A White Christmas

Anyone who is dreaming of a white Christmas should come our way. From Dec 24th through the 26th we had about 25 inches of snow. Add the winds in on the 25th and 26th and we had a full scale blizzard. I think if we put Timothy out in a few places in the front yard he would disappear in the snow.

This does not truly show the huge amounts of snow...you'll have to trust me that there is a lot!

Troy and I are thankful for our snow blower, but we have now decided to name it...Tiny! We would not want to be without it, but it was sort of hopeless pitting it against the waist high snow at the end of the driveway. Troy faithfully struggled to blow snow three times over the past few days. Not much joy in having the snow you are blowing being thrown right back in your face by the wind. Bless him.

But despite the snow, or because of the snow, we had a lovely Christmas. Christmas eve is a day for Timothy and me. We watched his favorite videos, played with his toys and took it easy. We enjoyed a 2pm church service with Troy (the only one we could attend as a family without Troy assisting in the service.) Troy arrived home at 8pm after a full day. Timothy was in bed, so Troy and I enjoyed some quiet time together in front of the fire.

Opening his basketball hoop from mom and dad.

Christmas Day was supposed to be another church service with Troy preaching. But the blizzard brought about the cancellation. Troy did go into church and upon making it home declared no one should be going out. We settled in for a day of family time. We opened gifts in the afternoon. We had a makeshift Christmas dinner (we are saving the planned turkey for New Year's with Troy's mom). The day did not have anything very memorable except that we were all together and safe and cozy and that was wonderful!

Helping mommy open her gifts. Everyone needed "help" from Timothy this year!

2 Year Old!

Timothy once again celebrated his birthday in the cities. The benefit of this is a greater opportunities for the day's excursion. This year we went to an indoor playground. Timothy had a ball climbing all around, going down slides and just exploring. Most of the time his daddy shadowed him protecting him from all the big kids. Mommy tagged along a little and then took pictures.

After playing the morning away we went out for a birthday lunch at Noodles. Timothy shared buttered noodles and tomato soup with me. But the straws and big water glasses may have been the highlight of the lunch!

His party consisted of his cousins Abby, Tate, and Broder coming over for dinner and cake. We played one round of pin the tail on the dino as well.

Timothy's second cake was another dino cake, but made from ice cream this time. He still didn't quite get the candles blown out, but he tried!

Friends, Dinos & Cake

Although the big day is a week away, Timothy began the celebration of 2 years tonight. We had a few of our friends and their kids over for cake and play. At 6pm Timothy was looking out the window saying "Friends. Come" At 6:10 he was dragging Troy to the door ready to head out in search of his friends. Thankfully they arrived and Timothy did not have a meltdown waiting.

It was a dino themed party complete with dino decorations, an inflatable dino, dino cake, dino stickers, dino tattoos and dino games. Timothy was, as usual, a bit reserved at first but was enjoying himself by the end.

Timothy hugging his dino before his party.

Showing off the dino tattoos that Mommy put on at snack time.

The highlight of the night! Cake time!

Timothy tried to blow out his candles, but he did not have quite enough force to get them blown out on his own.

Ready to take a big bite of cake! Who needs a fork?!

Will Christmas come sooner...

...if you open all the windows on the advent calendar when your mom is not looking?

Christmas is coming

Christmas is on its way and Timothy is enjoying the season. Although the first picture shows little to no joy, the second captures it a bit better. The first picture is at Auntie Susie's house. We celebrated Thanksgiving there on Friday November 27th.
Timothy had been waiting to open our box of Christmas ornaments for about a week. Finally, last weekend we got our tree and he got to explore all the wonderful contents of the ornament box!

Timothy loves our tree. Yesterday he pulled his little rocking chair up close to the tree and just sat there looking, touching and kicking it gently with his bare toes. Later he circled the tree touching the lights one by one.

We have been telling Timothy that he will have a dinosaur birthday party this year. When he hears us talking about Christmas being Jesus' birthday he usually says 'Dino' since he has come to relate dinos with birthdays. Maybe Jesus would like a dino party too?!

Happy 23 Months!

One more month until the big 2! Timothy is becoming our little boy and leaving the baby boy behind. In the last two months his language has exploded. He now tries to repeat every word he hears. He is not really into sentences, except he does say "{insert name here} come" all the time. Most often it is daddy or Grand-mom, but occasionally he names one of his friends from church.

He has left the high chair to sit on a big chair (with the help of a nice thick edition of Shakespeare's works!) He can drink out of a big boy cup. He is always telling mommy that he can walk. He can play by himself for longer periods of time. And he has definite opinions about everything from the shoes he wears to wear I sit when I read him stories at night. It is fun to see all the things he is learning!

Luckily for me, there are still plenty of moments when he wants a snuggle with mom-mom! We are ever thankful for our delightful little boy!

Timothy and I helping put up Christmas lights.

Surprise!

The following game of surprise came about spontaneously at dinner tonight. Before we took this video, he had already yelled surprise a dozen times. He was so into his game he did not actually notice the pudding in front of him for several minutes. Anyone who knows how Timothy likes to eat knows that is unusual!!!

Fall Fun

One of our main activities outside has been jumping and running in the leaves, a game Timothy calls boom-boom. He also tries to rake the leaves. This tends to end in frustration as manipulating a rake twice his size creates a few difficulties. Below is a short video of some of our fun!

Happy Halloween

Timothy got to help carve his pumpkin today. He chose to supervise the process--meaning he watched mom clean out the pumpkin and dad carve it. (This is better than last year when he tried to eat everything!) Occasionally he moved a seed onto the tray for toasting, or dumped a spoonful of goop. During the carving he repeatedly said "nose, nose" as Troy made the eyes, mouth and nose. (Nose is a favorite word...related to the word no which Timothy can say with distinct clarity!)

For our Halloween dinner we had Pumpkin calzones (made with pumpkin and shaped like a pumpkin), Halloween salad (carrots, raisins and apples), Jack 0 lantern fruit salad (grapes and oranges in a carved orange), and pumpkin patch brownies (brownies decorated with candy corn pumpkins and frosting). As pictured below, Timothy appeared to enjoy his pumpkin patch brownie!!

Our little elephant awaiting the big trick or treat outing. Can you see the excitement in his face? Okay, so maybe there is a look of are my mommy and daddy crazy!

Posing with mommy before heading out with daddy. They went to about six houses and Timmy's tiny pumpkin bucket came back full. Troy said he carried it the whole time and most excited about seeing M&Ms. That is one of the few candies he knows.

We ended the evening with a "moof" known to the rest of us as a movie. Troy had ordered Garfield's Halloween, but it did not arrive. Instead we watched a Pooh bear Halloween movie. Timothy watched some of it, mainly commenting when ever pooh bear or a pumpkin came into view. (He also thought that Roo was a mouse...understandably!) It was a fun Halloween!

Pockets, Cowie and Doggie, & New Words

What's new around here...well, Timothy has discovered pockets. He likes to shove both his hands in his pockets quite forcefully. Forceful enough that he sometimes needs his pants hiked back up to his waist! Most people forget how wonderfully entertaining a pocket can be!

Cowie and Doggie are Timothy's new buddies. Cowie is a red plastic cow and doggie is a little plastic dalmatian. Doggie or Cowie have been know to sleep with Timothy. There is usually one of the two at the dinner table. (Timothy likes to show them his food and the bubbles in his milk.) They watch us do art. They like to read stories with us. How great to have such faithful friends!

Sit is one of Timothy's many new words. It is very funny to see Timothy push on his daddy's head and very firmly say sit when he wants him to keep playing. Again is another new word. That is equally as handy for a toddler who likes to do things over and over. He can now command mom and dad to sit and play again and again!

Pumpkin Patch

The pumpkin patch was our destination this weekend. The weather was beautiful and I think everyone from town had the same idea as we did. Busy though it was, we had fun. There were pumpkins to choose, a hay maze for tiny tots, games to play, a spooky forest, and a hayride.

Checking out the pumpkins

Happy family!

Farmer boy!

Happy Birthday

We celebrated Troy's birthday this week. It was a bit lower key than the big party last year, but with a few happy moments woven into a busy workday.

An early morning story with Timothy. Nothing says happy birthday like reading Baby Bear's Treasury of 25 Stories!

Troy and his birthday cheesecake.

Instead of going out for dinner, we had a sitter watch Timothy for an hour while we went for a walk. It was a beautiful fall evening. After Timothy was in bed we had a nice dinner together. Timothy got to join in the celebration at an afternoon coffee/cider/cookie date at Starbucks.

Boom, Boom

We have been working hard to encourage Timothy to use words. Well tonight he mastered a new one...boom. Earlier today he fell down on his bottom and and I commented that he went boom. Well after dinner he fell again, on purpose, and I commented again that he went boom. At the mention of 'boom'' he started giggling. Then he began to roll all over and fall back and all sorts of moves while repeatedly saying "boom boom." Whenever I commented on his booms he would get the giggles. For a good 15 minutes he entertained himself with saying "boom boom" falling all over the couch cushion and giggling. Oh the joys of seeing him learn!!! (Of course he thought it was the funniest when mommy went boom boom too. :-)

Discoveries!

I made a trip to the thrift store to drop off clothes and took a peek inside to see if there were any booster seats for the table. Well no luck there, but I made another discovery--a marble run. I don't often impulse buy (okay almost never!), but this I couldn't resist. I had one growing up and Timothy has used it at my parent's house. He loves it. The one I got isn't quite what I had, you cannot do marble races with it, but Timothy didn't mind. He loves watching the marbles roll.
The other discovery of this last week was what fun painting can be! I went to a women's retreat at church and one of the sessions was Spirituality and art. I got to paint on my own little canvas. Time and skill were limited, but I was pleased with my creation!

Where's Da?

Troy had to go back into work tonight. Timothy gave him a hug and watched him go out the door. But for some reason it did not sink in that his Da was gone. He called out "Da" several times while we played on the driveway. He searched the garage for his da. I tried to point out that the car was gone which meant his da was too. That didn't seem to make a difference to Timothy. We went into the back yard and Timothy called for his da, but to no avail. His da was nowhere to be found. After all the hard searching, Timothy just wanted to go inside. Without his da he couldn't do what he really wanted, so why stay outside. Why did he need his da? Well his mommy wouldn't lie down on the concrete with him!

New Words

Timothy's speech has not been the speediest in developing. He takes his time and learns the important words like ice (ice cream), chase, bug, ball, dog, owl, elephant. You can't argue that those are needed words for daily existence--well most of them.

In the last week or so, however, he has added one new word that makes me smile... "Mom-mom." He is not the typical kid who just learns mama and dada. No, for Timothy it is Mom-mom and A Da! I guess he likes to be unique. It is pretty cute when we are at church and he sees Troy up front and he starts calling out "A Da!"

Signs of changing seasons

No the leaves aren't falling, nor has it been all that cool, but it is clear that fall is near. We will be saying goodbye to the Twins baseball cap...
...and hello to the Vikings cap (thanks to Timothy's Aunt Susan!)

(I can't claim that we are really Vikings fans, as we rarely watch football until January, but maybe that will change now that Timothy likes to point to the ball on TV!) I am not sure Timothy will really give up his Twins hat either. It is his favorite hat. But he did pick his new purple hat for our afternoon outing.

Hard work

I have not worked so hard in a long time. With the help and guidance of my dad, we fixed all the windows in our house. My mom was on babysitting duty (much to Timmy's delight)! Every window was removed, scraped, cleaned and painted. And if you don't think that is a lot of work, you should give it a try and then decide! We were able to recruit Troy for two and a half days (he became the main primer and painter). Thankfully we were able to finish the job in a week despite some rainy weather delays. We have hopes to change the shutter color eventually, but for now we are happy to have windows that look great!

Dad and I working at scraping and sanding.

Playing with Timothy on our day off.

Camping

We just returned from a camping trip in Canada. This was our first camping experience with Timothy. We had a few reservations about how he would do--mostly in regard to sleeping in a tent. We knew he would love being outside all day! He did really well if you ignore the fact that the first morning he woke up at 4:40 am! (He took a short nap in my arms from 6:30-7 am.)
Of course we wanted him to try all the thrills of camping including his first taste of S'mores. He seemed to like them, although he preferred his S'more without the marshmallow.

I think the marshmallow made it all a bit to sticky for him. He kept wanting me to wipe his fingers clean.

We were staying at Lake Winnipeg. It was a beautiful lake, but our first morning was rather rainy. It didn't bother Timothy. He enjoyed roaming the wet shore in his water shoes and digging in the sand.

The afternoon cleared up so we did a little sandcastle building. Timothy really enjoyed smashing the castles.

Timothy stopped for a moment to watch the waves beating upon the shore.

Eventually Timothy ventured out into the water. He giggle every time the waves crashed on his waves. Despite his delight, he was a little afraid too and kept a strong grip on his daddy's hand. he also kept pulling Troy deeper into the water.

We also spent some time in Winnipeg. We visited the children's museum and the zoo.

Shooting baskets!

Timothy's latest obsession is basketball hoops. He points out every single one whenever we go for a walk (and there seems to be one at almost every house!) While we don't have one for outdoors we have improvised with an over the door hoop making it an over the toy box hoop. This is Timothy's favorite game. He is actually pretty good at making baskets, but it is hard to get on video, as the camera distracts him so much from his play.

Broccoli trees and basketball veggie burgers

Well I didn't expect to have to find ways to convince Timothy to eat. He has always been a good eater, but lately he has started to develop distinct likes and dislikes. Vegetables are more often than not in the dislike category.

But I have found a few tricks.
* Melt cheese (a definite like) to broccoli so that when he tires to eat the cheese the broccoli has to come too.

* Refer to the broccoli as a tree which seems to remind Timothy of the outdoors which is a definite like and somehow redeems the broccoli.

* Shape the veggie burger bites into tiny balls and pretend to bounce them in Timothy's mouth. Here the ball shape seems to hide the fact that he is eating carrots, beans, red peppers and mushrooms, and onions.

As long as he is eating and venturing beyond his favored graham crackers, I am happy.

Getting around

Timothy is a boy on the move. Now that he has mastered walking he is looking for more exciting ways to get around. Sometimes running is fun, but why not take a spin in Grandma's new car.
Or go zooming down the sidewalk on a bike. (Well he doesn't really zoom as his feet don't reach the pedals, but slowly scoots for now. But he looks cool in his sleek bike helmet!)

Other favorite modes of transportation...being pulled in his wagon, riding in his stroller, being pulled in his bike trailer, and riding his motorcycle at his Grandma's house.

Just Like Dad

Timothy was unhappy at dinner. He was pointing at the plate of kabobs on the table and indicating that is what he wanted. I tried over and over again to show him he had the exact same food on his plate, but that did not satisfy him.

It took a few minutes to realize that it was not the food he wanted, but the wooden skewer the kabobs were on. Then the light dawned. He saw his daddy eat his food directly off of the skewer. So the steak and green pepper he refused to eat from his fork, he happily ate from the skewer because he had to be like daddy.

(Troy wonders if we eat with chopsticks, will Timothy insist upon the same!)

Celebration!

There are many reasons to celebrate, but this week it was baptism day! A year ago Timothy was officially welcomed into the family of God and baptized by his daddy. Timothy probably didn't know we were celebrating, but we wanted to start some traditions.

* A water related activity to remember the waters of baptism.
We planned to go to the splash park, but it wasn't all that warm. Luckily it was still sunny, so we opted for water play in the front yard with his big sprinkler beach ball. He loved it!

* A special dinner
We intend to let Timothy choose, but this year we selected likely favorites on his behalf. Dinner was graham crackers, cheese, fruit and pasta. Yum, yum! And of course a bit of cake.

* A gift
I am not sure he will always get a gift, but this year it was a new story Bible. The stories are a tad long for him, but he enjoys looking for the caterpillar in each page.

Happy Baptism to our little child of God!

18 months

A few things that keep our 18 month old busy... pointing out everything he sees to mom or dad; dumping things out of all containers (and sometimes pick them up); listening for every bird, car, truck, train or other noise that might occur; riding his bike, firetruck, and wagon up and down the sidewalk; noticing every ball outside, in the house or in a book; reading his I Spy book several times a day; and of course he has to do his 'work' like watering the flowers.

Even with all those important daily tasks, he still finds time for a little fun...

A Minnesota Twins game with Daddy, Mommy and Grandma Rebecca.

A trip to the Como Zoo in St. Paul with Mommy, Grandma Rebecca and Grandpa Ken.

(He was able to spot every single ball that the animals had to play with!)



And celebrating father's day with his Daddy.
(Daddy got a marble paint card and a decorated rock...aka paper weight!)

Tomorrow is our 18 month appointment so we'll see how he is growing!

Happy Boy

He is outside. It is warm. He has a balloon and a wagon to pull. He is a happy boy!

(Sadly the balloon popped when he tried to sit on it. No tears though.)

Five wonderful years!

A beautiful sunset, a warm ocean breeze, and a wonderful man...definitely an anniversary to remember! Obviously we went on a little trip to celebrate (this picture is certainly not North Dakota landscape!) Sanibel Island, Florida was our destination. It was a wonderfully relaxing trip. Timothy was once again in the care of my parents and also had a wonderful time. (Besides thinking of Timothy every time a saw a small child, I did just fine being away for a week!)

We enjoyed relaxing on the beach, going for bike rides and simply having free time together with no responsibilities.

It was fun to be in a climate so different than what we are used to. I loved the palm trees--North Dakota could use a few! It was very hot and humid, but that was great for a few days. We easily cooled down upon walking out of the airport back home (50 degrees as opposed to 90!)

I was happy we got to see a alligator, but from a good safe distance. (We would not have seen it at all if it weren't for a pair of very observant kids who were on the wild life refuge tour with us!) Can you spot it in the picture?

I was also happy that the cottage we stayed in was located just down the road from Pinocchio's Ice Cream shop. What's better than ice cream on a hot summer day?