Happy Birthday Austin!!

He's one! My baby is one!! I can not believe how fast the time has gone. Wow!!

Playing in the snow

Austin is such a fun boy. He loves to do whatever his big brother is doing. He loves to play with cars and trucks and even makes the "brrrm brrrm" sound when he's driving them.

He wants to eat whatever Carter is eating. Austin has been begging to eat real food since he was eight months or so. He loves chunks and pieces. His latest favorite food is peas and even if he's just eaten a full meal he will never turn down something that comes off of our plates. If I have to blow on his food to cool it down he seems a lot more interested in eating it. I'll blow on a spoon full and his eyes will get really wide, then as I go to feed him the bite he'll put his lips together and blow on it too before he'll eat it. It makes me laugh.

Austin has been walking since the beginning of December. He's now running and climbing. Seriously, this kid is fast. He'll climb on and in anything he can. His latest climbing trick is to get up on the couch and grab the TV remote. He gets really proud of himself when he does this. He's also discovered that when the dishwasher's open he can lift things out and climb on the door. (I can only do dishes if he's in his high-chair or sleeping.) He's gotten up in our window sills a few times and is constantly climbing on Carter's train table.

climbing

He's a double-fisted player. This kid is always walking around with a toy in each hand. And the two toys are almost always similar. For example, two cars, two plastic animals, two stuffed animals, two bottles, two TV remotes, two books, he's always got to have something in each hand.



We are so glad to have this sweet little boy in our family. We love you Austin!!

New Do

I finally went and got my hair cut at the beginning of January. It had been eight months since my last one. Here it is! What do you think?

Christmas 2008

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. Carter still didn't really get the whole Santa thing until Christmas morning. He woke up around 5 o'clock and came into our bedroom. I tried to get him to go back to sleep, and he did for about an hour. Then he was back up and wanted to watch a movie (his usual morning routine) but it wasn't 7:00 yet, which is when he can watch a movie. (We made this rule hoping he would sleep longer. It isn't working!) He ended up playing in his room for a little bit and then he would come in our room every couple of minutes, walk over to my side of the bed and say, "Excuse me mommy, I need something." At one point he wanted a drink. I told him to go in his room and get the cup of water I'd left there for him. He scurried out of our room and was gone for about five minutes. When he came back in he was so excited. "Mommy, there's a great big train and lots of presents. A great big train that I just walked passed. Dead Marose (Santa, in Russian) did bring them for me." It was so cute! Austin was still asleep so we let Carter play with his train while we waited for him to wake up.

They both really enjoyed opening presents. It took a lot of convincing to get them to take the wrapping paper off a bunch of them before they started to play with them all. One of the first gifts Austin opened was a rattle that Carter had gotten for him. He was totally content carrying that one toy around for most of the morning. I think my favorite thing that Carter said while we were opening presents was, "Dad, let's go gun something." He'd gotten a little gun that shoots those little suction cup darts and was ready to use it. Even better, we told him they were called bullets, (he'd been calling them "gun things") to which he replied, "Dad, let's go gun something with these gullets." Hilarious!!

The rest of our Christmas day was spent playing with toys and just hanging around the house. The boys were both sick so I'm glad it was so laid back. (By the end of Christmas week I hadn't left the house in two weeks due to sick kids. Goo!)

One thing that really surprised me was the after effects of Christmas. For three days Carter woke up at 5:00 wanting to go get a drink and see if there was a train waiting for him in the front room. Seriously, there was no getting him back to sleep those mornings so I just sent him out to play with his toys. Crazy kid!

My favorite thing from this Christmas, and something I hope to make a tradition, is that Zach and Carter decorated and undecorated for Christmas. Yes, you read right. Zach and Carter dug the tree out of our storage closet and set it up, we all put the ornaments on, and then the day after Christmas Zach and Carter undecorated the tree, took it down and packed it away. It was wonderful!! I really think this is our new Holmstead family tradition.