January 2015

Brian flew home on Sunday after Christmas, but the kids and I stayed behind in San Diego to celebrate Grandpa John's retirement on January 1st. Mom, Jessie and I picked dad up at the Radiology Department at Coronado Hospital at 5pm on December 31st. We had a delicious Grandma Pinkie lasagna dinner, watched some Cars and called it a night. 

The next day full-time Grandpa took me and Teddy to the tide pools in La Jolla. Nate gave it a shot, but he was still a little under the weather and asked for a ride home. We started with some sand castling and eased into some tide pooling. Teddy got really into and wanted to find all the sea creatures. I poked many sea anemones for him. 

Teddy has learned all his letters and likes to sound them all out. T makes the "tuh" sound, etc. When he hears words, sometimes he'll ask you to spell them. It's really fun to see how excited he is to learn to spell and eventually read. 

I'd poke sea anemones all day for this guy. 

The first week in January, Teddy started going to gymnastics class. It took him a few minutes to warm up to it, especially after the teacher had to instruct him it wasn't free play, but he got the hang of it (pun intended).

Jo had to amuse herself in the waiting area while we took a million photos of Teddy learning to do somersaults and jumping on trampolines. 

 These kids love their bathtime. You say "bathtime" and Jo runs to the tub and yells, "diaper off!" and Teddy strips naked in the living room, then runs to the tub. As Jo gets a little bigger, she and Teddy play together more often. Warms my already mushy mommy heart. 

We gave Teddy some Tinkertoys for Christmas and there was much tinkering in January. Even Jo liked putting the pieces together. 

Teddy makes fun things on his own, but get Daddy involved and things get silly.

I don't remember what I did to earn this look, but I think this may have been the beginning of the "No, Mommy" phase, quickly followed by the "No pictures, Mommy" phase. 

We read a lot of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom in January. Teddy memorized it pretty quickly. 

It tied in nicely with his interest in learning his letters. Thanks Aunt Jessie and Uncle Ben!

I won't even mention that Brian is wearing his Dinosaur PJs here. 

Jo likes to read to herself in bed. When she's done with a book, she throws it out of the crib and yells, "Book!" until you bring her another. She can see the bookshelf from her bed, and you must submit the book for approval before you can hand it to her. She usually gives about 10 "No's" before saying "No......yessss." Only then do you dare hand her the book. 

On one sunny day we had a little Olympiad in the front yard. 

Don't let her size fool you, Jo is a serious athlete. 

Teddy's interest in sports has waned a little from his golfing toddler days, but he's still got pretty good hand-eye coordination. He can hit most balls you slow pitch to him. However, his idea of running the bases is running clockwise around the yard while carrying the bat. 

Tee ball lessons coming up this Spring. 

Teddy found a pair of my pants on the floor and had a great time trying them on. 

Jo continues to amaze me with her girly instincts. Here she's gotten out all her Mommy accoutrements for display. 

In mid-January, we all flew to Brooklyn for Maisie's baptism. Teddy had been once before for Nate's baptism, but he was 1 1/2, so I don't think he remembered it. Back in December, we had been reading lots of Christmas books and Teddy was so excited for the snow that comes with Christmas. I had to break it to him that it didn't snow in Belmont, but I promised we'd see snow in New York. Then of course, there wasn't any. But it sure was cold. Teddy and Jo loved bundling up in hats and gloves and they really liked the sleeping bags in Jessie's stroller. Our first day there, Nate took us to his favorite playground.  

They had a blast. 

Jessie found us a great rental apartment for the weekend that was only a few blocks away from their place. Here's Teddy showing us how many grapes he can fit into his cheeks at a time. 

We had everyone over to our place for pizza that night and Aunt Jessie read some stories.

We woke up the next morning to Teddy yelling, "Come into my room!" He had woken up and looked out his window to see that it had snowed overnight. He was so stoked. And phew, New York hadn't made a liar of me. We had some breakfast and left Jo with Grandpa for the morning. 

Brian, Teddy and I went off a mini adventure to Manhattan. We tromped through the snow to the subway. Rode a few trains. 

Visited the Goorin shop in Greenwich Village. Had some lunch and took the train home for naptime.

That afternoon I joined Mom and Jessie in the party prep while Brian and Grandpa held down the kiddie fort at our rental. We had dinner at our place again that night and the kids goofed off adorably.

I took no photos of the baptism or the party, but they were both a big success. Maisie looked beatiful and was alert and cheerful the whole time. An impending snow storm frightened us into changing our flights to one the night of the party, instead of the next afternoon, as planned. So we rushed back to the apartment, packed up and hightailed it out of there. We landed at SFO at 11:30pm, plopped the already snoozing kids into their beds and enjoyed an unexpected Sunday at home, though I wish we'd gotten to stay and visit longer. 

Here's Jo back at home. She discovered the drawer in the kitchen where we had stashed all her retired binkies, thus beginning a binky regression followed by another round of binky cold turkey.