Happy Holidays!

Don't get excited, I'm not really here...

Just a few cute pictures for Dan and anyone else who wants to enjoy them.
Katie's first haircut...


Making "reindeer wreaths" with the kids.


Katie napping like we all wish we could.


Katie relaxing on the bed, coloring with Delilah.

Reading Rainbow

I used to worry that Owen wouldn't like to read. I am such a passionate reader. I get lost in books, the good ones, and I get very emotionally involved as well. That's why I won't read any more Jodi Picoult. The two books of hers that I've read have made me feel personally taken advantage of by the end. I know, I'm weird, but you can't say I don't enjoy reading. Anyway, Owen LOVES to read. He insists on reading to us most of the time. I snuck up on him reading to Boo the other day. He's reading a little haltingly in this video, mostly because the book is upside down, "so that Boo can see the pictures." Seriously, that's what he told me. (Also, please ignore the mess that is our room... it's a work in progress.)

Owen's post

Owen has been very interested in using our camera lately. He especially likes to take pictures of Katie. Here's a video he took yesterday.

The Wiggly Circus!

We took Katie to go see the Wiggles Friday night. It was actually a fun concert and it was fun to see her reaction. She LOVES the Wiggles!

"Did they just say Dorothy the Dinosaur is coming on stage??"


Dorothy is definitely her favorite.


Anthony is my favorite. He's the hottie in blue.


Here's Katie dancing to the monkey song... I forgot that the camera has to be held straight for videos, so you'll have to just watch it sideways...

Hurricane Kaitlyn

Yesterday Katie wanted to paint. She loves painting and I'm always prepared that it's going to be messy. Of course, I made the mistake of leaving her alone for a few minutes...


You can't see it all here, but she managed to paint her cheeks, nose, hands, belly, and tongue. Yes, her tongue.


She also has a special relationship with our fat cat Delilah. Luckily, Delilah is incredibly sweet and patient. Here, Katie is reading her an Elmo potty book.


This morning, when Kaitlyn walked into the living room "wearing" a pair of my underwear, I figured she might be trying to tell me something. We'll see how it goes.

Kaitlyn's concert for Anna

Katie sang some songs for Anna today while they were snacking on Kix. (background noise is the men working on our house/roof)

Our adventurous child... well, one of them.

now watch it again and notice Katie in the background pretending to be stuck under the car. I don't know where she gets her dramatic tendencies from.

It's raining, it's pouring....

It rained all day yesterday. After picking Owen up from school, I decided I'd let the kids get dirty.



Katie let us know when it was time to go in...

Life is Good... or maybe not.

So we went to the Life is Good festival on the 12th. Needless to say, Katie didn't get to wow the crowd with her dancing. We arrived about noon and hung in there until about 4:30 when Laurie Berkner came on stage and the meltdowns ensued. I was pretty disappointed that we missed Laurie Berkner and Guster, the two bands I was really really excited to see, but I guess that's part of parenting, right? Fortunately we did get to enjoy We Might Be Giants and Ok Go and a number of other bands.


Dan and I spent the last long weekend in Florida visiting his parents. The weather was beautiful and we had a really nice time being able to visit sans children. It gave me a great chance to recharge as well.

Today the excitement consists of Katie trying on costumes. Here she is in the clown costume. Owen wore it when he was younger and it was originally Uncle Bobby's when he was young. It actually says "Bobby K." on the inside of the bowtie. Very cute. At the rate she's growing I'll bet she could wear this for the next three halloweens.

It may take me awhile...

I made a nice list on the fridge for myself today. Things I want to get done while Owen's at school.

* Laundry - both doing the laundry and putting away the laundry that has been in the living room for the past week.
* Catboxes - cleaning the litterboxes becauase my husband didn't and the house stinks
* Trash - emptying the trash, after cleaning the litterboxes, because truthfully I'm not sure if it's the trash or the litterboxes that stinks.
* clean the kitchen
* grocery store for milk and cream

Really, it isn't a formidable list, however, at this point I have cleaned the kitchen twice and it's still a mess (it never stays clean for long), put the laundry away and done one new load, and gone food shopping. And it's 12:39! Owen will be home in a few hours. Katie is upstairs in her crib yelling my name repeatedly instead of napping, and I'm blogging amidst a stink cloud of trash/cat litter. How does this happen?

Anyway, in the meantime, to satisfy my husband who will enjoy this at work, here's a cute video of Katie dancing from a few months ago. She's quite the dancer and I think she'll really wow the crowd this weekend at the Laurie Berkner concert.

Back to School!

I know it's been a while, but notice that the last time I wrote was just before Katie turned 2. She has been 2 for almost 3 months now and it seems to be her personal mission to live up to the hype of "the terrible two's." In any case it has kept me busy. So lets see if I can catch you up on a few things that happened this summer.

Owen went to three different camps for a week each. The first was reptile/amphibian camp, the second was bug camp, and the third, nature camp. I have to say, we loved them all but the nature camp is one we'll definitely do next summer. He was totally in his element. Dan and I also took him camping for a few days in Maine. We went with Meredith, Kevin, and Caroline and left the little ones at home with Grammy & Grampy. The campground was awesome and we had a great time. Owen thrived in the camp atmosphere and seemed to really enjoy having us all to himself.



Dan and I had a nice weekend in Baltimore in June for our birthdays. We stayed in Fells Point and saw a Red Sox game. It was our first vacation without children in years! We're heading down to Tampa to visit his parents sans children in a few weeks so that should be nice.





Katie, aside from fine-tuning her tantrum techniques, has been learning a lot more words and tricks from her brother. In the next few months I'll keep you updated as we try to potty-train her and move her into a big girl bed. Those are two things I'd like to accomplish by the end of the school year.



Speaking of the school year, it started yesterday! At dinner last night Owen said, "first grade is awesome!" So it seems we have a happy camper, so far. Caroline had her first full day as a Kindergartener today.









I'm going to have to leave it at that for now. The Wiggles are babysitting Katie and it sounds like they just stopped.

My musical children

Is it a surprise to anyone that my kids would be musical? Kaitlyn and I are taking a Music Together class right now, it's awesome, and I really wish I had done one with Owen. I recently bought a guitar and Owen loves to strum it any time I'll let him.
Katie also likes to play with it, but usually I don't let her near it. She's constantly singing to herself and dancing around. We arrived at BJ's yesterday a few minutes before opening and she decided to have a dance party.
Needless to say, they're both happy and healthy and growing fast. I'll try to post more often but somehow my days keep getting away from me.

Happy Birthday to my first born.

Six years ago today, at 2:20 pm I popped out a 10lb 2oz. baby boy. I'm struggling to put into words how lucky we are to have him. I think these have been the fastest 6 years of my life. It was about this time 6 years ago that I was getting settled at the hospital, feeling contractions about 4 minutes apart. About 1:30, after much crying and swearing, I finally got the epidural, and at 2:20 I was highly drugged and saying hello to our baby. It wasn't until 2 days later that we would begin to call him Owen. In the time since then, he has taught us so much about life and how to be good parents. Owen has proven to be a sensitive boy with a love for all living things big and small. At the moment we are housing two cats (Boo and Delilah), a fish (Finn), a toad (Hoppy), a Luna Moth chrysalis, and three Painted Lady butterfly chrysalis'. We had butterflies last summer and he was always sad when we had to let them go, but he still understood the importance of letting them go. It helps too that they seem to keep coming back to visit us throughout the summer. This morning, we had to feed his toad. The toad eats live crickets, but I'm happy to say that Owen and I have both gotten over our squeamishness and are touching the crickets now. Well, this morning, the cricket that Owen pulled out of the bag was dead. To my surprise, Owen started crying. He was really really sad about the cricket because he said, "crickets are good!" So we brought it outside and buried it under the flowering almond bush. Then he saved a huge worm from under my car and put that in the garden too. A few weeks ago we were watching Life on the Discovery Channel and it was the part where the Komodo Dragons are stalking and then eating a Water Buffalo. He was sad about that too. It just makes me realize what a kind and caring boy I have. We definitely don't have the room or time to devote to a dog or any other bigger pet right now, but I'm happy to welcome bugs, reptiles, amphibians and fish into my house. Just keep out the rodents and snakes.

Owen enjoying two Spiderman cakes during the family party.

Excited to dig into his Bakugan cake at the friends party.

What good is a birthday if you can't have cake for breakfast?

Mr. Bugman

Owen spotted the first butterfly of the season yesterday. I'm not sure they're actually back here for good, I think Nana was just putting in an appearance to say hello. Anyway, not long after that he found a caterpiller (or "callapidder" as he says it) and insisted on making it his pet. Here he is chatting with it on the bench.

He wanted to come inside but I wouldn't let him bring the caterpillar so he decided to sit outside with it and chat. Today he was showing Caroline and he accidentally dropped it into the grass and lost it. Now, I'm not convinced the thing was even alive, but he was pretty upset when we couldn't find it. He said tearfully, "It was my only pet!" and when I reminded him of his fish, he responded, "he's not my pet, he's my friend!"

Anyway, I was happy to find that the Butterfly Place in Westford reopened for the season today, so we'll be stopping there on our way by on Wednesday so we can buy our first Callapidders of the season.

More from Katie the Adventurer.

She found a cookie in that mess of a table...

Her new favorite playspot.

All tuckered out (and drooling all over the chair).

This is how I discovered her just now when I went to check if she was asleep.

The love of cousins...

My daughter the menace...

I know she's totally adorable, but she's also the kind of child that will probably lead all the other children to rebellion. Some examples...

Yesterday afternoon, while I was blissfully unaware and working in another state, she climbed out of her crib. This is what it looked like after I was done with it...


Notice in this video how she's not at all interested in the knives that she's sitting next to, nothing matters but the sugar that she has discovered.


Here she is after discovering Owen's ice cream. He left it alone for a minute to use the bathroom and she swooped in to eat.


This isn't really a menacing picture, just adorable. She brought me every single barrette and made me put it in her hair.

Just some updates

I know, it's been a month... It's hard to blog in the yucky months when all I want to do is hide. Anyway, here are some things we've been up to lately.

We flew to Florida to visit Dan's parents... froze on the beach and Katie had her first plane ride.



Owen had February vacation. He and I drove to Vermont for the night to visit Kelly, Brian and Ella. Then we went to Monster Jam at the end of the week. Owen was exhausted but still managed to make his own Monster Jam out of blocks when we got home.





Finally, Katie has learned to climb everything but her crib. Thank goodness for that. Once she learns how to climb out of her crib we're in trouble. For now, I just keep chasing her around.



And here's one extra picture because Anna's so freakin' cute!

Utter Exhaustion

Every morning after dropping Owen off at school, I come home and all I want to do is sleep. I'm exhausted! I seriously don't know my child anymore. I'm talking about the crazy one, not the one in school. She is insane. She throws hour-long tantrums in the morning for no reason. She climbs over gates. She climbs everything! She hits. She HITS!! Owen never hit! She smacks us right in the face when she's mad. Who does that?? She's not even two yet but I have a feeling the "terrible two's" are visiting this house early.

I don't remember much about Owen at this age, but I remember thinking two wasn't so bad, three was a nightmare. Now, if this lasts through three for Katie, I just may go on strike. Or run away. On a cruise ship. So noone can find me or call me.

I'm going into this upcoming vacation with an open, positive mind, I swear, but that doesn't mean I don't want to warn off every passenger that tries to sit near us on the plane. "You may want to move because I can't guarantee that my daughter won't hit you or climb you or scream until your ears bleed."

Remember when she just laid there looking adorable?

Did you think I was gone forever?

I know it's been a month, and you'd think with winter here I'd be inside blogging a lot more, but I'm not. I hate winter. I spend a lot of time inside, depressed, eating too much, wanting more sleep but not getting enough, and just generally being cranky. My poor kids. I try to make an effort to get them involved in things so they won't hate winter as much as I do.

Katie just finished a class at The Little Gym. We missed too many this session because she was sick so much, so we're going to wait until spring to sign up again. In the meantime we're going to take a music class together. She loves music so much I can't believe it took me this long to sign her up.

Owen loves the winter. I don't think he prefers it to the other seasons, but he certainly doesn't complain. Dan spent a lot of energy making him a snow mountain the other day, so every day this week Owen has come home from school and spent hours outside in the snow. He's incredibly imaginative. I wonder where he gets that from.