Don't kick Anna

Tidbits from our week.

With regards to Anna, Matthew usually means well. Here he is trying to give her a head hug.

Matthew has picked up a few of my expressions.

One is, "here go" (here you go?) which he says when he give Anna a toy to play with. He is always bringing her toys while she does her tummy time. It is very sweet. He even brings her the age appropriate "baby toys."
He also stands in front of the toy shelves (or to me when I'm looking in the fridge) and says a long drawn out "hoow bouuut..." (how about...) while presumably deciding what to choose.
Another new phrase is "Don't kick Anna." Possibly his first three word complete sentence. I have said this to him a few times and apparently it left an impression. Hmmm.
He is saying more and more words every hour. It's like a speech explosion. I guess that's pretty normal for this age. He's getting to be quite the little talker.

We did some Christmas tree activities this week (that was our "theme" for the week). I'm trying to do a theme each week for the kids and starting yet another blog to record it all so I can remember the activities and we can do them over again. I don't know if I'll have a lot of time to actually follow through with recording it, but we'll see. I may have to abandon the project.

Here are our oh-so-fancy Christmas tree rice krispy treats.

And our Christmas tree advent calendar. There are lots of cute advent calendar ideas out there. This one was easy and age appropriate for Matthew. I got the idea from one of my favorite sites for toddler activities, No Time for Flash Cards. Her tree is better looking than mine, but I made mine in about two minutes so I don't feel too bad about it. Matthew likes placing the stickers.

Scott was gone all last week in the states and Matthew was throwing things a lot while he was gone. Hmmm... Here we are learning about what is ok to throw and what is not (bean bags are ok to throw). So, we're working on the throwing. Hopefully our efforts help things.

Scott surprised me by coming home a day early from his trip. I was so happy! Matthew loves having Daddy home.

What's wrong with this picture?

Here is our sweet little baby girl wearing boy clothes. In my infinite wisdom I sent all the kids warm clothes in a box to the states for our impending Christmas trip. It's sitting nicely at my in-laws taking up space in their house right now. And it started getting real cold here. So, Matthew is wearing the same two pairs of pants over and over (so much laundry) and Anna is now wearing old Matthew clothes. It works. Also you can see the stickers Matthew put on Anna's hands in this picture. She likes hanging out with Matthew so much that she doesn't mind a sticker here and there. Don't worry...I took them off before she ate them.

And yesterday I took Matthew and Anna to lunch with my friend and they were both so good. No crying or tantrums. Only smiles and eating all their food. Could this be a new era of restaurant behavior? I was so happy that I took them to the park afterwards. It was wet and a little muddy at the park, but we stayed for an hour and finally had to take off when Anna started to meltdown. Here is a poem in honor of our park adventures. This poem could sum up any trip to the park with Matthew.

Matthew at the park (a haiku)

down the slide he went
and wept bitter tears (toys toys!!)
when we had to go