glimpses of Christmas

I don't have much time for a long post covering all the Christmas festivities...so here's some photos for now.

new glasses and a few favorite photos

Jacob had his first eye exam a couple days ago, and it turns out he can't see as well as he should. He is farsighted with astigmitism, just like his mama! So here's his new look...short hair with new glasses :) I think he looks so cute!
caught this little beautiful moment last night! Aaron is so sweet to his sissys (most the time anyway) That's Mady he's planting one on.
And a sweet photo I took of Landen sleeping on me a couple weeks ago. Is he not just the sweetest little thing?!
Right before bedtime Ian ended up with both girls on his lap. I got lucky with a great shot of these 2 daddy's girls.
And my favorite of the boys decorating the tree greatly improved with some nice photo editing...love it!

words

It's been a while since I updated about the girls speech and other developments...so thought I'd do this list style. One list for each girl

Katelyn is really chatty. She can repeat/copy quite a few words back to us, and has a growing list of words she uses everyday.

• stop
• eat
• no
• all done
• baby
• nite nite
• baba (used for bottle or cup)
• bye bye
• mama/mommy & dadda
• hi
• owie (she says owie, no, owie when I want to change her clothes or diaper)
• uh oh
• mine
• shhhh (she loves to sush her siblings)
• whoa & weee
• taykoo (thank you)
• puppy
• key (kitty)
• bee bee (binky)

I'm sure there are a few more that I am leaving out. We are working on her saying Mady, she is getting good at saying mammy for Mady. And we try to get her to say Jacob & Aaron but she hasn't gotten it yet. Her language skills are developing more and more each day! There's a lot of gibberish that she says that I wish we could understand. She carries on and on sometimes in such a serious way, and nods her head and shrugs her little shoulders while in conversation. She still loves to yell, and scream and is very vocal while protesting to something. She also talks to her babies in the same gibberish, while feeding them babas and carrying them around all over the house. But I think her most favorite activity of all is trying to boss her sissy around. She thinks she's the boss, and yells at her and takes things away from her A LOT! And you can tell by her tone that she's trying to boss her around when they are talking in their own little language. It is very funny to hear them carry on in gibberish to one another, seemingly understanding each other's every word.

So now on to Madelyn. She has made some great speech developments in a pretty short amount of time. She's no longer silent that is for sure! She has gained so much sound, and so much volume to her little raspy voice.

• mommy/mama & dada
• baba
• no
• bye
• hi
• uh oh
• whoa
• takoo (thank you)
• nite

Most of her vocabulary still consists of mostly sounds rather than words. She has become fluent in gibberish, and really tries to make conversation (especially with Katelyn). We really believe that Mady would be even farther behind in her speech if she didn't have her sissy to converse with and teach her things. She has learned many sounds from listening to Katy. Her therapists also believe that Katelyn helps Madelyn with a lot of the developmental issues that we work on. It's actually quite therapeutic to have a twin to play and learn things with! Madelyn's personality has changed a bit over the past few months. She's no longer as quiet and reserved (at least around us). She now has become a bit of a bully, throwing things and hitting people. We are trying to teach her that kind of action is unkind, but it's like talking to...well a 2 year old! She's still very much a baby in so many ways that it really surprised us to see this kind of aggressive (very toddler) behavior. It's obviously a communication thing, and she does it out of frustration. In some small way it's nice to see her kind of fight back and not just take it when Katelyn knocks her over and takes her binky. We are actually working with her therapists to develop a visual type of communication for her. It will consists of pictures of needs and things that she can easily identify and point to, or bring us to communicate. Hopefully that will help her frustration with not being able to tell us what she wants or needs. So we are very excited to have that prepared and ready to implement during her next therapy visit.

We are also working on weaning both girls from the bottle. They are both drinking very well from a sippy cup, so now the only reason for a baba is for comfort. They are now having only 2 per day. One before nap, and one before bedtime. Soon we will cut the naptime one, but I think the bedtime bottles will be the hardest to cut out. They love to snuggle with us right before bed and drink their babas. So we will see how it goes. Binkys are a whole nother story. I'm in no rush to get rid of those things. And I am not ashamed!

MadyKaty

Well that's all I've got for now. Peace!

A bit around our home

Just wanted to capture some of the little things in our home that are making everything feel very merry & bright around here.

This is just something I made last year with some of my scrapbook supplies. I never framed it last year like I wanted...still haven't picked up a frame for it, so it just hangs on the inside of our front door.
Love this one of the boys, even though the color is horrible (my fault for not fixing my camera settings) defintitely needs some work in Picasa.
Our poor tree is constantly losing it's decor. This has been an ugly battle...so only about the top 1/4 of our tree has any decorations left on it. It has also fallen over once, and has been vertically challenged and just does not want to stand straight in the stand...it pretty much is quite sad looking!

KatelynMadelyn

I picked up those little wooden sleighs at craft warehouse...I painted them and added glitter and rubon words (peace & joy), and now they hold holiday treats.

Our advent calender...the boys love getting their treats everyday as we countdown to Christmas.

Ian also hung lights on the outside of the house and on our hedges...so it's definitely looking festive around here!

Christmas tree hunting & an early Christmas surprise

Ian had an unexpected friday off last week, so we decided to head over to Volstedt Farms to get our tree. Last year we did the whole u-cut adventure...you can read about it in our archives from last year. It was an experience that need not be repeated! So we selected a beautiful tree from their nice tented already cut tree section. Took about 5 minutes to pick the tree, they shook all the loose needles for us while we went into their greenhouse for hot cocoa and sugar cookies...I also found some fresh cut mistle toe to hang from our archway. We paid and Ian roped it to the top of the minivan. It was lovely...even more so because we didn't get the double stroller stuck in the mud this year! Another perfect example of why picking a tree in 5 minutes is a must!


These beauties are my Christmas gift from my father-in-law and his wife. They are top of the line LG Trom front loading washer & dryer. They wash 3 times the amount of clothes in one load and use 72% less water and energy!!! For the first time since my grandma was here when I was on bedrest with the twins, I have all of our family's laundry completely DONE!!! Except of course what we are wearing :) They are amazing! I really don't know how I got through life without these before. Words can not express how thankful I am to receive such an extravagant gift that will make life so much EASIER for us!

After a week of decorating our house is beautifully decked out for Christmas! I plan on taking some photos of all the festive decor, and our family photo in front of the tree hopefully tonight, so I can include then in our Christmas cards. Will post some of those in the next day or so! Hope everyone is having a delightful time with all your holiday planning and preparations!

November in photos

Ian was in charge of the turkey this year. We had a lovely dinner with family at my parent's house. Ian did a turkey in a deep fryer this year, and I think it was the best turkey I've ever had! We really missed Ian's mom & Robert and Grandma. MaryAnne and Grandma both had the flu and couldn't make it.
Daddy has his handsfull! With a little help from my sweet cousin Amber
Mady loved aunt Brenda's pumpkin ice cream pie

Katelyn digging into her thanksgiving feast.

I remember these days...trying to grab a quick bite with a newborn.
Great Grandpa meeting his 6th Great Grandchild (at least I think it's 6 now)

And some birthday highlights....

Mady really enjoyed playing in her cake this year. Last year she hated it! She was still extremely sensitive to textures and especially with things on her hands...it was much more a fun happy experience this year.Katelyn really dug in, and especially loved all the sugary frosting!

I'm having a hard time uploading photos to blogger...have tried a few times with no luck. Will keep trying through out the day. PEACE!

Is it December already?

November was such a CRAZY month! It was filled with the normal birthday madness...5 out of 6 birthdays in our house are crammed into one month. And of course Thanksgiving. But to take it to a whole new level of utter craziness, everyone has been sick for most of it all. We have all had it, but the kids just seem to not quite get over it, and then it starts all over again. Just tough colds that are lasting longer than normal. I am praying that we are at the tail end of it now with Aaron being the only one left with the lingering symptoms. So that sums up the reason of my lack of presence on the old blog. Many appologies to all my faithfull readers who thought we died (Jamie) or that we may have fallen off the face of the earth. We are all alive and almost well!

And I promise to make it up by posting an enormous amount of photos from all the birthdays, thanksgivng, and other little happenings that occured the last month. I have around 300 photos to upload from my camera!!! Yes, I still take a ridiculous amount of photos even when we are all down with "the plague" for an entire month!

Being sick did have it's perks...I did read 10 novels over the past month, which is more than I've read in the past few years combined. I guess being ridden to the couch and being so sick of t.v that I could scream, helped me devour some good reads. I also had to cook very few meals, hardly did any housework, and stayed in my pajamas for days on end. Would have been almost heavenly without the severe sinus infection, and complete lack of energy, topped off with caring for all 4 of my sick children. Of course now that I am well again, it's been a real treat to get caught up on all of the lovely things around here that got put on the back burner... An enormous amount of laundry, filthy bathrooms, and the girls room looks like a bomb went off in it. And the Christmas totes from the garage will be broke out this week. So the craziness goes on and on! But despite it all I am feeling quite festive, and am feeling the creative juices begin to flow again. Am really looking forward to doing some holiday projects, and getting everything ready for Christmas. Should be interesting with 2 very active 2 year olds reaking havoc on all the holiday pretties in our home! The tree decorations have a slim chance of survival!

Photos soon...I promise!

Peace