Christmas in Austin

We spent Christmas in Austin with Amy's side of the family. Her brother and his family were in town from Seattle. We spent several days hanging out with the family and eating a ton. The Baker 5 had a list of places they wanted to eat at while in Texas so we knocked out a lot of those including Pappasitto's, Rudy's, and Phil's Ice House.

After the kids did so well sleeping in Dallas, Amy wanted the four of us to sleep at her parents so we would have more time to hang out with the family. Grammie and Poppa have a room with two cribs in it and Amy and I slept on an air mattress between the cribs. Overall, the kids did a pretty good job sleeping. They woke up a little earlier in the mornings and struggled to nap but it went better than we expected.

The kids received some great toys. The highlights include a couple of toddler shopping carts and a gigantic indoor playscape from Grammie and Poppa. The Baker 5 gave the twins a cool wagon (which Ella was very excited about giving).

Here are a few videos I took over Christmas. I'll post some pictures later. You might notice most of these videos are of Caden. Don't think I'm playing favorites. :) Caroline was sick over Christmas and did not want to do a whole lot of playing. She is feeling better now and has been playing will all her new toys.

Here is Caden playing on a recorder. Thankfully, this was a gift given to one of the Baker kids. Just in case anyone is wondering, we never want Caden or Caroline to be given a recorder. :) We heard this sound a lot at Grammie and Poppa's. If it was an older kid making this racket, we could have told them to stop.


Caden also had a lot of fun playing on an electronic drum set that was given to either Will or Cal.


Here are a couple clips I took of Caroline being a bully. I thought they were funny. On account of being sick, Caroline got away with just about anything she wanted. :)


Here is Caden pushing one of the shopping carts. The other cart was for Caroline and is pink and white. But for some reason, Caroline currently shies away from pink toys. With her being the more aggressive of twins, Caden is typically left with the pink shopping cart, or the pink chair, or whatever else Caroline didn't choose. :)


Here is Caden playing on the indoor slide/playscape. Both he and Caroline love it. They can climb up and go down the slide all by themselves. They are pretty good about taking turns and going from the slide back over to the rock wall. But sometimes, one of them wants to stop and hang out on the top or tries to climb back up the slide.

Caden's Haircut from Grandpa

I trimmed the back of Caden's hair a month or two ago. Now the top was started to get a little long. Over Thanksgiving, we decided to let Grandpa give Caden a quick haircut. Grandpa was a barber a long time ago.

Caden cooperated for the first couple snips.
But he quickly became tired of cooperating.We didn't take an after shot but I think he looked very cute.

Christmas in Dallas

We spent the weekend before Christmas with my family in Dallas. I have not yet pulled any pictures off of the camera (I'll share those later) but I did download the videos.

On our trip to Dallas, Amy and I got the best gift we could have possibly asked for--the twins were great in every possible way! And I'm not talking about the Grandma version of "great" where her grand kids can do no wrong. The kids were in great moods during the entire trip. Part of this might be attributed to this being the first trip to Dallas in awhile where we didn't need to take one of the kids to the doctor. This trip, both Caden and Caroline slept through the night even better than they do at home. To make this more impressive, before this trip, neither kid has ever slept through the night when we were away from home. Not only did they sleep through the night but they even took good naps.

While in Dallas, the kids got a ton of presents. Aunt Angela insisted the kids open a lot of their presents early. We tore the tape on the presents making it easy for the twins to open. Caden and Caroline had a lot of fun opening their gifts.

Here is a video of us opening presents at Grandma's house. The kids favorite presents were the puffs that were inside their new lunch boxes, a cardboard box, and some tissue paper.



One thing the twins love doing at Grandma's is pushing their walkers all around the house on the hardwood floors. Here is a quick video of the twins pushing one walker together. Normally, they each push their own but here, they were having fun (mostly) sharing one.



The next day, we went over to celebrate Christmas with Grandpa. Sadly, a lot of the people who were going to be there ended up being sick. But the few of us who made it had fun. Once again, the twins got a lot of really good stuff.

Caden got a bus that he loves pushing around. While we were opening presents, he pushed this bus all around the house. At one point, I yelled, "Caden, are you okay?" The funny part is he immediately responded with a very cute "AAAAHHHH" from wherever he was. I wish I had that on camera.



Another thing the twins enjoyed doing at my dad's was playing with the dog, Chloe. At Thanksgiving, they (especially Caroline) were a little rough with Chloe. Something changed since then and this time, both Caden and Caroline were very good with Chloe. Caden chased Chloe around Caroline for like five minutes. I finally pulled the Flip camera out as it was all wrapping up.

Amy's Tomato Harvest

When we moved into our house, the previous owners left a tomato plant that eventually grew thirty or forty cherry tomatoes. Amy wanted to try to reproduce this. Earlier this year, Amy planted a tomato plant from seeds. She planted it at the very end of the planting season but thought she'd see how it turned out. It started growing right away and we had high hopes of having fresh tomatoes.
Sadly, the weather turned cold just as some tomatoes started to appear. This did a number on our tomatoes.
And here is our entire 2010 tomato harvest! I wonder what we are going to cook with these little guys.
We try again next year. Next time, we will plant the seeds at the beginning of the season.

Halloween Costumes That Were Not Meant to Be

A couple months ago, I posted pictures of our kids Halloween costumes. Caden was a bumble bee and Caroline was a lady bug. In the post, I said that we had a couple other costumes that we considered. Now, I'm finally sharing some of those pictures.

Our first costume idea was the Princess and the Pea. We thought the idea was brilliant! We envisioned Caden in a round, green pea costume (picture the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka...only green) and Caroline in a cute princess costume with the pointy style princess hat. Sadly, our vision never made it into fruition.

First, it is surprisingly hard to find a princess costume for a one year old girl that cannot walk. Second, my mom made Caden a pea costume but he could not handle it. It was just too round and he was unable to maneuver or crawl around. :)

Here is Caden wearing the costume my mom made. We envisioned him having green pants and shirt and potentially even some green face paint on his cheeks.
But if we were not holding Caden up, this is what would happen. He couldn't even sit up by himself.
And best case scenario, he would lay down, mostly motionless, like this. Sadly, we knew this costume would not work.
Well, the princess and the pea costume was out.

Thankfully, we had a great hand-me-down monkey costume. But as Halloween drew near, we realized it was going to be way to warm to wear this costume. Whichever kid had it on would be sweating like mad. That is how we ended up with a bee and a lady bug costumes.

However, we did have a chance to bust out the monkey costume. A week or two after Halloween, we went to our friend Asher's first birthday. It was a safari theme party and costumes were encouraged. The monkey costume was perfect for that. We originally planned for Caden to wear the monkey costume but as the time arrived, we realized Caroline would enjoy it more.

Here is Caroline sporting the monkey costume at Asher's birthday.
Caroline was very happy to wear the costume. She loved the attention.
She was very proud of herself.
Caden would not have enjoyed the costume nearly as much. We definitely made the right choice putting it on Caroline.

Amy and I need to start thinking about costumes for next year. Hopefully, our kids will be walking by then which will open the door to all sorts of new costumes. :)

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

We have been reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" to our kids pretty much since their birth. Recently, Amy started making the sound of whatever animal is on the page. The funny thing about this is Caden is very scared of the white dog especially when we say "woof." :) He crawls over to snuggle up and be held by whoever is closest. It is pretty funny. We are not sure how he became so brave.

Opening Presents a Little Early

In our family, Amy buys most of the gifts and I do all the wrapping. With the number of presents Amy likes buying, I end up doing a lot of wrapping.

In my previous post, I talked about the kids being initially scared of the Christmas tree. This was never the case with the presents underneath the tree.

Caden enjoys picking a present and pulling it away from the tree where he proceeds to sit on the present. It is hard to get a picture of him sitting on the present but I like this one. Some of the less structurally sound boxes might be a little bent up when we give them away.
Caroline looks sneaky as she pulls the lid off of Grammie's present.
When I was at work one day, the kids escalated their playing with the presents. When Amy saw this, knowing full well how hard I worked wrapping the presents, she decided the best course of action was to photograph them as they destroyed my hard work! Thanks, hon! :)
Here is Caden biting off more than he can chew by trying to pull out this large present.
Here is Caden literally biting off more than he can chew with that same large present.
Here is what I saw when I got home from work. Amy put the presents back under the tree but you can see some damage had been done.
I plan to re-wrap these before we give them to our family. But who knows, it might just be too much of an uphill battle. Some of our presents might be in crushed boxes with some more than slightly ripped paper. :)

UPDATE: Soon submitting this post, I snapped these pictures. I thought they were worth adding to the post.
I sure hope the present Caroline is standing on isn't fragile.

O Christmas Tree

Amy and I were not exactly sure what to do with our Christmas tree this year. We didn't know how the kids would react. Would they ignore it? Would they pull off ornaments? Would they try to pull it over? Would they be scared of it? Yes, scared was a very likely possibility since our kids are scared of nature. I'm not sure why but they are frightened by trees, grass, leaves, etc.

We decided to set it up like normal and see how the twins react. Well, we mostly set it up like normal. I used some fishing line to tie the tree to the wall. This will make it even harder for a kid to pull it over should they try to do so. But other than that, it was Christmas tree as usual.
Here is our decorated tree. It is in the same place we put it last year.
At first, the twins didn't know what to think. Caden is a little braver with nature than Caroline so he got into the action first. Caroline stood behind him to see how it went. (Actually pushed him closer to it so he could get a good look.) I love how he was staying as far away as possible and slowly touched a branch. You can see Caroline keeping her distance.
After some initial hesitation, Caden decided he liked the tree.
For the first couple days, Caroline was a little scared of the tree. She wouldn't get too close by herself. When Amy or I held her and got close to it, she would hold onto us tightly and quickly touch/poke the tree. I wish we got a picture of her doing this. Now, she is fine with the tree and likes touching it every once in awhile.

Christmas Tree Lights

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we retrieved our Christmas decorations from the attic and decorated the house. Amy loves decorating for Christmas and was very excited. My excitement took a nose dive when I plugged the Christmas tree and found two entire light strands were not working!

On our tree, when one light burns out, the rest of the strand stay on. The same is true for two, three, or even four lights. But for some reason, when five lights are burned out, all the lights in a strand go out!

I checked each bulb individually by painfully pulling it out of the bad strand, hoping not to electrocute myself, and putting it into a good strand. When I finished finding all the bad bulbs, can you believe that there ended up being 16 burned out lights on one single strand!?! How in the world does that happen? Amy's dad has a theory that Christmas tree lights were designed to cause Christians to sin while trying to get them all working.

Here are the bad bulbs from the one strand.
I found all these bad bulbs on just one of the two bad strands. But I had enough and instead of fixing the second strand, I just turned the tree so the still bad strand was hidden in the back. Maybe Caden will deal with it when he gets older.

Excellent!

Caden's Grammie and Grandma should be proud of him! He got his first "Excellent" at school!

Caden and Caroline's pre-school rates their eating everday. Their scores range from "Could have been better", to "Good", and finally "Excellent". If you know Caden, you will know that he NEVER gets a rating of "excellent" to describe his appetite. His little 18 lb body is proof that he barely eats at all! We are always encouraging him to have just a few more bites. Well, maybe he's finally hit a growing spurt, because yesterday, he got an "Excellent" to describe his eating at school! Yay Caden! He also had another first, Caden actually asked for food when we got home. He went to the kitchen and pointed to his cup and the snack basket. I happily obliged and gave him everything he asked for!

Oh, and did I mention that he FINALLY ate his fruit yesterday too? The doctor told us that if we continued to introduce foods, he would eventually eat them. It took about 80 exposures to Rasperries, but he finally ate them. Phew! Maybe we've turned an eating corner with this little man!

Fun at the Spragues

Our friends, Mike and Courtney, invited us over to their house for dinner. I brought Lightning so we could roll all around on the hard wood floors that Mike recently installed. (Mike has become pretty handy since buying a house.) After dinner, I put both kids on Lightning and quickly pushed them all around the house. They loved it! We had tons of fun...well, at least until we wrecked and everyone went tumbling. :) Oh well. Stuff like that happens. After some crying, everyone was as good as new.

Courtney snapped these fun pictures for us. Check out the awesome crown molding in the first two pictures. (Helping with the crown molding was my end of the bartering between our wives.)
I love that Caden is holding on to Caroline's ears. We were going fast and he was looking for something sturdy to grab.Too bad you can never tell when Caroline is having fun.We can't wait to hand out with the Spragues again!

Sneak Preview of Courtney's Pictures

Amy and our friend Courtney (aka, the amazing photographer) did some bartering a few months ago. Amy loaned me out to help Mike install some crown molding. In exchange, Courtney and Mike, who is also becoming quite the good photographer in his own right, gave the twins their one year photo shoot.

Here are just a few pictures from the photo shoot. We don't want to share too much just yet since since you can bet some of the pictures will be made it into presents for the grandparents.
Courtney and Mike did a great job with the pictures. It was well worth the time I spent helping Mike with the crown molding...which I would have done for free so these pics are just a nice bonus. :)

PS: In case you are interested, here are some of the pictures Courtney took of the twins a year ago--Caden, Caroline, Together.

Train Ride in Cedar Park

A couple weeks ago, we took the kids on their first train ride. There is a park close to our house with a train and a mile or so of tracks. It winds around the park and even goes through a tunnel. Amy and I have been on this train with the niece and nephews and were looking forward to taking our kids on it.
Caden enjoyed the ride. He had a lot of fun looking at everything and letting the wind blow in his face.
Mommy having fun with her little boy.
Caroline had fun as well, but she didn't want to cooperate for a picture. Also, you can see our friends, the Followays, who came with us.
Jon had a ton of fun on the ride. I think he felt like a big boy being able to sit next to his dad. Also, I loved his A&M jump suit.
Here we are after the ride was over.

Caroline's Evil Eye

The night before Thanksgiving, we went to Maggiano's for their all you can eat family style dinner. We wanted something light and small before our big Thanksgiving meal. :)

At dinner, Caroline dropped her sippy cup in front of the waiter. He quickly picked it up and took it to the back to rinse it off for her. Caroline watched him walk away with her cup and she was not happy with her cup leaving her sight. When the waiter brought Caroline's cup back, she gave him an evil eye. She stared him down until he was out of sight. I think we all learned not to take Caroline's cup.

First Taste of Ice Cream

Last week, Amy and I decided to give the twins their first taste of ice cream. Of course, we wanted their first ice cream to be Amy's Ice Cream.
Amy and I both wanted chocolate ice cream with a peanut based candy mixed in. We knew that wouldn't work for the kids so we asked for a couple free samples of Mexican Vanilla. The two little samples ended up being more than we needed.

Caroline was not sure what we were trying to give her. It is the coldest thing we've ever tried to stick in her mouth and it was sweeter than anything she had ever eaten.
Caden didn't know what to think either. Both kids turned their heads away from the spoon making it difficult to get anything into a mouth.After a few forced licks, Caden decided the ice cream was okay and took a little bite to finish off sample number one. Mommy finished off most of sample number two so we didn't need to force the kids to eat that one.
Caroline's favorite part was when we gave her the spoon to play with.
The twins might not be ice cream fans yet but I'm sure they will be someday.