Christmas

We were awoken Christmas morning by the thunk thunk thunk of Damon playing with his new basketball hoop. Not too much later everybody was up and ready to tear into stockings.

Olivia and Carmen knew exactly what to do now that they're both old enough to remember the previous Christmas. We tried to keep Miles distracted by food, but now that he's mobile it didn't last for very long.

There wasn't really any theme to the gifts this year, but the kids seemed pretty happy with the assorted toys they got. Amber and I are certainly happy with our new piano.

The rest of the day was spent playing and calling family. Amber had taken the night shift, so I took the afternoon shift while she caught up on some well-deserved sleep.

Christmas Eve

I had quite a few vacation days left over this year, since Miles was born during the week I was planning on taking off, so with the way the holidays fell I was able to take two full weeks off to end the year. I was kind of lazy this time and didn't have any big projects planned, but I did spend a lot of quality time with the family.

On Monday, we mainly cleaned the house and did a little last-minute shopping. Tuesday was Christmas Eve. I took the girls to see Frozen at the theater. I liked the movie, but I wasn't wowed by the music. The girls play acted for days afterwards, so they must have liked it, although they were both scared during a few scenes.

That night Dan and Hyde's family came over for our Christmas Eve gathering. The kids acted out the Christmas story as I read it from the Bible.

Afterwards we played Christmas songs on chimes and sang around the new piano. We ended the evening with a gift exchange. Olivia and Carmen got crowns, which they put to good use playing "Frozen". The kids were having a great time, but we eventually said good-bye to the other Browns and got our kids to bed.

It was late when Santa finally turned with a jerk and laid a finger aside of his nose, but no sooner had he risen up the the chimney and we settled back down for a long winter's nap, than our kids continued the tradition of puking on Christmas Eve and Amber had the pleasure of cleaning the sheets (and the wall, and the floor) for Olivia and Carmen. Thankfully, they felt fine the next day.

Kid Update

I've been meaning to write this post for at least three weeks. It's been long enough for Miles to go from "kind of sitting up on his own" to "nothing below 3 feet is safe", so I'd better get it done before it's too late.

Miles has discovered mobility, and he loves it. He's always been very active, but now he's harnessing that power for the cause of slobbery destruction. He can't crawl continuously, but he can crawl for a few crawls at a time now, which when combined with the rolling and army crawl means he can get where he wants to go deceptively fast. And where he wants to go is the coffee table, to rip and eat magazines. He's in the stage where he grabs everything and tries to put it in his mouth. He figured out how to go from crawling to sitting on his own recently, and seems pretty please with himself. We started him on solid foods a while ago. He eats baby food just fine, but he loves cheerios and the baby puffs and yogurt drops. He is still very sweet and good-natured, and smiles at everybody. He is extremely pale, which is usually the first thing people that know our other kids say about him.

Damon is growing up and thinning out. He has discovered "no", but hasn't started abusing it yet. My favorite is when I say, "Damon, it's time to go to bed" and he replies, very sweetly and matter-of-factly, "No, daddy". He is still very active and curious, but is slowly getting better at not getting into everything. He even listens occasionally to our cries of "Get out of there!" and "Don't break that!" Along with "no" comes that stage where he wants to do everything himself. He has started dressing himself (he refuses to wear two-piece pajamas, only footie pjs will do) and even started potty training himself. And of course, he wants to wear backpacks and cut food with a knife and whatever anyone else is doing. He is talking more and more, but it's still a struggle to understand him much of the time. One of his favorite things to do now is to read books and repeat all the words as we read them. He has always mixed his consonants, like "dimosaur" and "gyankie" (blankie), but I've noticed improvements lately. Two of my favorites that he still says sometimes are "hellocopter" and "eye brown".

Carmen continues to assert her independence, which has led to lots of bickering with Olivia, who is used to always getting her way. Perhaps it's the youngest child in me, but I have a hard time not being partial to her plight (Olivia can be really domineering during playtime). On recent Sundays, Carmen has wanted to wear matching dresses with Olivia, but of course Olivia never wants to. Carmen is very emotional and any slight can throw her into a sullen state, but the flip side is that she is also very loving. She has been proactively helping around the house, like throwing away dirty diapers without being asked. She is like me in that she observes more than she talks, so we can often just communicate with a look. A few nights ago at dinner we had cuties (mandarin oranges). In the past, Olivia had gotten all the stickers and Carmen all the peels, but Carmen wanted stickers this time and Olivia refused, so they each kept their own stickers and peels. During dinner I caught Carmen's eye and snuck her at least 3 extra stickers under Olivia's oblivious nose and we shared a mischevous giggle when Olivia realized Carmen had more stickers and got upset. Carmen is to the point that she will probably start reading pretty soon. She knows how to read, and can read if coerced, but I think she doesn't like practicing with other people watching (and with her show-off sister around).

Olivia is getting to that age where I'm not sure I understand her (and probably won't for another 10 years). She and Carmen seem to compete about everything; their current competition is who gets to play with Miles. She gets frustrated when Carmen stands up for herself, but doesn't know how to play by herself, so she'll either annoy someone into doing something with her, or disappear for an hour reading a book. For a while she was really into an online math game/competition provided by the school. She's very smart. She is several grades ahead in reading, math has been a breeze so far, and she's very good on the piano. Her teacher had nothing but good things to say about her at the parent-teacher conference. Amber says Olivia is her brightest piano student. Olivia learned a simple, two-handed song with chords recently and she has been playing it constantly. She could be accurately described as hyperactive and is always jumping, bouncing, and giving spontaneous hugs at weird times (all while talking constantly, of course). One of the things I like about that energy, though, is that she's indomitably happy and bubbly to the point that she has trouble staying mad for very long. She always finds something good to talk or laugh about.

I've gotten into the habit of picking up a few extra mints when I go to restaurants for lunch, or grabbing three candies when I encounter them at work, and bringing them home to the kids. I've had a lot of catering/restuarant/celebrations/etc towards the end of the year, so now every day when I get home from work, like Pavlov ringing a bell I'm greeted by three cries of "Daddy's home! Do you have any treats?!?". Carmen and Damon stick to me like glue the rest of the night, and Olivia often trails behind unless she's reading a book, and Miles, well, he's got magazines to eat.

New piano

Last week during my lunch break I stopped by a piano showroom near where I work just to browse a little, since I drive by it every day but had never actually gone in. Being the time of year that it is, they were having a Christmas sale and the price on their smallest baby grands caught my eye.

The idea simmered in the back of my mind for a few days, so I told Amber about it and it didn't take much convincing to get her to take a look for herself. We spent a Saturday morning at the piano store (before going to see the dinosaurs) playing pianos and doing mental arithmetic with our savings account.

In the end, we liked the Yamahas, but the smallest baby grand (5'0"), whose price had initially caught my eye, was noticeably lacking in sound quality compared to the 5'3" model, which of course was significantly more money.

Much to the chagrin of the salesman, we left and mulled it over for a few days before finally pulling the trigger on the 5'3" model earlier this week. As our one and only Christmas present to each other this year, we got this new piano.

We barely have room for the baby grand, but we didn't let that stop us from getting it anyway.

We figured it's a lifetime investment, and so far we haven't regretted it.

It sounds great and will sound better after it's had time to settle and gets tuned.

After playing on an electric piano for so long, Amber and I have both been enjoying the rich sound of a real piano, and the solid key response of a real keyboard.

It's still hard to find time to play, because of the kids climbing all over me, but you can be sure I've been making an extra effort of it lately, and enjoying every minute of it.

Dinosaur Bones

My company holiday party was held at the Houston Museum of Natural Science Paleontology Hall this year. We had a good time, but being the good parents we are, we both just thought how much our kids would enjoy it, so on Saturday we took them to see "Rexy" and all the other dinosaur bones.

This Paleontology Hall is relatively new and we hadn't been yet, but it's definitely worth a visit. It's a very big collection, arranged in chronological order, with many of the fossils posed in exciting positions, such as this mastodon hunt.

Olivia and Carmen thought it was pretty cool and wanted to go around and see everything.

Damon was just interested in going in the opposite direction, making it hard to herd the group. His favorite part was the elastic ropes around the exhibits.

Miles didn't seem to appreciate it as much. Perhaps when he's older.

We managed to briefly see some of the other areas of the museum, like the gem and mineral hall, but our excursion eventually ended in meltdown and we headed home.

Thanksgiving week

Due to a certain boy who interrupted my planned vacation earlier this year, I had lots of vacation days to use up so I took off the week of Thanksgiving and had a staycation. Actually, in a lot of ways it was a vacation for Amber because the kids followed me around all day instead of her and she was able to get some work done.

I'm glad I hadn't planned on doing anything outside, because it was cold and rainy most of the week. I took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese one day while Amber painted Damon's bedroom. The kids had a lot of fun, of course. Damon loved the rides, Olivia tried to maximize her ticket output, and Carmen was somewhere in between.

Amber was thrilled to finally get the upstairs rooms painted and reorganized. The crib/bed that Damon was sleeping in is now in the guest bedroom, where Miles will sleep until he's old enough to move into Damon's room. Damon got a regular bed and hardly seemed fazed by the change.

We went to the temple one day and it was nice to not have to rush in and out like we normally do in the evenings. I went running in the cold (upper 30s); I finally got to use the cold-weather running clothes I bought last year but never used because my knee started acting up. I finally finished converting all the CDs we had lying around the house to MP3 (now I just need to go through them and see what's worth putting in the collection). We watched Iron Man 3, it was just ok.

For Thanksgiving itself, we were invited over to a friend's house with several other families. It was a great meal and all we had to do was bring some pies, so it ended up being a nice relaxing day. On Friday we eschewed the sales and did our traditional activity of putting up the Christmas decorations while listening to Christmas music. The weather had warmed up a little, so I was able to put up the lights outside too without getting frozen onto the ladder.

By Saturday we were back to having jealousy-inducing warm winter weather and we took the kids to the playground for a big chunk of the day. I was home long enough that going back to work didn't seem like such a bad thing on Monday morning. I guess the vacation worked.

Renaissance Grandpa

Amber's dad stayed with us for a couple days on his way back from a business trip in the east. The kids were very excited to have him there, but perhaps not as excited as he was to see them. He brought some fun Christmas toys and winter hats for the girls.

He picked a cold weekend, but it was also the weekend we had planned on going to the Renaissance Festival, so we dragged him there with us. He got to go on all the rides, especially the spinning ones.

We had fun looking in the shops and catching the shows. Here's Carmen with a flower she got from the parade.

One of my favorite parts of the festival is lunch, where after much searching in the wrong place (I was wrong, Amber was right) we finally found the place that sells Polish sausage and sauerkraut. Once again, I was so eager to eat it I forgot to take a picture, but it was delicious, even if it got cold fast. Here's Amber with hers.

We got lucky and only had one small rain shower on what had threatened to be a rainy day. It stayed cold the entire day, but that didn't slow down Olivia.

One benefit of the cold and rain was that the crowds were smaller, so we were able to get front row seats for two sessions of the jousting show and cheer on our favorite knight, Sir Thomas.

Damon wasn't quite sure what to make of the whole festival, but I think he liked the jousting.

And of course, no visit to the RenFest would be complete without stopping at our now traditional photo locations in the statue garden.

The kids were sad to see Grandpa go, but they had lots of fun in the time they had.

Camping

Our ward campout was this last weekend and since we'd just recently gotten warmed up, we decided to go camping again. We were now experts, so surely nothing could go wrong.

We drove two hours or so to Lake Somerville, and got out of the van at our campsite that had this nice view. The kids were excited to go see the lake...

...except for Carmen, who had gotten into the van without putting on any shoes. Amber rigged up some cardboard/diaper/tape shoes for her until we scrounged up an extra pair of way-too-big crocs from a kind ward member.

The kids had lots of fun finding things at the lake, and burning sticks in the fire.

We had tinfoil dinners again and managed to get the three older kids to sleep a little easier than last time. Miles still needed a walk around the park before he finally went down.

 

The weather was much nicer than last time. It was pleasant during the day and slightly chilly at night, and most importantly, there were hardly any mosquitoes.

 

In the morning we woke up early enough to watch the sunrise over the lake (and take a few pictures).

 

 

After packing up our gear, we took a short hike around the area and found lots of wildflowers and fuzzy caterpillars. On our way home, we decided to stop by the Blue Bell factory in Brenham.

 

 

The factory tours were closed, unfortunately, but we got some ice cream at the ice cream parlor there and everyone went home happy.



Olivia's first lost tooth

Olivia informed us a few days ago that one of her teeth was loose. When she realized this meant it was going to fall out soon, she was very excited and couldn't stop talking about how her tooth was going to come out. Luckily for us, well, let's have her tell the story:

Now she can't stop talking about how she lost her tooth and the tooth fairy's impending visit.

Stitches

We always figured Damon would be the first of our children to require an ER visit, and we were right. We successfully navigated the time change this morning and had pulled into the parking lot at church with time to spare, when, in the process of getting out of his carseat, Damon fell onto the floor of the van and started crying. We were both about to get annoyed with his theatrics until we pulled him up and saw that he had blood all over his head and shirt.

He must have hit his head on the corner of the plastic assembly between the second-row seats where the optional seat attaches (and where there are also a few metal latches), but whatever it was, it left a divot in his head that was pretty obviously going to need stitches. I rushed the girls into church and dropped them off with someone, then we headed off to the neighborhood ER clinic, which is conveniently very close to our house and even closer to the church.

In our Sunday best, we checked in with the front desk (of course I didn't bring my wallet, why would I need a wallet at church?) holding our bloody child. There were no other patients, so within minutes we showed him to the doctor, who needed only a second or two to agree that stitches were needed.

Damon was very good for the procedure, even though he did not like getting wrapped up in a sheet to keep him from wiggling. The doctors were impressed, especially when he stopped fussing after the pain of the anesthetic needle went away. (They were also impressed that we were so calm. I guess other parents freak out?) In the end, he came out with six stitches.

It didn't take him long to get back to being his old self again (the stickers and lollipops helped).

I was impressed with this ER. They had us out in time for me to catch the last 10 minutes of Sacrament Meeting and all of the primary program practice I needed to play for. After cleaning up Damon, Amber made it back in time for the third hour and Damon colored pictures in nursery like nothing ever happened.

As far as ER visits go, it could have been much worse. We'll see what he comes up with next time.

Halloween

Halloween came at a busy time for Amber, but she managed to pull off some great costumes and the only thing we didn't get around to was putting up decorations. We warmed up the kids' costumes with the ward trunk-or-treat, and got our pumpkins carved a couple days before Halloween.

Olivia said she wanted to be a green monster (but not a scary one). It turned out to not be as cool as her siblings' costumes, but she certainly got her wish with this costume (that Amber whipped up in no time) and she was happy with it.

Carmen said she wanted to be R2D2 and we had a lot of fun making that a reality. I advised with images from the internet and contributed electronics and even sliced my thumb up pretty good helping with the helmet, but in the end we were very pleased with the result.

The body is vinyl with hand-drawn detailing. The helmet is a blue bowl with silver paint and various flashlights, blinking lights, and toy binocular parts.

As cool as Carmen's costume was, I think Damon's costume won best in show. Amber was inspired by his curly hair and let it grow extra long so she could turn him into a hobbit.

All the clothing was custom-made by Amber, of course. He was especially fond of his "precious" and kept rubbing the gold paint off of it.

He looked just like the little people they used as body doubles in the movies, especially from behind, so I had to get some video of him walking around (and it shows off his "hobbit feet").

Here's the full crew, ready to terrorize the neighborhood.

Trick-or-treating went pretty well. It rained for 3 days beforehand, but cleared up around 5 or 6 o'clock on Halloween night. We invited over some friends and our kids all went out together. Amber took them around our street to show off the costumes to our neighbors, then I took them on an extended tour until they were worn out and their bags were overflowing.

They were very pleased with their haul.

Camping

After a two and a half year hiatus, we finally got our act together and took the kids camping again. Our family has since outgrown the tent we used last time, so I bought a two-room family tent we can grow into.

I took the day off on Friday so we could get there early and enjoy ourselves (and so I wouldn't have to set this thing up in the dark). After we got set up, we had a quick lunch then went on an "interpretive" hike.

That basically meant that it had a boardwalk and several stops along the way to see various ecological features, like this "duck" pond that featured lots of dragonflies.

The weather, unfortunately, was not as cool as I was hoping, and it was pretty hot and muggy. We finished the mile hike, but only after taking Carmen back for an emergency Band-Aid (she fell and scraped her stomach on a bench) and killing dozens of swarming mosquitoes.

Back at camp, the mosquito war raged on and despite squishing dozens more and continuously applying bug spray, they were undaunted. Even building a fire with wood that is a "natural repellent of mosquitoes and other flying insects" didn't phase them, but that didn't stop us from enjoying some roasted marshmallows anyway.

The highlight of the trip for Amber and me was dinner. We decided to be more adventurous and ditch hot dogs in favor of tin foil dinners. Neither of us having done this for more than a decade, we weren't sure how they'd turn out, but they were delicious.

The kids' favorite part, no doubt, was playing in our cavernous tent. They were thrilled when it finally got dark and they could use their flashlights and get into their sleeping bags.

They had no intention of actually sleeping, of course, and the boy scouts who arrived after dark helped them in this endeavor, but they eventually dropped one by one, giving Amber and me some alone time to listen to the scouts (they were actually pretty quiet, for scouts).

After a short night, we didn't stay very long on Saturday. I had hoped to explore some more trails, but even I wasn't up to battling the mosquitoes, and I don't think Damon could stand to lose any more blood.

Despite the carnage, I think everyone had a good time. Miles managed to escape with only a few bites and a pretty good night's sleep.

And the girls were sad to have to leave all their stick friends behind.

We'll have to plan another trip after fall really comes and it actually cools off.