Thanksgiving! (and AJ gets a cake!)

So we had Thanksgiving, and it's my favorite holiday!  I ate lots of turkey and hung out with the family.  Nichole's parents joined us for Thanksgiving this year, in what I hope is an often repeated new tradition.  We played some Tennis, Nicky's dad loves to play tennis, I can't wait till the kids are older and we can all go and play Tennis.

Nicky's parents were in Arizona all month visiting Nicky's Grandpa, and it was good to see them again.  They came and picked us up to drive to my family's house.  It was cute picking Taylor up from preschool, she said "I am thankful for my toys, my mommy and for raindrops that fall from the sky"... very cute.

AJ turned one, and he's walking pretty well.  He loves looking up at the moon, and he's starting to say "Nigh nigh".  He also thinks it's funny when you're feeding him to take all his food up into his mouth and chew it up, but not swallow it.. very not-funny!

Anyway, incoming picture dump, with 2 videos at the end.

No Pictures

So it's hard to make a blog post when there are no pictures, and there are no pictures because I can't get Nicky to take any during the day. I know that sounds like an excuse... well... it is.  I've been playing lots of LOL.  Also, I completed my enrollment for a masters.  I got an invite to Google Wave... it's very interesting.  Lots of potential for a cool tool that could replace IM/email, but very beta.  It crashes a lot and there aren't many gadgets for it yet, but what is there seems very cool.

I find myself more frustrated at Taylor than normal, she says NO a lot to me, which is very annoying.  On the cute side, she always wants to help when I'm making something in the kitchen.. Today I was making a protein shake and she wanted to help at each part, from pouring in the mix to peeling the banana.  She loves going to the gym with us, and has a lot of fun in there while we're working out. It's so great to have a good gym that she likes going to.  We pay a lot of money for our membership but feel like it's worth it, California Family Fitness is great.

AJ is really walking all over the place.  What's funny is when he walks he holds his right arm up at a 90 degree angle to his body.  Like he needs it for balance or something.  He has this cute little tuft of hair on the top of his head, kinda like an alfalfa.  He says night night.. and he's so cute when we put him to bed with his tigger.  He hugs it close and loves being warm with his blanket at night.  I know some parents have a hard time with bedtime, but we're lucky, both of our kids love going to bed.  If only they liked to sleep in a little later.

Walking and Talking

Today AJ walked from the kitchen all the way the the hallway bathroom, almost 30 feet.  He's starting to say things like "yeah" and "night".  He's doing this thing where if you're distracted, he comes in and stares you right in the face, from like 3 inches away.  And he's just starting to bug his sister.  He'll pick up a toy she wants and he'll wave it infront of her and tease her with it.

Taylor has started being very difficult when it comes to sharing.  She won't share and she gets mad when AJ wants to play with her toys.  I have to say I'm really disappointed, I thought they would be older before this started.  She is also being very sweet when AJ isn't involved.  She says "Yeah, I am" and "No, I don't" instead of just yes and no... hard to describe the tone but she's very complete in her answers.

Really looking forward to Thanksgiving, I love Turkey!  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

Slow news day

So not much special in the last few days.  AJ continues to practice walking and Taylor is a little sick.  I decided I'm going to start taking classes again, work on getting a Master's Degree.  We hit our target weight, we're able to run 30 minutes straight now.  More training for the biathlon.  We've started spending more time on teaching Taylor basic reading.

I look forward to AJ getting old enough to play games with me, Taylor too if she's interested in it.  Nicky often falls asleep very early, so it means that I end up gaming alone... Kids are great for that kinda stuff!

AJ is learning to walk

So AJ is almost 1 year old, and he's starting to walk.  He stands up all unsteady, then takes a few steps before plopping over.  He loves to hold a single finger for balance and walk around the room.  He also loves to look at the moon.  When we're outside, he stares up at it, and when we're inside he loves pictures of the moon in his book or on the mattress in his room.


The other day, he went out on the patio and got stuck inbetween the playhouse and the window... here's what that looks like!

When I got home from work today, Taylor wanted me to come outside and play with rock people with her... Rock people is drawing chalk circles around rocks... very strange game.  She loves to ask us to tell her stories.  The stories she wants to hear always include "Once upon a time there was a little girl named Taylor" and then we follow it with random things she has done or hasn't done.  Very funny and cute!

Halloween!

I love the fall, the trees turn great colors, the weather starts to cool off, and we get a whole bunch of holidays.  Having kids means I get to relive all the cool old holidays again.  Taylor was a peacock this year, and AJ was a pumpkin.  We decided to go trick-or-treating up by Linda's house.  Linda is Taylor's best friend from preschool, and it's really funny to watch them together.  Whenever they see each other, it's "Hiiieee Taylor!" then "Hiiieee Linda!" and they give each other hugs.  Anyway, Taylor was so excited to get some treats, and I think Nicky was pretty excited to poach a couple of treats of her own.

Taylor dressed up as a peacock - I'm really impressed it still fits from last year and is still in good condition.

Taylor meeting up with Linda - She calls Linda's shoes "Fairy Mary Janes"

A little video of them trick-or-treating together.


Unfortunately, Halloween doesn't lend itself very well to lots of pictures, but we had a lot of fun.  On the way home, we stopped by Uncle David and Aunt Leah's house to say hello.  Nubs was dressed as a turtle and Diablo was dressed up as a pumpkin.  I've always thought people that dress up their dogs were crazy, but seeing a Turtle-dog and a Pumpkin-dog was pretty awesome.