First of all: Happy new year!

This month a bit more verbiage; part of the intent of this site was to chronicle our kids development, but we don't always get much typing time.

Vincent Ladybug

Jokes of the month

Vincent, Today is Friday; what do you do on Friday? Eat French Fries!

Julia, what do you have in your mouth? Teeth!

10 degrees F outside, and snowing... but still Vincent wants to go outside without jacket. He did finally agree to wear papa's sweater.

V on his way to his first business meeting...

He and Julia got really into ties one morning, ran around for an hour trying on different styles.

Both Vincent and Julia will now tell you what their phone number is. Vincent includes the Area code. Vincent is even asking for the phone number of certain girls

 NO progress on potty training….. at all :-(

Bed-time routine

Bed-time routine is just wonderful these days. At 8 PM it’s time to brush teeth, which they do themselves (brush downstairs, then upstairs, then ‘kiezen op elkaar’). Then we put pajamas on, and they each pick a book to read. When the books are done, it’s time for bed. They get their pacifiers when they’re all tucked in, so they race off to climb in. At least Vincent. When the book reading was in Vincent’s room they usually request to use papa’s head as a step to both climb into Vincent’s bed. Then Julia says Goodnight to Vincent, steps on the tiger stool to turn off his light and closes his door. Then she climbs into her crib, finds her pacifier, and we’re done! Although, truth be told, after closing Vincent’s door she takes off running at full speed shouting “run away!!!”

Vincent

Vincent is going to Pre-school twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. The Rocky Mountain Academy, no less, which just moved in to the brand new Beth Evergreen Temple building. He loves it! The teachers like him too, even though his house training leaves much to be desired.

He is not much of a follower; that gene seems to be totally missing. He doesn’t always participate in the projects they do each day, and often ends up sitting in one of the teacher’s lap.

Vincent is almost always in a good mood. Tracking him down in the house is usually easy, just listen for his singing. He sings all day long, and often all though nap time too.

Vincent is really into spelling now. He did this Boggle arrangement completely by himself.

Julia

Julia has been in a cute stage ever since she started crawling. These days she sometimes tries to get her way by crying, but this month it’s already much better than last. She loves playing with Vincent, and they are very good now at wrestling together. Vincent has learned to not hurt Julia (too much) and Julia has turned into a tough cookie under Vincent’s physical abuse.

Swimming

The other day I took Vincent and Julia to the local swimming pool. It’s totally geared towards kids, with a small 1-story high slide, a whirl-pool and water depth running from zero to 3 feet (Vincent stands 38 inches high, Julia 32). They also have a monster slide, more than 2 stories high. I climbed the stairs with Vincent, and found that the start of the slide is covered; a big tube opening with water jets from bottom and top forming a wall of water you have to jump through. When Vincent saw that he took my hand and said in a very decided voice “you go first”. After a short discussion we went down together, through the water wall, followed by a long acceleration in the covered tube section. Then it opened up and I realized how fast we were going. Sliding on the high side of the curves I was thinking this thing might have not been designed for papas with kids on lap…. Not much time to worry about that, before I realized we were spit out at the end, got totally submersed, holding Vincent up as high as I could in the direction of what I figured was ‘up’. When my head broke the surface I saw Vincent spitting out all the water he had taken in and braced myself for a long infant complaint session, but as soon as he had any breath he said “let’s go again!”.

Sofia

Sofia continues to be a spectacular baby. Happy almost all the time, eager to start walking so she can join the other two; in the mean time a great help in Mama's computer efforts.

Julia calls this: Baby in a bucket

 Last updated 12/30/2004