We had Joshua's 9-month check-up yesterday (about 2 wks late) and his stats are:
Head circumference: 46 cm (65%)
Length: 28 inches (45%)
Weight: 21 lbs., 11 oz. (65%)
I'm flabbergasted that his weight is only 65th percentile. My back begs to differ.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
2009 in Review: Christmas
Christmas 2009 was a weeklong affair for our family. Every bit of it was a blessing.
This was Joshua's first Christmas. He learned that wrapping paper is more fun than what's inside, and that you have to eat it fast before Mommy and Daddy realize you've got it.
On the other end of the spectrum, this was the first year Katie could start to understand the concepts behind Christmas. If you ask her whose birthday Christmas is, she says it's Jesus' birthday. She has memorized the entire 16-line poem about Baby Jesus that's in her Toddler Bible. We kept Santa talk to a minimum this year and instead anticipated the birth of Baby Jesus. Katie also is totally enraptured by two Christmas specials: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (my favorite Christmas special of all time) and A Charlie Brown Christmas.
The weekend before Christmas, we were supposed to travel to visit my grandma and extended family, but we were snowed out. The weekend wasn't a total bust though. We were able to enjoy several feet of snow, and a few days later we ventured out to join some friends for a night of dinner and caroling. Katie enjoyed singing, playing simple musical instruments, and dancing around with her friends. And Jenn and Jeff, our hosts of the evening, were thoughtful enough to give each of the kids gifts that were especially suited to their personal interests. What a wonderful night.
The weekend before Christmas, we were supposed to travel to visit my grandma and extended family, but we were snowed out. The weekend wasn't a total bust though. We were able to enjoy several feet of snow, and a few days later we ventured out to join some friends for a night of dinner and caroling. Katie enjoyed singing, playing simple musical instruments, and dancing around with her friends. And Jenn and Jeff, our hosts of the evening, were thoughtful enough to give each of the kids gifts that were especially suited to their personal interests. What a wonderful night.
On December 23, we travelled to John's parents' house, where we enjoyed a day and a half with his family. After a delicious home-cooked brunch on December 24, we gathered around the tree for presents.
Joshua's gifts that day included a personalized sippy cup, a fun whirling toy, his first set of blocks, a reindeer hat, a sock monkey jack-in-the-box...
... and of course, his favorite gift of all: Ribbon!
Poor Joshua was not amused when Daddy dressed him in the clothes that came on Katie's new camouflage-wearing stuffed moose.
Katie received several wonderful gifts as well, but the best was saved for last. Oma pulled out John's sister Laura's old baby doll and cradle, as well as several sets of clothes that Oma had handsewn this fall. Now Oma and Katie will have hours of fun dressing and undressing the baby doll -- a doll Oma and Katie have named "Baby Lucy" (since that's the name I had wanted to use for Katie).
Even the dogs got gifts! Here JPa presents Jamie's dog Brooks with the holiday tennis ball we bought him.
After naptime, we got dolled up and went out for Christmas Eve dinner. Katie wore the new snowman dress that Oma had just given her, and Joshua wore his Santa outfit.
After a wonderful 36 hours with John's family, we headed home to get a few Zzzz's before Christmas morning at my parents' house.
Every year, even when none of us were kids, Santa Claus has come to my parents' house. My mom makes all of us squeeze onto the stairs outside the closed-off living room while she walks through the living room and ooohs and aaahs over all the things that Santa has brought us. Then she walks over to the door, verbally tortures us some more, and finally lets us in. Each individual or family has an entire chair full of unwrapped gifts that Santa has brought us. Our family's chair is the one on the right -- you can see my mom peeking through the door delivering the verbal torture to those of us outside.
(I probably should explain the verbal torture -- she's just trying to get us excited and impatient -- her "Are you ready? Do you want to see what Santa brought you?" was very effective at increasing our anticipation when we were kids. Now she gets more reactions along the lines of, "Are you done yet, Mom, or can I go back to bed for awhile?")
Here are some photos of our family enjoying each other and the generous bounty of gifts.
The last photo is my brother Stephen with a John Calvin bobblehead doll that my parents had special-ordered for him -- although when Stephen opened the box, we discovered that Calvin's head must have bobbled a little too hard!
More photos, including Lindsey's homemade ribbons, Stephen holding Joshua while I took my turn at Scrabble, and Daniel pushing Joshua around in Joshua's new Tonka truck:
Dinner was supposed to be at 1 pm (Katie's naptime) but it wasn't ready till 3 pm, so we tried to encourage Katie to take a nap while she waited. John laid down to encourage her to sleep, and his efforts were successful in getting at least one person to sleep.
Merry Christmas, Santa Baby!
Finally, around 6 pm, we headed back home to celebrate our own family Christmas.
Here Katie opens her new (well, new to her; I bought it on eBay from a Goodwill store) Muppet Babies book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. As soon as she opened it, she started "reading" us the stories of The Three Bears and Little Bo Peep!
And here is a video of Katie and Joshua playing with the musical instruments that Santa brought Katie at my parents' house:
Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We sure did.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
2009 in Review: September and October
Two days into 2010, I'm still trying to catch up on my 2009 blogging. Sorry! Here are some of my favorite previously-unposted photos from September and October of 2009.
I call this one "For every good photo I take, I have six more of these."
Cute ones of Katie and Joshua:
On September 6, we celebrated the birthday of John's brother Jamie at a nearby club to which we belong.
On September 2, my dear friend Meredith (one of my bridesmaids and a missionary in Mexico) came to visit. It was her first opportunity to meet Joshua and she and the kids enjoyed a round of giggling, tickling, and posing for the camera.
Joshua's soon-to-be-close-friend Adah (daughter of our close friends Mike and Cindy) was baptized a few weeks before Joshua. Here's a photo of Katie dressing up to "match" Adah's winter apparel, and a photo of Cindy and Adah before Adah's baptism.
September 14: Katie's first poo-poo in the potty.
And yes, I took a photo to note the occasion. But I will spare you. :-)
September 27: Joshua and Katie moved to their big beds
Already blogged about it here.
October 3: We visited John's parents. Katie marvelled at JPa's expanded model train set-up, while Joshua tried a playground swing for the first time at the local elementary school.
October 8-12: We went to the beach for Columbus Day weekend. Six weeks earlier, we had left to beach after my family vacation, and I had said goodbye to warm beach weather and bathing suits. However, we were delighted in October to still have weather warm enough to play in the water! Other highlights of this weekend were teaching Katie how to play mini golf and skeeball, and seeing Katie put a not-so-appropriate funnel (read the words on it) on her head as a hat in a souvenir shop.
October 23: We left the kids with my parents and took John's parents to see Topol in his farewell tour of "Fiddler on the Roof". Topol is one of the most famous Tevyes ever (he played Tevye in the movie version, for instance), and the four of us were awed to see him in person. He exuded energy and charisma even at age 74.
After the contest, Katie (who won 1st prize in the 2-and-under category) poses with "Cheetah", who won 1st prize in the 3-and-up category. She also tried hula hooping for the first time.
Since Joshua's pumpkin costume didn't win any contests, we tried a few costumes my friend Marce handed down to us. Joshua wasn't a fan of the monkey outfit because he couldn't use his hands.
In the meantime, John and I attended a Halloween-themed birthday party. John and his friend Wayne teamed up for a unique take on the Blues Brothers, while I dressed up as a baby (hey, I already had all the gear around my house!).
The next night was Halloween, and Joshua's third costume try was a charm. He was a Dalmatian, and I painted his nose black to add to the effect. That afternoon, John's parents had babysat while John and I took my parents to see "Jersey Boys", with the added bonus that both sets of grandparents were around when we started our trick-or-treating.
At the beginning of most of our Sesame Street DVDs, there is a promotional intro that can't be skipped over. Thus, Katie knows it by heart and even enjoys it. Her favorite part of the segment is a muppet named Khokha from the Egyptian version of Sesame Street, "Alam Simsim". From the time she started watching TV, she has always cracked up after Khokha exclaims something that makes no sense in the English language. In fact, she just walked up behind me as I was blogging and said "Coco-kabaya!" which is our best translation. Here is her laughing as she watches the segment.
Katie runs in circles in the arcade where her daddy is playing skeeball. Katie runs in circles a lot ever since we taught her to run around the coffee table while singing "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain".
Katie tries her hand at mini golf (I had to post two videos because they both crack me up).
I call this one "For every good photo I take, I have six more of these."
Cute ones of Katie and Joshua:
On September 6, we celebrated the birthday of John's brother Jamie at a nearby club to which we belong.
On September 2, my dear friend Meredith (one of my bridesmaids and a missionary in Mexico) came to visit. It was her first opportunity to meet Joshua and she and the kids enjoyed a round of giggling, tickling, and posing for the camera.
Joshua's soon-to-be-close-friend Adah (daughter of our close friends Mike and Cindy) was baptized a few weeks before Joshua. Here's a photo of Katie dressing up to "match" Adah's winter apparel, and a photo of Cindy and Adah before Adah's baptism.
September 14: Katie's first poo-poo in the potty.
And yes, I took a photo to note the occasion. But I will spare you. :-)
Joshua's Baptism
On September 27, Joshua was baptized. I've already blogged about it here, including a video of the sacrament, but here are some other photos from that day that I love.
After the baptism, I took Joshua to the church nursery so I wouldn't need to keep him quiet for the rest of the service. He promptly fell asleep after I dropped him off -- here are photos of him when I arrived, and just after he woke up and saw his mommy.
We had our family and a few friends over afterwards for lunch.
I know what you're wondering: What is that last photo? That's a photo of the giant branch that fell during the baptism lunch, spearing our front yard just as some of our friends were walking up to our door. We put Uncle Jamie in the photo so you could see the scale of the branch. We were so thankful that no one was hurt, especially later that week when I heard someone in our town had been killed that afternoon by a falling tree.
Here is the rose that was displayed on our church organ during Joshua's baptism -- our church's way of announcing his birth.
We had our family and a few friends over afterwards for lunch.
I know what you're wondering: What is that last photo? That's a photo of the giant branch that fell during the baptism lunch, spearing our front yard just as some of our friends were walking up to our door. We put Uncle Jamie in the photo so you could see the scale of the branch. We were so thankful that no one was hurt, especially later that week when I heard someone in our town had been killed that afternoon by a falling tree.
Here is the rose that was displayed on our church organ during Joshua's baptism -- our church's way of announcing his birth.
September 27: Joshua and Katie moved to their big beds
Already blogged about it here.
October 3: We visited John's parents. Katie marvelled at JPa's expanded model train set-up, while Joshua tried a playground swing for the first time at the local elementary school.
October 8-12: We went to the beach for Columbus Day weekend. Six weeks earlier, we had left to beach after my family vacation, and I had said goodbye to warm beach weather and bathing suits. However, we were delighted in October to still have weather warm enough to play in the water! Other highlights of this weekend were teaching Katie how to play mini golf and skeeball, and seeing Katie put a not-so-appropriate funnel (read the words on it) on her head as a hat in a souvenir shop.
October 18: Christy Rowe, the mother of my fantastic new sister-in-law Lindsey, paid us a visit from Seattle.
October 23: We left the kids with my parents and took John's parents to see Topol in his farewell tour of "Fiddler on the Roof". Topol is one of the most famous Tevyes ever (he played Tevye in the movie version, for instance), and the four of us were awed to see him in person. He exuded energy and charisma even at age 74.
Halloween. I blogged here about Katie winning our neighborhood costume contest, but here are some of my other favorite photos from the Halloween season.
Before the costume contest, Katie poses with the pumpkin and gourd that she and I decorated, using VeggieTales characters as a model. She called our creations "Jimmy and Jerry".
Before the costume contest, Katie poses with the pumpkin and gourd that she and I decorated, using VeggieTales characters as a model. She called our creations "Jimmy and Jerry".
After the contest, Katie (who won 1st prize in the 2-and-under category) poses with "Cheetah", who won 1st prize in the 3-and-up category. She also tried hula hooping for the first time.
Since Joshua's pumpkin costume didn't win any contests, we tried a few costumes my friend Marce handed down to us. Joshua wasn't a fan of the monkey outfit because he couldn't use his hands.
In the meantime, John and I attended a Halloween-themed birthday party. John and his friend Wayne teamed up for a unique take on the Blues Brothers, while I dressed up as a baby (hey, I already had all the gear around my house!).
The next night was Halloween, and Joshua's third costume try was a charm. He was a Dalmatian, and I painted his nose black to add to the effect. That afternoon, John's parents had babysat while John and I took my parents to see "Jersey Boys", with the added bonus that both sets of grandparents were around when we started our trick-or-treating.
Videos: Here are our favorite October videos.
Katie swings at a pinata for the first time at the neighborhood block party:
Katie swings at a pinata for the first time at the neighborhood block party:
At the beginning of most of our Sesame Street DVDs, there is a promotional intro that can't be skipped over. Thus, Katie knows it by heart and even enjoys it. Her favorite part of the segment is a muppet named Khokha from the Egyptian version of Sesame Street, "Alam Simsim". From the time she started watching TV, she has always cracked up after Khokha exclaims something that makes no sense in the English language. In fact, she just walked up behind me as I was blogging and said "Coco-kabaya!" which is our best translation. Here is her laughing as she watches the segment.
Katie runs in circles in the arcade where her daddy is playing skeeball. Katie runs in circles a lot ever since we taught her to run around the coffee table while singing "She'll be Coming Round the Mountain".
Katie tries her hand at mini golf (I had to post two videos because they both crack me up).
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