Whoever taught my son the concept of “why?” needs to be stoned!  My God, EVERYTHING is “why?…but why?…” and after awhile the answer is “BECAUSE I SAID SO!”.  For the most part we try to answer all of his questions, which we require to be actual questions, hoping he’ll retain a little bit of the information but after awhile you just want to hit your ahead against the wall.  He is just too curious – or nosey!

“Why are these lights on?”
“Why are these lights off?”
“Where is our house?”
“Why do we live there?”
“What’s that (total stranger) man’s name?” (that we’re standing within earshot of)
“Why are we going?”
“Why are we stopping?”
“What are you thinking?”
I am not exaggerating even a little and the questions don’t ever stop, not even for him to breathe!  Any idea when it stops?  Is it to late to ask Santa for a mute button for him?

Kate is doing well.  She just yells at us so far but luckily her needs are still simple.  She loves to smile and flirt now and it’s so much fun getting her to grin.  She has found her hands and thinks they are the coolest thing ever.  We often find her liking her fist or doing tai chi when no one is looking.  We’ve also discovered that she has a dimple!  The ying to Noah’s yang.  Each of them have just one, on opposite cheeks, like they share a pair.  Today is her 3 month birthday!

Walter and I are very well also.  He’s off until the end of the year – which I love!  We are trying to do fun things, catch up with friends, take trips to attractions we don’t get to often, and generally just spend time together.  We’ve been doing quite a few photoshoots for friends, family and clients.  It’s been a long time since this was something we did so often and to be honest we didn’t think it was something we would every do with regularity again but we enjoy it so much that we’re making it work.  We charge just enough to cover the babysitter and our time to do the shooting, editing, and airbrushing and we’ve really been having fun.  Maybe when the kids are older we’ll set the studio stuff back up and play with that again.  For now only our kids get studio shots.

We hope you all are well and are enjoying the holiday season.  I will try to blog about our adventures since Walter’s been off, we have been diligent about taking photos!

Here is part two of decorating the house for Christmas -

I told Noah he had to wear his Santa hat if he was going to help decorate the tree.  It was the rule.  He was thrilled.

He loved hanging ornaments though.  This year we invested in an entire collection of shatterproof ornaments.  It’s a good thing too, Noah has tried to spin the tree a few times.  Lovely.  He couldn’t stay focused on which set we were hanging at the time and went back and forth between all the choices.  He loved putting the hook on himself and hanging them.  I couldn’t help myself, after he went to bed I rearranged some of the ornaments.  Who needs six hanging off the same branch?!

The next evening the kids and I were going to hang lights outside in the bushes.  What a disaster.  I think they were both crying before the second strand was up.  I did them another time, by myself, and they look fabulous!  Of course Noah likes everyone else’s lights better but at least we have them up this year.

This was before we started hanging them.

And when I realized my car was in all of the photos I dragged them to the front door.

I just realized I don’t have any photos of the final products.  I’ll work on that, and my Christmas shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving to you!  This is one of my favorite holidays!  When I was young we would get up early and watch the entire Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while my dad prepared dinner.  Mom always made the pies and dad took care of the rest.  Then in the late afternoon we would feast like kings and pass out early.  Those were the days!  Now I’m lucky to catch pieces of the parade on TV and most years we spend our entire day zig-zagging across Palm Beach County so we can hit all of our families’ homes and end up keeping Noah up way too late.  This year will be different though.  I’ve put the boys on warning that I am watching the parade (darnit!) and if they want to watch anything else they’ll need to find another TV.  We’re also only going to one family on Thanksgiving, Walter’s parents.  On Friday we’ll go to my parents’ for leftovers.  Hopefully we can keep reasonable routines, naps and a decent bedtime schedule for both kids.  Here’s to hoping!

One really nice thing about the holidays is that it brings family to town.  Our cousins, Bruce and Peter are here from Atlanta with their daughters Olivia and Teagan.  We went to the beach with them on Wednesday.  It was Kate’s first trip and she enjoyed it as much as any two month old might.  Noah was loving the water and the weather was amazing.  I leave you with a few shots from the day.  Happy Thanksgiving!

The weather was perfect!  I wouldn’t have wanted to sunbathe with the breeze we had, which is probably why it was empty, but the kids had a great time!

Peter with Teagan                                                    Olivia

Bruce and Teagan making sandcastles

It was early.  Don’t mind my “look”.

I may be biased (maybe just a little) but aren’t my kids so freaking cute?  Kate looks more like an angel every day.

I know – I’m a horrible blogger!  I’m sorry.  We’ve been so busy trying to keep up with these kids of ours that a few things have fallen by the wayside.  I will try to do better!

Kate and Noah are doing pretty well.  Noah has finally realized that he doesn’t have to be nice to his sister.  It doesn’t earn him any brownie points but he gets plenty of attention for acting out.  We’re working on this.  Kate has proven to us that her digestive system (or could it be her taste?) is more delicate than we would like.  We’ve tried so many formulas, gone from her sleeping all day to not at all and back again, called in the reinforcements (our wonderful families), and just generally been very frustrated.  We think we’re turning the corner with this (we hope we are), please send us happy, restful thoughts!  She has managed to pack on the pounds just fine.  At her last visit (last week) she was 12-ish pounds.   That’s half of Noah’s weight!  She is also taller than he was at this age.  Tomorrow she is two months old, it’s hard to believe.  And today, Noah officially turned two and a half.  It’s crazy.  I’m so glad we’re half way through the “terrible two’s”!  Please tell me this attitude issue magically disappears on his third birthday!

I finally got a new camera to replace the one that Noah threw in a pool.  Hopefully this means I will have a lot more photos in the future.  A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of having someone else volunteer to take our photos.  Virginia met us at the beach early in the morning and got some amazing shots.  Here are a few of our favorites -

And to show how fast a baby can change in four weeks, this is her now -

Well, I was able to go to Cinicinnati and attend our friend Jill’s wedding.  It was looking a little iffy between hurricane Ike and baby Kate, but luckily Ike missed us and Kake decided to hang in there a bit longer. 

I flew up on the 11th (Yikes! That day will never be the same.) and stayed the night with Dan and Diane.  I hadn’t seen them in like six years!  Wow time flies!  Their oldest child at that time was just over 1.  And now look at them!  They’ve grown so fast!

The day of the wedding was raining and overcast.  I didn’t get to see much/any of Cincinnati at all because of it.  Thankfully it did stop raining in the evening so it didn’t ruin the wedding.  It was hot and muggy though.  It reminded me of Florida.  Anyway, Jill was a beautiful bride and I was glad that I was able to make it.  Everyone was pretty disappointed that Dawn couldn’t come but unfortunately she was too far into the pregnancy.  Here are some pics (of course) …

The church …

The beautiful bride …

The reception …

And the happy couple …

I actually stayed at a hotel in Kentucky that night to make it easier to get to the airport the next day.  It turned out that Saturday was beautiful (in the morning anyway).  Here is a view of Cincinnati from the Kentucky side. (Click the picture to Zoomify – enlarge, zoom and pan)

And I’m not sure what it is with Cincy and pigs with wings …

It was a lucky thing that I flew out on Saturday because it turns out that Ike visited Ohio and the airport was shut down and over a million peeps lost power, including Dan and Diane! Sorry guys!

Today is Walter’s birthday.  I don’t know if anyone is as excited about it as Noah though!  He woke up this morning yelling “IT’S BIRTHDAY TIME!” and couldn’t stop reminding us.  He ran in and woke up Walter telling him to get to the kitchen for birthday time.  When I didn’t whip out a cake at 6:30am with the respective 39 candles Noah was very disappointed.  We lit and let him blow out our kitchen candle – twice – just to get him to relax a bit.  I made Walter the traditional lucky boiled egg breakfast, he opened gifts and then left for work.  All the way to school Noah kept on about fire and cake and Daddy’s birthday (anyone who knows Noah knows his love for fire).  I gave his teacher a head’s up in case she thought we were raising a pyromaniac (on purpose).  Tonight our good friends Rachel, Robby and Ayla are hanging out with Noah so we can go see the new Batman movie.  We’ve tried to go a few times now, maybe tonight it will actually happen.  And did you hear, the whole world is celebrating Walter’s birthday too?!  They’re having some huge party in China for him at 8pm, it’s such a shame our frequent flyer miles couldn’t get us there.

Happy birthday, hon!

My boys have cooties!  Well, Hand Foot and Mouth Disease, or the coxsackie virus, to be more exact.  We think Noah picked it up at school but we had no idea, we are such first time parents!  On Tuesday we saw a blister under his toe so on Wednesday after school I was going to take him shoe shopping, since his shoes must be getting too tight – right?  WRONG!  I took his shoe off after school that day and his feet were covered in them!  We went straight to the doctor’s office to learn it was in deed HFTM, which sounds so gross!  And since it could be dangerous if I get exposed, because of the baby, Walter took two days off of work to handle cootie duty and guess what, now he has it.  Everything we read and everything the doctor’s say tells us that adults *shouldn’t* be able to really catch it, that it’s a children’s disease.  I guess for Walter there are downfalls to never wanting to grow up! 

Here was Noah at the doctor’s office -

And my boys this morning.  Noah’s is getting better, Walter’s is just starting.  Please pray I don’t start showing symptoms!  On the bright side it doesn’t seem to be slowing either of them down, they haven’t caught the fever or loss of appetite portion of the virus and it’s so nice to have all of us together for a few extra days.