The Climbing Max

Max is becoming quite functional. He understands virtually everything we say, and is actually surprisingly obedient. I'm sure he'll stay that way forever.

He's also starting to say words. Real, actual words not just grunting and pointing like he's done for the past several months.

His known words/phrases include:

• "Da-Da"
• "Ma-Ma"
• "Luh" (meaning "light")
• "No"
• "Bye bye"
• "Eye"
• "Hi"
• "Ere-is" (meaning "there he is"--after playing peek-a-boo)
• "Nose" (accompanied with grabbing your nose, twisting, and generally trying to rip your nose off of your face)
• "Ball"
• Shaking his head "yes" and "no"

Additionally, he is also becoming quite adept as things such as climbing on the table to consume any remaining food inadvertently left on the table.

Not to worry, however, because the crumbs he can't finish eating himself, he likes to vacuum up with the handheld vacuum cleaner.

Hopefully he'll soon become adept at getting a haircut (and we'll come adept at taking high quality photos with our new Canon SLR camera).

It's A Rock Star Outfit

The other day I was down in my office in the basement working hard (or hardly working--depending on whether you ask me or ask Megan) when Kaitlyn came into the room. She took a few steps forward and then twirled around with pride, showing off the outfit she had obviously picked out herself.

I carefully observed her outfit--pajama top under a swimsuit and jean shorts (it was 30 degrees outside) with High School Musical sunglassess--and said, "Kaitlyn...that is the craziest outfit I've ever seen."

Without missing a beat she replied, "It's a rock star outfit!"

As we've mentioned numerous times, Kaitlyn is our little "girly girl." She loves dolls. She loves dresses. She loves dancing. And, she loves playing dress up. Megan tried a little experiment: documenting every outfit than Kaitlyn wore during one 24-hour period. Let's review the results below:

Outfit 1: White leggings, pink pajama top and white tank top.

Outfit 2: Pajama pants, normal blue shirt and white tank top.

Outfit 3: Same pajama pants, jean skirt and new, white long-sleeved shirt.


Outfit 4: Same pajama pants, same jean skirt and swimsuit as a shirt.


Outfit 5: Ballarina leotard. (She's only supposed to wear this on Saturday's when she actually has ballet class.)


Outfit 6: Ballarina leotard, white tank top and socks.

It's no wonder she complains about never having any clean clothes--she wears everything she owns once every single day!

(Pictures by Megan. Text by Nathan.)

Coming Soon! Cirque Du Ali

Last week Megan and I went to Cirque Du Soleil. It was very entertaining as we saw all sorts of wild acts, feats and stunts that hardly seemed possible. I particularly enjoyed the cyclist who was able to stand on the handle bars, or do a handstand all while the bike was moving. He was also able to ride the bike like a unicycle and perfectly balance on 2 wheels when the bike was stationary without falling over. It was simply incredible.

Even more incredible, astonishing, and amazing, Alison has learned how to ride her bike without training wheels. In fact, she learned on the day that Megan and I went to the cirques (pronounced "circus"). Ali confessed that she went over to her friend's house to try riding together and that her friend's father added air to her tires which made riding much, much easier. Hey...I inflated those tires the best I could given the equipment we had on hand!

She is as excited as I've ever seen her about anything. Unfortunately, it snowed/iced again this weekend so we've had to delay capturing video footage to be able to share her newfound skill. But...coming soon: Cirque Du Ali!

Kisses, BouncerTown, Piano Recital

First off, a confession. After my monster post on our Christmas "vacation", I decided that it was long enough to merit a week off from blogging. But now, what with my quasi-New Year's Resolution to return to weekly blogging and all, I'm back.

Now, let's review some recent events.

Mr. Max has discovered that he likes Hershey's kisses. A lot. Megan has jars, crafts, rolls, stacks, and bags of them in the scrapbook room for use in various and sundry of her stampin' creations. Max now knows what they are. He can open them. He can pop them in his mouth. This knowledge has led to the eternal struggle between parent and child: the battle over treats.

After Round 1 the score is, Max: 12, Parents: 0. (He's very sneaky and goes in when we're not looking.)


Kaitlyn (and Alison, for that matter) has been asking for weeks (if not months) if we could go to BouncerTown--an indoor play-place filled with arcade games where children can waste their money, as well as giant inflatable bounce houses and slides. We finally relented, and last week for Family Home Evening we took a trip there.

Kaitlyn deeply enjoyed cutting an imaginary rug on the Dance Dance Revolution pad. After seeing her mad dancing skills, we've enrolled her in Saturday ballet class at the local dance instructory.


Max enjoyed it as well, but that was mainly because I shook the stage enough to make him feel like he was dancing on his own.


In addition to slides and bouncing, Ali and Kaitlyn also enjoyed driving imaginary race cars.


One of the highlights, however, was that because we had gone at the end of the day and there were few other customers in the store, the teenage workers decided to give all of the extra tickets (you know, the ones that you win by wasting your money in those arcade machines) to the kids. We personally won only about 8 tickets. However, thanks to the generosity of the workers we walked out of there with about 150 tickets worth of suckers, treats, rings, knick-knacks and other worthless stuff. All in all, it was a great night.

Alison also had her first piano recital. She played the classic, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" as well as a duet with her teacher called, "The 10-Second Song." She did a great job. She was so brave--playing in front over 100 people--and even took a bow at the end (despite her insistence that she would never bow).

Megan and I have been working on painting some more walls in the house. At some point our house projects will be completed, right? Please tell me that they will be!