New tricks!

We've got lots of fun stuff to share about our Christmas and the last few weeks!

Christmas was fun. We started out at my folks and then headed back to Willmar to celebrate with Brett's family. Jaden was sick with a pretty nasty cold which explains some of the 'dazed and confused' looks on his face in some of these pictures. We gave Jaden a farm with a tractor that runs with a remote and pulls all of the farm equiptment. It was pretty cool. I think Jacob was more excited than Jaden!

Mackenna got his little giraffe with a baby giraffe that pulls behind it. So far she can only scoot backward on it but in time I'm sure she will learn to go forward! We spent the evening of the 26th at Grandma Pat's. We have two new Sound of Music converts! Jaden watched with great anticipation waiting for the kids to sing! He got mad everytime there was a commercial. We watched until the Nazi stuff was going to go down and then left so that he will be willing to watch it again! He finds almost all movies 'scary' to some degree now so finding something that he will watch is pretty hard. PBS Kids and most of the early morning stuff on Disney is still ok, though.

One of Mackenna's new tricks is posing for pictures. This one doesn't really capture it, but now she squints her eyes and puts on her biggest teethy grin!

Jaden got the newest edition to his Bobcat inventory! His showroom is on his dresser! This one even beeps when it backs up and makes noise and flashes its lights like the real ones.

So, on to the news for the week or month, sadly I am so darn neglectful when it comes to this blog! Mackenna has some new tricks! The ones she can do on a pretty regular basis are: pattycake, so big, and peek-a-boo. Her peek-a-boo is pretty hilarious as she covers her ears instead of her eyes. I guess she doesn't want to miss anything! She can wave but doesn't always catch on! She is such a sweet baby with some a great disposition. She is happy most of the time. In the last week she has really started to let the drama out, though! When a toy is taken away or we have to move her or something she screaches. It's pretty funny actually. Her inscisors have finally broken through. They are taking their sweet time coming down, though. Her front teeth are pretty cute. You can see them in some of our pictures if you look really closely. Mackenna is crawling like CRAZY. She is FAST!! She walks around things now and Uncle Greg caught her standing up for a second without holding on to anything! She will be walking soon. She took about 6 steps yesterday behind her little push thingy. We will have to work on that more. It was about this time, I think when Jaden really started to move behind those push toys, too. She loves to sit in Jaden's room and play (chew on) his toys. When they are both well rested they actually play together (next to each other, not really cooperatively) pretty well.

Jaden is learning to go potty in the potty right now. He is just at the beginning of potty learning so we are still using diapers full force until I can either get some more pull-ups made (not my idea of a good time with that stupid clear elastic, gahhhh.) or can order some Antsy Pants. He really can't quite get his pants off by himself yet anyway. He's doing a pretty good job of going #2 now we just have to work on #1. His food choices are still pretty limited so we are working on that but it's hard when he has a genuine fear of anything new and has texture issues/sensory issues. Jaden continues to love music. He got a new electric guitar from his birthmom which he really digs! He will hopefully be going back to ECFE for the winter/spring semester so he can be around some of his peers. It will be fun to see how much more he will be game to try now that he is older! He had his 3rd haircut a couple of weeks ago and this time he didn't cry or scream. He even let Pep put the cape on him. It was quite an improvement from the last two times when those waiting for their turn needed ear plugs!

All in all we are doing well, we are recovering from our winter colds now. I am still busy with my diaper biz. It is really fun to get to know my customers and share a lot of the same woes and joys of raising little ones. I am enjoying MOPs. I love my small group. We get together a lot beyond our normal twice a month for fun play dates. I have a couple of good friends who we continues to have play dates with as well.

Brett continues to busy himself with helping his patients, playing with the kids after work, cooking (we tried some fun Swedish recipes last week from our cook book from Ikea!), tinkering on things around the house, and spending time online and watching some of his favorite TV series on Netflix. He sadly watch the last episode from the last season of The Tudors last night. Boo.

This is sounding more and more like a Christmas letter, so I guess I better post our Christmas card for those who haven't seen it!