Toys EVERYWHERE

Our condo still hasn't recovered from Christmas. It looks like Toys R Us threw up all over our living room. There are toys EVERYWHERE. Everything came with small parts and pieces and accessories. And I don't recognize all of them yet so I sometimes can't figure out what goes with which toy to even know how to put it away. And many of the toys don't have homes yet. And the kids like mixing and matching the toys (Barbie is quite good at riding Dylan's tractor truck; the legos almost look like they belong in the ball pit; etc.) so everything is all mixed up.

Do small dolls really need to come with 4 pairs of miniscule shoes? And where is the toy that makes cleaning up part of the game? I'll pay for that.

THEY'RE EVERYWHERE..............

Our Christmas Card

I'd like to say I was trying to save the environment or just trying to be hip, but really we just didn't get around to making and sending Christmas cards this year. So this is what we sent out:

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Proud parent moment #4

The first non-sarcastic proud parent moment:

We woke up on Christmas morning to a very bouncy Kelsie who was actually fairly patient while we brushed teeth, started breakfast, woke up Dylan, etc. And when we told her it was finally time to go open presents she said, "The best present of all is this whole family."

Our New York Christmas

The kids gave us a pretty awesome Christmas present yesterday morning ... they slept till 9:00am!!!!!!!

The calm before the storm:


And the aftermath:



Kelsie proud of finishing her new puzzle from Grammie and Grampa:


The parents' favorite present from Santa (insert evil laugh):


Then we went to NYC to see the Rockefeller tree and the ice rink at Bryant Park:


It was a nice, relaxing day. We've tried a couple times to clean up, but it's a pretty futile effort. Every time we make progress one of the kids comes along behind us and makes a new mess. I officially give up.

Supportive little brother

Dylan cheers along with Kelsie as she plays her new game ...




This is one side of Dylan. The other side of him is tackling Kelsie, then dragging her across the floor by her hair and stealing her toys.

Proud parent moment #3

The third proud parent moment goes to having such a dainty, polite little girl. This morning at breakfast she burped loudly and then said, "Daddy, you're a booty tooter."

Proud parent moment #2

It is 10:30am and already I've lost count of how many times today we've said "get your hand out of your pants" and "take your finger out of your nose."

Proud moments in parenting. Issue #1

I'm stealing an idea from a friend's blog and starting a series. This one will be called Proud Moments in Parenting. Here is the first installment.

Proud moment #1: Kelsie occasionally makes up gibberish words and then gets stuck on them, so she will blurt them out randomly over the course of a few hours or days. Lately she has made up a word that I think is "Booshee." She's very fond of this word and has been periodically shouting it for several days now. And she has gotten Dylan stuck on it too. The problem is, when they shout it it sounds like they're screaming "BULLSHIT!" at the top of their lungs. So, the first proud parent moment goes to having kids screaming "BULLSHIT!" for everyone to hear.

Another day, another incident report

Brian has a story about when he broke his nose in college. I'm sure I'm misquoting, but the gist of it is that the doctor took a look and said, "I see you broke your nose again," to which Brian responded, "again?" The doctor said it looked like he had probably broken his nose 5 or 6 times. But Brian had no idea.

I think history might repeat itself. Poor Dylan and his nose. This one is from a fall onto a step in the playground today.



Ouch.

Our Thanksgiving weekend, documented by Kelsie

Kids these days. Kelsie typed her list for Santa this weekend. On the real computer. Our computer, not a play toy computer. Unfortunately she also discovered computer games, so we're already fighting for computer time. And she taught herself to use the digital camera this weekend, which turned out to be a nice way to document the weekend. Here is a random collection of photos from the holiday weekend, mostly by Kelsie.

We started off by making Turkey Cookies. If you look closely you can see some of the cookies are shaped like turkeys (i.e., hand cut-outs). Turns out the turkeys take a really long time to make, so we opted to finish the batch with randomly decorated cookies.



Kelsie's first picture attempt:


Mommy stepped in to catch Brian in all his cookie-eating glory:




Mommy and Dylan comparing tongues. Mine wins the purple prize, thanks to the red wine:


Speaking of purple tongues ...


Mmmmmmm ... turkey ....


Uncle Jaime. (our across-the-street neighbor and friend from Shreveport)


Oh, LSU. How the mighty have fallen. We still proudly use our koozies, though.


She wanted a picture of his foot. So here you have it.


Daddy's gangsta pose.


Self portrait.


Happy Baby D. (A rare smile for the weekend, considering he was sick and teething this weekend.)


Ansel (the cat) and Dylan having a confrontation. This one ended poorly -- Dylan got bit (bitten?).


Kelsie said she didn't use this stuffed animal anymore and it reminded her of Bodhi so she wanted him to have it. She set it next to him while he was napping.


It's torture having to wait for that pizza:


And in closing, here is our precious daughter showing me a boo-boo on her middle finger:


This is a drastically edited version of her photos. I deleted over 100, and kept a handful of others that probably aren't worth posting here. She took individual pictures of every stuffed animal in the house. Kind of fun to see the world through her eyes, though. Maybe she has a future as a photographer.