Merry Christmas!

 

It has been a wonderful, crazy day in the Koch household today as I’m sure every house with children has been. We have Meema and Boopa visiting from Oregon again and it has been a wonderful time celebrating with them. Santa was very kind to our kids and the big hit was their scooters. It took awhile to convince them to open anything else. Another hit was our new house pet, “Petchulah”, our giant stuffed giraffe which Claire had fun naming. It was a relaxing day and feel very thankful to have family in town to celebrate with us. Merry Christmas!

Spotting the gifts under the tree:

  

Having fun with “Petchulah” and scooters:

    

Some more playing and then “Petchulah” needed to take a nap:

   

Christmas Program 2012

 

The past two days we have been attending the kids’ Christmas programs. And by program I mean a bunch of preschools either staring or crying at their respective parents.  I’ll start with Claire. She was very excited when she saw us and the whole entire time she just stood staring at us saying, “Mommy, Daddy!”. She also informed the little girl next to her who we were and also pointed out the little girl’s brothers to her. I don’t think she sang one line she was just so excited we were at school!

 

Henry’s was today and he had a wonderful time. He was smiling and waving as they were walking in. When he saw us, he gave us a big smile and wave!

I feel I need to explain Henry’s face…He fell on the cement and scraped his nose and last night he fell into the table corner. His eye looks a lot better than it did last night. I thought it was going to be all black and blue. The poor kid looks like he was in a fight!

Kiddo Update

 

I feel like it has been awhile since I have done just a list of what the kids are up to with milestones and behavior. It’s always fun for Paul and I to look back at these.

Up first is our spunky Claire-Bear(3 3/4):

• This girl keeps us on our toes, she is constantly asking questions about everything she sees, hears, comes across.
• Since November 20th she has asked if it is Christmas at least three times a day. Thankfully it is December now and we can refer to our advent calendar.
• This past weekend we did an overnight trip to Black Mountain, NC which is about 15 miles east of Asheville. During the trip she asked us about every five miles, “Is this Asheville?”.  Cute, but oh so tiring.
• We have new neighbors and their little girl is in Claire’s preschool class. Since we discovered this every single afternoon Claire insists on walking to the girl’s house and standing outside until she comes out. We’re not quite sure how to explain the meaning of “stalker” to her. It’s cute to see Claire have a neighbor friend.
• She loves playing “restaurant”. She rearranges all of our kitchen table chairs and creates a little restaurant complete with menus and food.
• Another favorite pretend game is “doctor”. She loves trying to “check” our ears, mouth, head, and stomach for problems she can solve.
• She thinks it is funny when she calls us by our first name. She will say our name and give us a funny little smile to see if we catch it.
• When we play outside her favorite game is “airplane”. We all pretend we’re airplanes flying in the sky.
• Finally, she has started saying the phrase, “I wish…” For example, “I wish we could go on an airplane to Oregon.” or “I wish we could have a dog like so and so…”. It’s pretty cute.

(She decided putting stamps all over her face was a good idea.)

And now Mr. Henry-Sir(21 months):

• Oh my goodness does this kid have a set of lungs. Since his speech is limited he has resorted to screeching at the top of his lungs about everything. I think I need to start wearing ear plugs.
• He continues to love school. He is so excited to put his backpack on, get in the car, and go with big sis Claire. Enthusiastically he will wave “bye” when I drop him off.
• At the Y they offer a fun “Pee Wee Sports” class for toddlers/preschoolers. The last month I have been doing it with Henry and he has so much fun. As of now his favorite sport is basketball(yay!). He loves when it’s time to play.
• When we are outside he loves walking, climbing, sitting, rearranging stone, on our rock wall. I can’t get that kid away from it.
• Claire still has to deal with Henry as her shadow. It’s been a bit hard recently because Claire has gone to our neighbor’s house by herself to play with her friend and Henry just doesn’t understand why he can’t come too. Poor little guy, he just looks so hurt.
• He is starting to talk some more. It is still limited to about 10 words but he’s trying.
• Henry loves trains. For awhile I wasn’t sure what he really liked because he didn’t seem to attach to anything. All of sudden he loves trains. He collects his, loves our Thomas books, and building tracks.
• It took awhile for Henry to enjoy sitting and listening to stories. Now he loves to be an active listener. Claire was much more into just sitting and listening to the story being read. Henry wants to help flip pages, make comments, and make the book interactive. I think he new interest in the train books really influenced this one.
• Finally, he loves to figure out how things work. Claire likes to be shown and told how something works; Henry wants to figure it out on his own. He wants to put the train tracks together; take apart a block tower, he’s more of a “cause and effect” kind of child than Claire was/is. It’s amazing how different their personalities are.

Sunday Breakfast

 

Most weekends we are in relax/recharge for the upcoming week. Occasionally I’ll get inspired and make a nicer breakfast than just the standard Eggo waffles(Although, they got a bit gourmet this season with pumpkin spice!). It usually ends up being the kids’ second breakfast since they get up at the crack of dawn and are starving at 6:30. While I was making breakfast Paul and Henry were having story time:

 

 

That lasted for about a whole two minutes until Henry had enough.

 

Claire was in a silly mood:

 

Just picture me here:

At one point, Paul thought I was taking too long and said he could cook the bacon better. He burnt it. He’s not allowed to touch the bacon anymore. We were all a little sad.

After breakfast the kids were still in a silly mood and actually were both up to posing for a picture. I had to take advantage:

             

Love those goobers.

Craft Wars

 

Since I have a bit more time with the kids both in school two mornings a week it has given me the opportunity to 1) enjoy a quiet house, 2)go to the store without two kids grabbing food the whole time, and 3)do some home projects. I have done a couple of craft-ish projects over the last couple of months. Since I have no crafting ability or talent whatsoever it kind of feels like me vs. the project each time. That means it takes me about 8x as long as the normal, talented, crafter.  I thought I would share what I have done. I am awful at figuring out what to put on walls for décor so I found a easy/cheap painting project for our bedroom:

I have always wanted to use chalkboard paint for something in the house, so I painting a small wall in our desk area in the kitchen. The kids loved watching me paint. Every time I ask Claire what color she wants her room she always responds with black. Silly girl. I think I might paint a small part of her wall with chalkboard paint to satisfy her odd black choice. Each painting step took me about a week to complete because I’m a bit of a procrastinator at times.

Finished product:

Baby steps with the crafting. My next task is tackling our window treatments. I have no idea where to start! Curtains intimidate me.

In fun kid activities, Claire loves anything to do with playing music(guitar, microphone, etc…) and Henry loves dancing so they have been having fun putting on “shows” for us with their talents. Pretty darn cute!

    

Henry is also finally loving books and building with the MegaBlocks. It took him awhile to have the attention span to sit, look at a book, or build towers. Now he will entertain himself for good spans of time.

    

(His “cheeese” face.)

Happy Halloween!

 

Our Halloween festivities began last Friday when Davidson did a trick or treating event with all the downtown businesses. We heard that it is always extremely crowded but we didn’t realize what that meant until we got there. It was a good thing we got there early because there were a TON of people there by the time the event started. Both kids had a lot of fun and were really into everyone’s costumes:

(They were Tinkerbell and Peter Pan).

At school, they both had parades and were able to dress up in their costumes. Henry’s parade day(I forgot my camera so a friend took some pics-thanks!):

Claire’s parade day:

Finally the big night!

With our neighbors(trying to get four kids to smile at the same time-pretty impossible!).

We just did our cul-de-sac, which was plenty for the kids. They had more fun handing out candy when we got home!