Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016

We've had a wonderful and busy holiday season.  The kids absolutely LOVED Christmas and it has been so much fun to have so much family time.  We did Zoolights, Snowflake Lane, watched the Christmas Ship down at the Des Moines Marina, baked cookies, visited Santa (SO MANY TIMES!), ate goose and turkey, ate cookies,

Uncle Connor was home for Christmas!  Zoë LOVES her Uncle Connor.

Christmas Eve was at our house with the whole Seaman family.  Chris cooked a yummy goose and we had lots of fun together.

Grandpa and Oliver

Grandma and Oliver

Eating bows.  Just like big sister did on her first Christmas.

The Goose Master.

Cheese!  Go Hawks!

Starting to crash...

We had so much fun on Christmas morning just the four of us.  It was the first year Zoë was truly into the whole Santa thing, and she was really irritated that the reindeer didn't eat the last bite of carrot (note to self next year...just get rid of the whole damn carrot).  I'm not quite sure if Santa is ever going to be able to top his present this year, a trampoline.  Zoë is absolutely in love with it and I think it's going to forever live in the living room.

We headed to my parents' house in the afternoon for dinner and more presents.  :)  We made sure to bring Zoë's new ride so she could drive it around in their neighborhood, which is a much better (safer) place for Power Wheels.

Cousins!

I love that my sister has a baby the same age as mine.  It is so much fun!

Dedo and his grandsons.

In your Christmas jammies.

Whole crew.

The day AFTER Christmas we headed back to the Kolczynski house to watch the Cougs in the Sun Bowl.  Go Cougs!

Beautiful Baba's Babies

Baba and her grandsons.

Happy Eight Months, Oliver!

Crazy crazy crazy how fast our year has flown by with our two monkeys.  I can't believe this one is 8 months old already.

Oliver has mastered pulling himself up to a solid stand on ANY piece of furniture, toy, or tree (yep) that he can get his hands on.  He can change position easily and has started to scoot across the couch and from one thing to another.  We've even had him try out the push toys a time or two and he struggles to move his feet but eventually does it.  He definitely prefers to be standing and protecting him from falling over and bonking his head has become a full-time job.


















He's still sleeping through the night.  Terrible at going down for naps.  He's in his crib now for all three naps a day but it takes a while to get him down and I have to repeatedly go in and put the pacifier back into his mouth.  It's nice that he only requires it to fall asleep but, man, he requires it to fall asleep.


















Oliver has the most charming smile and lights up when he sees people he knows.  Every time I see him looking at me and smiling my heart completely melts.

He just popped his 6th tooth through on Wednesday night (Z had only 4 on her first birthday!) and eats like a champ.  My goodness, the kid will eat anything we put in front of him.  We've gotten to the point where he can have whatever we can cut up into small enough pieces.  He had chicken nuggets the other day and devoured them.  His favorites are still Kix cereal and the Harvest Snap Pea Crisps.

Oooh, also, he's started to wave!  He full on waved at Baba the other day and surprised us both!


















































































Zoë has become, er, a little bit more of a near-three-year-old lately.  The tantrums have escalated and so has the amount of time it takes her to do ANYTHING that I request her to do.  On the other hand, she's also been extremely lovely during the times she's not peeing on the carpet or screaming at us from her bedroom at bedtime.  She's been trying to drop her naps completely, and only naps about 40% of the time now.  Many times when she falls asleep it's after talking to her "friends" for an hour in her room, which is fine with me.

Zoë is in love with Alice, the Elf.

Her newest endearments are the fact that she'll run up to one of us spontaneously and say "I love you" with a big hug and maybe a kiss.  I LOVE it.  It helps especially on the days when she's being an extra special pill.  She also responds to almost every command or question with the word, "Sure." followed by "sure, sure, sure".  I have no idea where it came from but it's hilarious.  AND, she's also started creating her own secret language.  She'll start singing a song with the normal words and it'll morph into a complete string of made-up words that she so convincingly says that we'll wonder if we heard her wrong.  She makes up names for everything and everyone.  She is the most imaginative and creative 2 year old girl I've been around (I haven't been around very many, but I think she's something special!).

Zoë's first workshop at the Home Depot with Dad.  :)

Decorating the tree with Daddy.

Very proud that she put all of the ornaments on about five branches.  Sometimes, 8 ornaments per tiny branch.

We've been doing so many fun things this Christmas season.  I created an activity advent calendar, we started the Elf on the Shelf tradition, and open a new Christmas book every night.  There have been so many fun events so far.  We decorated the tree together (Zoë put all of her ornaments on about three branches on the very bottom of the tree), attended the Des Moines tree lighting event, went and listened to the choir on the Christmas Ship down at the marina where they had a huge toasty bonfire burning, went to story time with Mrs. Claus and visited Santa.  OH!  Santa!  Let's talk about that for a minute.

We walked by Santa with the intention of just waving but I asked Zoë if she wanted to go talk to him and she said YES!  And then she waved at Santa when he waved at her after which I practically peed my pants I was so excited.  Santa noticed and said to me across the line, "There's a long walk between you and me...right about here (gestures about five feet in front of him) there's a magic line that transforms kids into scaredy cats".  But, believe it or not, she walked up with me, gave him a high five, and then CLIMBED RIGHT UP NEXT TO HIM AND STARTED TALKING TO HIM.  What.  He did have to ask me what she said she wanted for Christmas because he couldn't understand or hear her, but I was pretty pumped.  Oliver didn't know what was happening.  He kept looking at me, then up at Santa, and back and forth.  I wanted another picture of him looking at Santa, but didn't want to drop a million dollars to buy it.

Looking forward to Angela, Jed, and Mason being here in a week and a half, and Uncle Connor will be here in just a week!  What a fun Christmas to look forward to!

Alice the Elf and Other Holiday Stories.

Daddy, Zoë, and Oliver playing with the train.

We have had such a fun three weeks since I last wrote and have entered the Christmas season with an almost 3-year-old.  And let me just tell you, it is ALREADY freaking fantastic.

Santa has watched a lot of Harry Potter, clearly.

I have been waiting 2 years to start the Elf on the Shelf with Zoë and this year is the year.  I decided to wrap up the box with the elf and the book in brown paper and make it look like it was a package from Santa.

When I got home from Zumba tonight (THAT'S another story...I was the youngest by about 20 years) I convinced Zoë to play hide and seek with me (yeah, like that took a lot of convincing), and while she was hiding we put the package out on the front door step and rang the doorbell.  I had to find her because she's gotten really good at not actually yelling "in here, Mama!" when we don't find her right away and then told her to go check who was at the door.  This was an important teach-able moment since she f.i.n.a.l.l.y figured out how to open doorknobs this weekend- two months away from turning three freaking years old- and we had talked about waiting until Mama or Daddy said it was ok to open the door.

She opened the door and saw the package and the look she had when she turned around was priceless.  I never want to forget it.  Plus, she was in her Christmas jammies, so she looked extra adorable.  She grabbed the package and we asked her who it was for.

"It's for Zoë!" she said.  We read the front of the package and made sure she knew it was from Santa.  "Santa must have known you like the color blue, he put a blue bow on it!"
She kept asking "what's in there, Mama?" while she ripped off the paper proudly proclaiming, "it's a book!" when she got some of it off.
As soon as the package was open she GRABBED the elf and wanted to play and looked a little ticked when I told her Santa left her a message to read the book since it would explain everything.

Now, if you don't know anything about Elf on the Shelf, you must not have children OR you've have been living under a rock for the past 3 years BUT, as soon as children receive their elf they're supposed to name it.  Zoë's not great at names.  She insisted I name her.  But we kept prodding and gave her some suggestions and she settled on Alice (we suggested it, along with several others, because we heard her talking about someone/thing named Alice a few days ago in the car).  So, Alice the Elf it is.

This would be a great end of the story.  But if you know our precious daughter, you know that the ONE AND ONLY RULE to Elf on the Shelf would be the hardest on Zoë.  You MUST NOT touch the elf or its magic goes away and the Elf won't return.  So, Zoë's hopes of sleeping with Alice were dashed.  AND, of course, the Elf has to leave every night to fly to the North Pole to tell Santa if the child was naughty or nice during the day, but always comes back in the morning and hides somewhere new in the house.  Well, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.  She ended the night in tears because she wanted Alice to sleep with her AND didn't want her to fly to Santa at night (no matter how many times I told her that Alice would return the next morning).  So.  There's that.

Good and bad, I suppose.  But the best part was re-opening the door to see if we could see Santa and his sleigh because she was puzzled as to how the present got onto our porch and her constant queries about Santa and how he's magic.  It was wonderful.  I can't WAIT for the rest of our month and to see Christmas through her eyes.

We've got a mover on our hands now, and he's SPEEDY.  He prefers to be on his feet to sitting and can pull himself up on anything with finesse.  He just popped another tooth, we're up to five.  Five!  His hair is growing like crazy, he's fitting into his 18 month clothes, and I love, love, love this baby.  I can't believe he's almost 8 months old already.  Time is going way faster the second time around.

This girl LOVES olives.

More on him in a few weeks when we take some 8 month pics of him.

Red cheeks=getting a tooth.

I sure love these two.  :)

Grandma and her redheads

Happy family

Father and Son

First Thanksgiving!

Good Christmas Tree hunter

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with both of our families, have already cut down our tree (we'll decorate tomorrow, after the Christmas Light House Lighting unofficial ceremony), and have lots of fun activities planned for this month.  Happy Holidays, YAY!

The Christmas Tree Team

Swinging on a cold, cold November day.

Weekly trip to the library has become more fun with a mover...

Oh, yeah.  Oliver's first Apple Cup.  We don't want to talk about it.

Baba and Zoë

Oliver helping Dedo recover after the Apple Cup.

Mr. Blue Eyes