sometimes it even resembles a mullet. She's in that annoying growing out stage, and something needed to be done. Plus, my Etsy addiction needed to be fed ;o) Enter the new hair clippies:


They do the job (for the 3.2 seconds she leaves them in) and they are so cute. Seriously though, can I superglue them in? Staples? I need suggestions!

Am I the only one who notices the particular mischievious glint in her eyes here? Be afraid.

Skating

About a year ago, Taye saw 5 minutes of a hockey game on TV. He immediately decided that he wanted to play. We talked about taking a class to learn how to skate first, and he was very interested. It has only taken me this whole year to finally find a class and sign him up. He was so excited when I told him, and he started last week. The day before his first class, he got to warm up a bit at Rowan's birthday party.


As you can see, he was totally not excited about his first class.

There were 9 or 10 kids in his class. They started by having them all grab onto the wall, and try to walk around the rink.

Most of the class was focused on how to stand back up after falling, which has proven to be a very valuable skill.

The class is 40 minutes long. About 38 minutes into it, there was a period of maybe 10 seconds where every kid in the class was on their feet at the same time. All the parents clapped. It really is entertaining to watch, and Taye is loving it. Mom and Jim took him this week (we were away) and he reportedly had some fun rolling across the ice as well. Goofball.

Bubbles

This is an example of one of the (many, many) things that make Luis such a good dad. The boys were talking the other day about blowing bubbles - 'maybe in the spring...when it's warm...when we can go outside...we don't have any bubble stuff anyway...'

Without a word, Luis slipped out of the room. He was back a few minutes later with a pot of homemade bubble soap, and a 'wand' to blow bubbles with. Who says we have to wait for spring?

As you can probably tell by the clamoring, the bubbles were a hit.


I just had fun watching their faces, I love that something so simple could make them so happy.

I almost forgot...

I have to share this bit of Christmas craftiness. While I was working on the finger puppets we sent to Eva and Emma, Darius decided that he wanted to make one too. I gave him the blank body and showed him how to do the felting slowly, so he wouldn't stab his finger (those needles hurt!) He made this monkey with minimal help from me. Without hesitation, he decided it should be for Kathy. We found a little box, and he wrapped it himself. She was thrilled to open it.

While I was out...

Mr. Incredible

As I mentioned, drawing is a new big deal around here. Taye especially has had a great time drawing all his favorite characters. The first one he made was, not surprisingly, Mr. Incredible. One day he had me staple several pages together to make a book. The title was "Mr. Incredible and His Friends Defeat All the Bad Guys and the Omnidroid." This was also the whole story in a nutshell. He illustrated each page, and I was instructed to write this same phrase on each and every page.

It is so much fun to watch. Now, if only we could keep the covers on the markers. We've gone through 2 boxes since Christmas, and they are not cheap!

Christmas

Christmas was, as usual, a blur. A very fun blur, but a blur nonetheless. There was a lot of buying, making, and wrapping. Several weeks before Christmas, Darius put some coins in a little box and taped it shut to make an instrument. He immediately decided that it would be for Daddy for Christmas, and kept it hidden in his room for those weeks. On Christmas Eve Eve, he and I wrapped it together. Taye decided to make Daddy a poster to hang in his room (like the many Taye has made for himself, and hung over his own bed). When the gifts were wrapped, the boys each made a tag and wrote "Daddy" on it. This new picture drawing/letter writing phase is so awesome.

A couple of days before Christmas, a package arrived from sunny Fla. Not being ones to wait, we opened it right up and found gifts from the other half of the Ranosco crew. Tia had made awesome pj's and the cutest baby dolls for all three kids. As you can see, they were thrilled.

On Christmas Eve, we opened new pajamas, as usual. The kids were all happy with these as well.

On Christmas morning, Nana came over to open presents with us. Lucky for her, the kids aren't at that "let's wake up at 4am on Christmas" stage yet, so 7am it was. They were excited to see the presents, but really took their time opening. They liked to play with pretty much everything for at least a minute or two before moving on.

Here is the part of my post where I show off the outfit I made for Mya. I knit the pants, then I knit a square and felted the Christmas tree on it to make the patch on her shirt. It was just as cute as I had imagined. I love when that happens. :o)

After opening presents at our house, we went to Nana's for breakfast and to open presents with Nana, Jim, and Jackie. The kids loved everything they got. Lots of Spiderman goodies for Taye (he had requested Spiderman bad guys) a Thomas set for Darius, and a ball popper for Mya (which has been a favorite of all three). They also got an awesome ice cream maker from Aunt Penny, Uncle Bunny (yes, we still call him that), and Emma.

This is the point where the day starts to get blurry - a 2 hour ride to the Dorsey's, yummy lunch, fun times, an hour and a half ride to Aunt Amy's, dessert, more fun, and the hour ride home. The bonus gift of the day? Frog was alone for 13 hours outside of his crate, and there was not a drop of pee (or anything else) on the floor when we got home! Merry Christmas to us!

Catching up on December...

Yes, it's true...I am finally updating my blog. December was busy and full of knitting and making gifts, not leaving much time for blogging. On top of that, I've had some technical difficulties (my uploading program is not working, the dog chewed through the power cord for my laptop, and the battery needs to be replaced so it doesn't last more than a few minutes without being plugged in.) But here we go on a whirlwind tour of our Christmas preparations...

The first weekend in December, we got our Christmas tree. The place where we went had a fire burning next to their artificial pond. We walked around and then warmed ourselves by the fire while we discussed which tree to get. Taye was climbing around on the wall of the pond, and we warned him to be careful not to fall into the water or the fire. He told us that if he fell into the fire, he could jump into the water to put the fire out, and then stand next to the fire to dry off. At least we knew he had a plan.

We finally decided on a tree, and Mya and I walked in to pay while they loaded it onto the van. A man stopped me on the way in, and asked if he could buy our tree for us. He told me he likes to see young families out with kids, and that he tries to buy a tree for someone every year. It was really sweet of him, we couldn't thank him enough.

When we got home, we decorated. Compared to other years, everything went like a dream. The boys were very excited to put the angel on top, Mya liked helping with the ornaments, they even posed for the Christmas card.



Later that week, the kids and I traveled out to see Joe, Krissy, and Aine. We went to their town's tree lighting, and saw Santa arrive on his ATV. Out here that's how Santa rolls.

We had the first good snow of the season. "Good" being a relative term, of course. The boys couldn't wait to get out in it and play. They actually stayed out for quite a while. When Taye got cold (lying on your belly, eating snow, can do that do you) he went in with Luis and Mya. Darius and I stayed out and decided to check out the river in the woods.

And finally, since Joanine is gone and the rest of the Carey's couldn't get it together, we had our own gingerbread house party. We even won the contest.

After all that, we were ready for Christmas.