It's a Christmas Miracle!

Grandma Jane and my brother Tim with his brand new daughter!!

Tim and his wife Sara welcomed beautiful little Evelyn Noel into the world this morning. Grandma Jane and Papa Jim brought their laptop so we could skype and meet her. We are so happy to have another cousin and niece. Micah thought she was very cute and agreed to play with her when she gets a little older. We think she is precious and can't wait to watch her grow and meet her in person someday. We love you all! Hugs and kisses and tears of joy from our side of the pond.

Lydia is going to school!

the school of hard-knocks. She enrolled yesterday when she started pulling herself up on anything she could get her hands on.
First hour: pull up in crib and not know how to get down
Second hour: pull kitchen chair over on top of self
Third hour: repeatedly shut dresser drawer on fingers
Fourth hour: recess
Fifth hour: have brother bounce balls off your head
Sixth hour: see guidance counselor for new major

And...graduation! She did it! And she's happy.

Funny Faces from December

laundry

Winter Festival

We went to a Christmas festival this weekend that was raising money for the earthquake victims out east. It was very fun to do something festive and for a good cause. We helped out by buying and eating lots of yummy snowman cookies and pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Micah got another snake painted on his face...it's the easiest for a squirmy 3 year old, and he likes it. And, they were taking these jolly family photos. Merry Christmas everyone!

Visiting Santa

Ever since last year's international women's Christmas bazaar, I've been waiting to take the kids to have their picture taken with Santa. I got there too late last year. So this is our first official family picture with Santa. Could you ask for better? Lydia is screaming and Micah is expressing his shyness by refusing to remove his hand from his mouth. Santa's beard is falling off and his coat is not even zipped up. Maybe next year.

Micah is 3!

Can't believe it! My little man has passed another age marker! I was all set to attempt a Chuggington cake this year (his latest fave) when he stumbled upon a picture of a cake in his box of shape & color cards. Wow! All of the sudden he wants a chocolate cake with balls and eggs on top (the picture has m&ms on top, but the imagination of a 3 year old sees balls and eggs). I was off the hook! Sure, I can make a chocolate cake with candy on top! Until my oven doesn't work and I make a slight error in standard to metric to reading packaging amounts and not actually measuring....and I have a half-cooked VERY chocolately (3x the desired amount of cocoa powder) cake brownie. We skimmed off the bottom and ate it anyway...and my little man loved every bite. We had pizza, train-shaped garlic-parmesan bread, and cake. We celebrated with two other families and Grandma and Papa. It was a nice low-key evening of chasing balloons, enjoying new toys, and visiting with friends. Happy Birthday little man!

Our New Place!

Here it is...hopefully you can see it well enough by clicking on the photos to enlarge them. We are really thankful for this new place and it is feeling like home now after Mom & Dad helped us get things on the walls and put away. We keep finding more and more reasons why it is wonderful. There are of course things that are not perfect, but we're choosing to dwell on the things that are great. Like, yesterday I found the beach by walking 10 minutes down a new road. A beach! With sand! A bit like the Illinois side of Lake Michigan - pebbly, but beautiful. We have also discovered several restaurants close by with slides and other kid-friendly entertainment inside. McDonalds & Burger King of course, but also a yummy dessert and sandwich/soup restaurant! The trees at our park are the best...still dropping fall leaves mid-December. We are across from a school which means there is a certain vibrancy to the air in an otherwise older neighborhood. We have met two neighbors thus far and both seem very sweet. This building has 16 apartments in it (rather than 4 in our last place), so a good chance to meet more people if we get our oven fixed and bake some cookies. Rick gets to work in less than a half hour and we even have a grocer in the building next to us... a bit like convenience store prices, but fresh produce and really helpful for the things you forgot to get at the bigger grocery stores...like oven bags to cook your Thanksgiving turkey in! We have tons of built-in closets, which is not the norm here...so really awesome for reducing clutter and furniture. And we have these funky window shades that you can raise and lower on the outside to block out streetlights at night and make up for the curtains we took from our old place that are just a few inches to short. :) The oven guy is supposed to come tomorrow, so start making your vacation plans, as we are now set to host!

Grandparent Visit

 Here are the kids checking out our new park with Grandma and Papa. The photo below is one of my favorites of the season. If I can regress to high school for a moment and just exclaim, "I'm totally geeked to celebrate fall with fallen leaves at our new house."

Another reason...

this second child cannot be left alone.

We were really quite spoiled with Micah. He wasn't interested in any of these dangerous activities. Now I turn for a second, and she's emptied the silverware out of the dishwasher and chosen a fork to suck on.

sibling rivalry?

 Round 1: Lydia wins

  

Round 2: Micah wins

Round 3: Everybody wins

new fads-for the grands

Mommyhood is always full of surprises-each day is new and different. This post is mostly to catch up the grandparents on what wild things their grandkiddos are doing these days. Because my brain is mostly mush and fragmenty after 9pm, please excuse the randomness.

Micah's current faves: watching Chuggington on youtube and then re-enacting the stories with his Thomas trains, making train tracks and car tracks in play doh, making train tracks with stickers, driving cars on mommy's striped shirts (because they look like roads), re-enacting scenes from Cars (especially tractor-tipping and driving through the leaves on the highway), driving cars in sand or dirt, and of course, sleep-dog. He also likes Clifford stories and Richard Scarry stories.

You might think he is completely obsessed with planes, trains, and automobiles. You would be correct. But he also paints (with brushes because fingerpainting is messy), makes phone calls to grandmas and papas on his banana and zucchini phones, cooks and then eats plastic eggs with mom and dad, makes sharks and snakes out of play doh, snuggles with mom on the couch after naptime, reads as many stories as he can get away with before naptime and bedtime.
 

Lydia's current faves: pulling on the garbage bags sticking out of the trash can, eating toilet paper, pulling her dresser drawers in and out, laughing at her brother, eating cheerios, trying to eat computer cords, and crawling anywhere that big brother has toys..."godzilla-ing the train set and airport"
She has two teeth now and would rather feed herself than let mom do it. Too bad she really can't do purees with her fingers.

 This was an attempt at sending grandparents thanksgiving cards. I thought Micah would think it was fun to use the glue stick to stick colored scraps of paper to cards. He thought it would be fun to drop the 'leaves' on his trains. "Fall is come!" Maybe next year. or maybe next child.

Please note the car park that has bit the dust to the left. Good thing Moo is sleeping.

Quotables:


On the bus yesterday, a female student asked about Lydia,
"Girl or boy? Boy probably."
No, girl actually, I replied.
"She looks like you."
Does this mean I look like a boy?


When asked his name on the bus two weeks ago, Micah replied, "Moo"
When asked his name in front of our house today, Micah replied, "blah"
I guess we don't have to worry about identity theft.

another year for the memory books...

 We celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago...Micah of course was ecstatic to stay up late, help blow out candles (if you look closely, you may be able to figure out which birthday), and EAT CAKE! Micah is now also quite excited to go to Bible study with me every week because there is always cake. Can't beat that.

My beloved husband blessed me with a fancy night out to the Hilton hotel for dinner. A beautiful view of the Bosporus, amazing food, and delightful (kid-free) conversation. Quite comically, we were the only ones there when we arrived at 7. By the time we left at 9 there were quite a few more dinner guests...several wearing jeans. But my hubby wore a suit and tie and I wore a dress that did not have baby drool, spit-up, or finger paint on it. Harika! (Awesome in Turkish!)

Siblings

 You would never guess from these photos that Micah has issues with his sister playing with his toys. He is making mom and dad crazy with his frustrated cries of "I not want Lu to play with that!" "I not want Lu to look at me!" And then there are other moments of the day when he just showers her with love and toys....in the brotherly way of shoving them into her face.

random sillies...

 Last weekend's fun activity was going to the amusement park at the mall before it opened. Micah had plenty of fun without turning on any of the rides. We'll save that for when he's older and knows they actually do other stuff. :)

 We convinced Dad to cram into a teeny truck to join Moo. Such delight on this little kiddo's face.

 Where's waldo??

Come fly with me...

We took an airplane trip this past weekend to the South. Micah loved watching the planes and going up high in the sky by the cloudez. Lydia loves her fair share of planes too. We had a big shock when we returned Tuesday...we sweated our way to the airport and then we got off the plane back at home and immediately commenced shivering in the rain. A weather shock to the system. Lydia got to try out her cute bonnet and booties from some friends in Gary. Now I am beginning the maddening process of switching over all our clothes to fall/winter season. Break out the boots and the coats! Where did I put all that stuff anyway? Not having closets lends itself to creative junk storage...but sometimes I forget where things went...

PS...

Lydia cut her first tooth last week too! She's getting so big!

Catching up....

 A couple weeks ago we had a fair at church with face painting and games! Micah was super excited to have a "green snake on my face. with grey stripeys and an ornage" (tongue). Two weeks later, he asked me today out of the blue if he could have a green snake on his face. Where did that come from?

 Yesterday, a local kids' bookstore sponsored a performance of two kids' plays at a cafe. I got a free coffee and Micah (and Lydia) got to see "The Giving Tree" and "Little Red Riding Hood" acted out by a drama group from an English speaking university. Micah pretended to be pretty nonchalant during the performances, but when I asked him about it later, he was quite happy to tell me he saw "two stories - a tree and another story". Lydia was fairly happy rolling around on the big comfy chairs at the coffee shop....why is it that coffee shops sometimes have chairs more comfy than our house?

 We topped it off with a trip to our favorite park...and Micah even let sister play this time! She cackled at him coming down the slide after us and he got pretty stoked to have mom and sis chase him on the big pirate ship.

 I love these two kiddos!!

Is it nap time yet Mom??

Lulu gets her talk on

Lulu turned 6 months old last week! We are astonished. But even more so at all her amazing feats. Last week she began to keep herself up when 'sitted'. She started eating homemade veggie baby food - carrots first. She's 'talking' A LOT. And, the hat trick - she started crawling this weekend! Quick, baby proof the house! I thought we were doing pretty good...until Micah started using the mini rocks from our candle centerpiece for his dumptruck quarry. Mommyhood must take it up a notch. While visiting friends, Lydia got to play with an exersaucer and one of those things that dangles over your head. She thought both were amazing. We knew she was getting bored staring at the same 'baby toys' all the time, but I'm afraid Micah is not ready to share some of his more exciting toys yet. Ah sharing. Someday it will come.