Our best Christmas present!

Today, daddy was out running errands and got a phone call from mommy asking me to pick up some candy necklaces for a reward for Mary Grace. When I got home I found out what the reward was for. Our little girl (finally) made a poopy on the potty! She's been making pee-pee on the potty like a pro but refused up until today to do #2.

When I asked how it happened, she said she was making pee-pee and some poopy came out too (been there done that). After all the scheming and badgering and rewards that we tried over the last year, she ultimately just did it all by herself. A good lesson and our best Christmas present too!

Mary Grace sings Winter Snow Is Cold

Her performance was a big hit at Christmas Eve...

"Winter Snow Is Cold" debut tonight

Those lucky enough to be in Mary Grace's presence tonight will get to hear her sing the song she wrote and produced "Winter Snow Is Cold". She's been talking about singing it all month and tonight is the big night!

We've asked her to sing it for us and she's only given us a few lines, then she stops and says "that's all, you have to wait until Christmas".

So everyone be sure to ask Mary Grace about it tonight and have your video cameras ready to go!

Relief about Mary Grace's dreams

Our kids sleep really well. We've seriously been blessed; I know that after hearing about some of our friends experiences with their kids. They ordinarilly sleep 11-12 hours continuous over night with the rare exception of one of them waking during the night (which happened a few nights ago when William rolled out of bed onto the floor, poor thing)

On a rare occasion, one of them will wake up crying calling for us. Mommy usually springs into action while I mumble some supporting words or just go right back to sleep. We usually think it's a bad dream although we never know for sure.

So I was leaving this morning and noticed that Mary Grace's covers had fallen off and were on the floor and she was curled up in a little ball. I put her covers back on her and she half woke up, looked at me and said "Daddy, there's rain in a rainbow".

It's so relieving that Mary Grace is dreaming about rainbows! Hopefully, there are unicorns and puppies and flowers in there too.

Pank-pank

William's word for pancake. Which he has been asking for at every meal lately. :)

Advent Calendar

Mary Grace got an Advent chain made of paper, where you take one ring off each day, and each ring has a little task. Some of them have been "take a walk with your parents", "build a snowman", etc. She's been getting more and more excited with each one, until she read today's task. It said "Eat some vegetables".

So said "that's not very fun." Mommy said, "Maybe tomorrow's will be more fun". And Mary Grace replied, "Yeah, maybe it will say something like "go to the farm and ride on a horse!".

Halloween pictures a month late.

I've been blogging from elsewhere lately and haven't had access to my photos. I was just browsing the blog and realized I didn't do a halloween post. So here are some of the more memorable photos:

	William and Mary Grace posing in their costumes just before we left for a trick or treating adventure! William is Curious George and Mary Grace is Princess Arial
	The Princesses; Catherine is Cinderella
	First trick or treat stop at Damien and Annette's house.
	And a photo of all the little trick or treaters.
	Curious George enjoying the fruits of his labor!

The Princess and the Silly Prince

Mary Grace took her stuffed fabric letters out as she does periodically and we spelled "princess" together. I told her how to spell it and she picked each letter and laid it down on the floor. Yes, we were short one "s". Once she was all done and sitting there as cute as could be, I had to snap a picture! I love the way she put some letters down backwards!

Conversely, William decided to take off his pajamas and run around the house in his diaper and snow boots. The funnier thing about this photo was that he was saying "I want to go outside", as if he expected he could go play in the snow so long as he had his snow boots on. :)

And finally a loving picture of mommy, Mary Grace and William.

Pakasil:

The word that William says for Popsicle.

Our wonderful kids

Mary Grace got in trouble tonight for turning the TV back on after it was turned off because it was bedtime. William got in trouble like 50 times, so I'm not even going to start going through them. But at bedtime, I offered to sing William two christmas songs in place of the normal Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle. HE LOVED IT. He laid there with a big smile on his face, staring off into the distance. I swear he had visions of sugar plums dancing through his head.

So I sang the songs to Mary Grace too. She started to get really excited for Christmas and promised that she was going to make up a new song and sing it for us on Christmas day. The title: "Christmas Snow Is Cold". As I walked past her room to go downstairs to watch TV, I heard her experimenting with the lyrics. Our little performer.

Mary Grace and William's first movie!

This past Saturday, Mommy was working so I had the idea to take the kids to the theater to see Madagascar 2. The kids loved the first one for a long time until someone played with the DVD and scratched it up.

I looked up the information online and there was a 10:20am matinee showing, score. Also called Eric (neighbor from down the street) and we decided to meet there with his two girls, Clementine and Adelade.

So, we get there and buy the tickets and gave them to the kids and said DON'T LOSE THESE! So we get to the ticket-taker and the kids gave them to her and it turns out that I lost my ticket! Found it on the floor and moved to the next hurdle.

As you might expect, the theater was nearly empty. We found a good spot and settled in. The kids were instantly hyponitized by the big screen as they watched the previews. When the lights dimmed for the feature presentation, the both got a litle anxious, but when they saw the clouds clip for Dreamworks Studios, the anxiety switched to excitement.

An hour and a half later, the movie was done. The kids did surprisingly well. William got a little fidgety towards the end. They chowed down two candy necklaces, sippy cups with apple juice, a snack-trap full of goldfish crackers and William had a LOT of popcorn.

It was a good experience, but nervous dad didn't really get to enjoy the movie. I was focused on the kids and making sure they were ok, needs were met, etc. We'll catch it on video soon so Mommy can enjoy it too.

Fun With Leaves

A little something I like to call "Creative Leaf Un-Raking".



They loved it. Played over and over until it started raining.

The age of figuring things out?

Last night we were all watching the new "Dora Saves The Ice Princess" movie premier (you HAVE to see it, it's so awesome!) and in one scene, Dora and her friends all need to use magic to jump into a book to help the Ice Princess.

A little while later, Swiper the Fox appears and tries to steal a magic pendant. Anne, William and I were ok with this, but a very observant Mary Grace says "Haaay! How did Swiper get into the book?" (he wasn't one of the friends that jumped into the book)

It's strange how when the kids were infants, every single thing they did was a major developmental milestone (rolling over, sucking thumb, even sleeping for X hours at a time), but now that the kids are getting bigger, they exhibit strong reasoning skills like what Mary Grace did, and we hardly notice.

Playing with birthday party playdough and a nice moment.

Anne was trying to get William to sing Happy Birthday and caught the following:

1. William at his cutest.
2. Mary Grace trying to take over.
3. William saying "my do it"
4. William saying "emm!" (the universal "and I mean it" punctuation)
5. Mommy suggesting Mary Grace let William sing the song.

Plausible deniability

(10:54:01 AM) Anne: "I dont do stuff naughty to myself"
(10:54:20 AM) Rick: ?
(10:54:34 AM) Anne: Mary Grace after she accused me of "bending' one of her coloring pages and I told her that I didnt do it, she did
(10:54:42 AM) Rick: hehe

Poor Mary Grace was sick with some short-term stomach bug yesterday afternoon into the evening. She's much better today, eating and playing just like herself. And even contradicting her mommy too.

Sisters and brothers

There are times when the kids fight over toys or fight over what to watch on TV or fight over who gets to play on the computer, or fight over food or treats or just try to see who can scream the loudest.

Then there are times when William will walk up to his sister and give her a nice big hug. And times when Mary Grace will put her arm around her brother just because. They always give a hug or a kiss goodnight and are always happy to see each other in the morning.

So long as it all balances out in the end, it's all good.

William's favorite sayings

Mommy was putting William to bed last night and leaned in to give him a sleepy kiss and whispered "William you are so sweet!" to which William responded "I not sweet, I a boy!". This has also been his excuse for getting into to trouble around the house.. "William, why did you make this big mess with your goldfish crackers?". "I a boy"...

He also recalls the time that he fell off a piece of playground equipment onto a (luckily) soft surface playground base several months ago, whenever anyone asks him "how are you"? The standard response: "I fall down playground, go boom."

Fall fun, New York style.

It's that time of year again. The leaves in the neighborhood are turning gold and red and the mornings are a bit crisp for anything but lounging in front of the TV (or Spinning classes :)

So in accordance with customs, we headed out to Baumanns/Schutts farm markets, this time to REALLY pick some apples. The kids up to this point thought picking apples meant going to the farm market and selecting them from the bins.

So we went out to G&S Farms near the corner of Lincoln and Atlantic in Walworth. Fabulous experience. We picked a bushel of various delicious apples. The kids had a great time picking the apples from the nice low trees and actually listened to directions (like to not throw the apples into the box).

Next, we headed over to the pumpkin patch to get some pumpkin. Mary Grace termed this act "pumpkin patching", similar to "apple picking". We like it, so we've integrated that term into our vocabulary...

The trip's only downside was when Mary Grace tripped in the pumpkin patch and fell into a rotten pumpkin and got her pants full of pumpkin guts. Luckily mommy had a spare pair of pants in the emergency bag in the car.

 

 

 

Car ride from !$%#

Saturday of this weekend was a very busy day. Daddy had a golf tournament in the morning that lasted until almost 1. Mommy also worked in the morning. Lucky for us, Mama came and spent the night and babysat the kids to allow me to golf (thanks SO much, Mama). Next, we had to get Mama back to Lyons by 2:30, then be in Syracuse by 4:00pm for a birthday for Kristin, Brian's wife.

Everything went pretty smoothly and we had a very nice time at the party. The food was great (authentic Syracuse Dinosaur BBQ) and there were lots of parents with kids around Mary Grace and William's age, so the kids played a lot and we got to talk with some other parents.

We packed it up around 8:15 with kids jammies on, fully expecting they would be asleep as soon as we got on the highway for the two hour drive. The fun began as we got on the highway. Both kids were singing very loudly all the songs they knew. ABC, Itsy-Bitsy-Spider, Twinkle-Twinkle, Bingo, Old McDonald, etc. It was really cute to hear them both singing... for about the first 20 minutes.

After about an 45 minutes, Daddy was going insane. So Mommy introduced the kids to the "see who can keep quiet the longest" game. While that brought down the noise level, it didn't induce sleep. William finally fell asleep at about 9:15, but Mary Grace resisted THE WHOLE WAY HOME. At the end of the trip, we observed her shaking her head from side-to-side in a last-ditch effort to stay awake. So 10:15ish, we arrive and put both kids right to bed and so ends our last road trip anywhere... ever...

I'm obviously bluffing, but man.... Sippy cups will be filled with warm milk next time.

Early morning playtime.

This past weekend, Mama was the first out of bed and went to check on William first. To her surprise, he was not in his crib. Checking in Mary Grace's room next, she found both kids playing so nicely in Mary Grace's room.

So William climbed out of his crib and went into his sister's room to play and Mary Grace joined in!

As parents, we definitely welcome this type of situation. :)