Christmas 2008

What a wonderful Christmas!! Santa came five times to Pip and Viv, proving they are much more nice than naughty.

He first came Christmas Eve to Grammie and Grandpa Balas' house, where Pip was thrilled to find his reindeer food worked to lure the sleigh in early. Pip and Viv got lots of cool presents, but this kitchen was over the top.

Bizarre, we know, but Viv's favorite toy is Pip's rubber snake. Perfect for teething, either that or she's destined to be a snake wrangler.

Pip is still enamored with Harry...

Brodolph:

Viv's getting the hang of the bottle solo:

Jelly bean tongues:

Serious cutie:

Christmas day was spent at Uncle George's and Pip and Rhiannon had a blast together. I had lots of fun playing Blokus with Al ... very smart kid!

Later Santa came to Pop Pop's house where Pip was beyond thrilled with this year's Hess Truck and Phil shared the sentiment with his Playstation loot.

We also made a trek to see Jodie's clan and Pip was very happy to play with his cousins. I laughed for at least an hour straught playing Apples to Apples with Jodie, Mike, Mickey, and Phil. The highlight for Pip was this whipped cream concoction ...

... it was literal icing on the cake that got him fully hyped up. Unfortunately, without a nap he was unable to hold back when he spotted the John Deere ride-on truck outside and these dashed hopes combined with his overtired state resulted in a nice big tantrum as we left. Here's the tail end:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/CKQIwWRwb6g3D3sQOLISmQ?feat=directlink

Check out facebook for some embarrassing pictures of gamenight at Wert's. We had great fun playing my new Quelf game (thanks Jen and Matt!) but the mullet wig was just to prove that hairstyles have indeed come a long way.

We arrived back home Sunday night to find Phil's snow fort completely melted. Here are pictures from it's glory days.

Entrance:

Snowball bunker:

Escape hatch:

Next day we were too pooped to cook and ordered pizza in. Pip had fun giving the delivery guy high fives. We all enjoyed the pizza.

Even more snow!

Three snow storms in one week!!! Pip can't get enough of the snow and has been shoveling like crazy with Mom and Dad. He also bravely mounted a sled (innertube) both by himself and with his buddy Brian from across the street. They slid down the neighbors driveway. Pip also went on the big sled with Mommy. So fun!

Vivian is unfortunately missing out on all the snow fun, but she is having fun on her own. She's now trying desperately to get things out of her reach, pulling herself up to her knees in the process. Here's a video of her getting the beginning movements of crawling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va1-pshdTIY

Pip has also begun to acknowledge Vivian's presence and is starting to interact with her. Lately he loves giving her hugs.

Pip has been battling with his emotions lately. Tantrums are a regular part of our life these days. Pip has learned that one of the many infractions that will get him a timeout is hitting. Here he explains to Mommy and Daddy about his history of hitting people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlxlpYIcVRQ

The Story of the Snow Pants and the Secret Tooth

Today was our first big snow storm of 2008! We were all very excited. A few days ago we had a little dusting to get us all in the mood. Here's Pip showing off his shoveling skills.

Last night everyone geared up and announced they would work from home (Natalie) or take half days (Phil). Pip and Viv went to daycare but got picked up early.

When we got home Pip and I went for a walk in the wagon. He was hesitant about getting dressed up but with some prodding we eventually got him into his full snow outfit ... snow pants, hat with ear flaps, mittens, jacket with hood up, and snow boots. There was the lure of snow plows (THEY'RE LOUD MOMMY!!) and Dunkin Donuts which could not be resisted. After pounding a festive donut with red frosting and warming back to room temp, Pip and I went back into the cold and over to the grocery store. Pip switched places with me and instead of riding in the wagon, he pulled it all through the store as we loaded it up with a few essentials (yes, we were THOSE people who went to get milk in the snow storm). He was quite proud to see a teacher from his daycare there and show off his wagon pulling skills to her. The wagon was a bit much to pull in the storm, so I took it the rest of the way home.

Upon arriving safely back home, Pip was happy to shed his hat, mittens, jacket, and boots. But he steadfastly refused to take off the snow pants, which he just loved. Maybe he likes the swish swish when he walks, or the feeling that he's SO BIG, or the extra padding when he falls, or maybe it's just the warm factor. In any event, he requested permission to where them to bed tonight. Permission granted. Sorta like the fireman who sleeps in his fire pants, Pip is ready to roll should a call come in a 4am to help shovel snow.

Meanwhile, as you might have guessed from my post title, Vivian cut her first tooth today!! She's been drooling like crazy and so I poked my finger in there to see and sure enough a little one is coming up on the bottom. Go Viv!

Mom's Group Christmas Party

This entry is a little late, but I would be remiss not to mention the fabulous (and wild) Christmas Party our Mom's Group held on December 10th at Liz's house. She did a great job decorating and everyone brought food galore. Pip was excited all day about the prospect of a party and hit the ground running. I barely saw him because he spent all the time running about, especially in Charlie's play house.

Vivian spent a good amount of time in the exersaucer, which (amazingly) is not the Baby Einstein one so she had to figure out all its bells and whistles. She also had fun flirting it up with Conor (has a thing for the big boys).

We did two group shots, one with the toddlers and one with the babies. But the toddlers just could not resist hamming it up in the baby photo as well. (Vivian was quite tired by this point ... and non-coincidentally this night was her first sleeping through, which was in retrospect more a function of this party than what was to come.)

Phil and I spent lots of time after putting the kids down over the prior two or three nights constructing a huge devil's food cake, with dark chocolate ganache, white chocolate mint cream, and mint frosting cake to take along. It was from one of our cooking magazines. Would have hit the spot has I been craving chocolate, but after all the other great food it was a little much.

Grandma Bresler visits!

This weekend Grandma Bresler visited for what is becoming an annual Christmastime tradition. The visit was too short, but it was full of activity.

As usual, she brought all sort of little toys .. Pip's favorite being toddler tongs that he uses to pick up and transport small objects. Very proud accomplishment.


We had lots of fun building tunnels and playing hide and seek and making trains (of course, this goes without saying, staple activities cannot be abandoned simply because visitors are in town.) You can barely see the friendly cave monster hiding in the background of the shot.

We also enlisted both Pip and Grandma into making 3 batches of sugar cookies for our annual Cookie Decorating Party, which we held on Sunday. It was a tornado of frosting and toddlers and babies ... always a good mix. The kids donned T-shirts for protection and went at it. Nicholas was a fiend for the green frosting; Aislinn preferred multi-colored cookies and promptly ate all that she made; Jameson Velez could not resist chocolate chips for toppings (and who could blame him); Jameson Burns carefully covered his circle cookie with pastel sprinkles. I think Pip returned to the table multiple times to decorate ... starting each round with a fresh bite off the said cookie. Talk about a sugar high! Later in the afternoon, Jameson V. and Pip serenaded Aislinn with a song (much to her chagrin)

Not to be outdone, Vivian picked this weekend to sit up consistently and proudly. Every once in a while you're glad you have the pillow behind her (or alternately freaking out because you didn't) and she'll tumble backward, but for the most part, she's upright and loving her new view of the world. She was also very charmed by the mysterious bunny which Grandma seemed to be able to conjure up out of this blanket.

Just a cute pic of us 3:

The hair apparently runs in the family:

And Viv claimed Pip's Transformer Potato Head arm as her new favorite toy ... Mr. Potato Head is very afraid.

We also learned that Daddy had a secret up his sleeve when he presented Pip with OCTOPUS HOT DOGS for dinner one night. Genius.

Pip and Dad grab a nap:

In other Daddy action, Phil taught Pip how to lather up for a shave.

Today we sadly dropped Grandma off at the airport with hopes of visiting her in Florida in February!

Scratch that...

Ok, so forget it. Vivian's NOT sleeping through the night. It was a fluke. But I had every right to be excited. Since then, she's gotten up usually once per night and screams like bloddy murder until you give her a measley single ounce of formula, at which point she happily doozes back to sleep for the rest of the night. I know, I know, if all she needs is 1 ounces, she's clearly playing us. I agree. And to prove it, last night she decided to get up twice, each time for a single ounce, jsut to show us who's in charge.

So back to sleep training we go.

VIVIAN SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT

It's official. Last night, after 4 hours of wild Christmas party mayhem at Liz's house, Vivian took her bath and went to bed. And didn't get up until 7am. That was about 11.25 hours of sleep. In all honestly, I did hear some moaning at one point in the night which I ignored and it went away. Pip also decided to sleep soundly, resulting in the first full night of uninterrupted sleep for Phil and I since May 29th. Actually ... for me it's even longer since for the 5 months before that I was up multiple times per night to pee.

Could it be that Phil and I will sleep through the night again tonight? I dare not ask for too much, but my fingers are crossed and my hopes are high.

A word on language

Just thought I should take a moment to comment on Pip's language. It's been truly amazing to watch it evolve at lightning speed over the past 2 months. I suppose it's all been in his mind for a while and it just took courage and practice to string it all together. But he's been speaking in full sentences without stammering to catch his thoughts on a regular basis. With relatively correct usage of pronouns and possessives.

"This is my Daddy's shirt"
"My Mommy is gonna come and get me tonight"
"I was supposed to fall asleep today but I couldn't fall asleep"
"I'm going to call Grammie ... Hi Grammie ... Watcha doing? Cooking? Okay, bye bye!"

This last comment was made into his toy Nemo phone and was one of several conversations he pretended to have with Grammie Balas this evening. He was pacing back and forth in and out of the kitchen with the phone to his ear, carrying on about his day and what he imagined her to be doing. Very cute.

Winterizing

Today we got our first snow of the season. Pip and Vivian had fun donning their ear-flapped hats and Pip got busy sweeping the steps with Daddy.

Viv was "off-schedule" most of the day, which makes for lots of cranks ... but you couldn't tell it from this picture where she's struttin' her stuff.