Elliot has decided that there is no Santa. And so, we had this little conversation on the ride home from school a couple weeks ago:

"Santa's not real."

"Of course he is, Elliot."

"No, he's not, mama."

"Well you better not say that too loud or if Santa hears it, he might not give you his presents." And there was a pause. And when we got home ( Read more... )

Taking the annual Christmas Photo is always a challenge with kids. The more kids, the more challenging.   This year, with three kids,  I took about 15 "practice" shots and then about 52 pictures (in 10 minutes) of the real deal in hopes of catching just one good picture for our Chrismas card. The kids had fun doing this with baby Philip, so a lot ( Read more... )

Clara's the little girl on the left, playing with Anna on the right. :) So sweet.

Click to view

Click to view

The kids went with their friends Amanda and TJ as the Scooby Doo Gang - can't ever remember the actual name. And they didn't have a Shaggy, unfortunately. But they were darn cute.

( Read more... )

We had Elliot's party at Fun City this year (just like last year). We invited a very few friends, some of which have dads who are so connected that we ended up getting discounts on our pizza and a free party room! Woo! Elliot was animated the whole night, like this:

( Read more... )

Baby Philip was born with some awesome frizzy baby hair (not too thick, but definitely frizzy).  The only thing is, after several weeks, only the top hairs were getting longer and sticking out all over the place. They didn't look cute. And when he wasn't extremely clean, they kind of plastered down on top like a huge comb-over. And I figure, at 10 ( Read more... )

This is Philip's little Play Yard (I think it's funny how they call it a "yard" instead of "mat") that he loves. Normally he'll lay on his back and look up at the beams and toys, very happily, sometimes for 45 minutes. Tummy time lasts much shorter, maybe 3 minutes. Here's tummy time.

( Read more... )

It's been one year since Clara got burned (and so technically a few days shy of a year from her surgery) and here's what she's looking like. I should say that a few weeks ago Tim took her to the dermatologist and she gave Clara some creams to put on her skin grafts. One is a medicated ointment which apparently is used to treat acne, and we think ( Read more... )

Philip's been "talking" for a couple weeks now. He's pretty much perfected the word goo (and we've heard foo, boo, and ooo variants) by now. It still takes quite a bit of effort sometimes. :)

Click to view