Walking...

It's official. Rachel is a walker.

In the last couple of days, she's started just letting go and cruising across the room. Sometimes she still falls down after a few steps, but she's taken more than 15 steps in a row, stopping in the middle of the room and then continuing on.

And she knows she can walk

And she is SO proud.

And Anida was right, and wins the bet that she'd be walking by Christmas.

Christmas is going great, by the way. The cousins are a lot of fun, and we had presents this morning, but that's a whole blog topic on its own.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Almost, almost...

Friends

It's almost Christmas. And Rachel is tauntingly close to walking. Several times in the last week, there have been little three-step attempts -> step, step, step followed by either sitting down or falling forward. So it's close, but not there yet.

One of the side effects of having cats in the house is that occasionally, they'll bring mice inside. Daniel's seen his fair share of mice, both alive and not-so-much. The other day there was a half-eaten mouse right in front of the Christmas tree. It led to the following: "I found a mouse! Another one! It has a blue tail! It doesn't have eyes - it's sleeping..."

D's still a skinny guy, but he is growing, and is now up to 27 lbs. Food just isn't that important to him. He'd rather play. His latest excuse "the food is too hot, I'll play for five more minutes". It hasn't ever worked for him, but he keeps on trying. Rachel is also growing like crazy and topped 20 lbs the other day.

Oh, and D obviously has a haircut. This picture doesn't do it justice - it's a very cute cut. We're biased of course, but he's quite a charmer. When we're out in public, women (mostly) just can't help but coo over him, and he responds to their questions in a polite way, so he's quite popular.

The tongue? We just had to document it. It's constantly sticking out now. Three of the upper teeth are out, but there are still three more that are close, so Rachel's always rubbing something against her gums.

Daniel's potty training is complete. He'll even wake up in the middle of the night, go on his own and go back to bed. Sometimes he feels compelled to wake us up: "Mama, I have to go potty!' then you tell him to just go and three minutes later he returns to tell you of the success. It's awesome, of course, but at 3am you kinda wish he'd lay off the newsupdates.

Tomorrow, the madhouse begins as Grampa and Farmor, Sara, Michael, Leo and Jacob all come for Christmas. This is going to be fun. Happy holidays everyone.

All better now...

Friends

What a difference a week makes. Last week, everyone was "blah", and this week, everyone's spirits are back on top. Rachel is completely cured from her cold/ear infection, and Daniel is still on antibiotics for his, but shows no symptoms anymore. So life is a lot calmer.

Daniel is ready for Christmas. He sees the lights, the decorations and (as of today), the christmas tree and says "is it christmas?" constantly. He has a little advent calendar he opens daily, and the other day he got a piece of candy and said "It's like Trick or Treat"...

He also likes to "Visit Santa" - though Rachel doesn't share his enthusiasm. The city we live in did their Holiday party last Friday, and it was really well done, with activities for the kids, lots of lights, cookies and a santa. Last year they had a "winter father", who was downright scary, but this year it was good.

Potty training is effectively complete - he's gone a couple of times on his own, even in the middle of night, which is awesome. A few, small, accidents here and there, but amazing progress in just a couple of weeks. He was ready.

We had this great picture of Rachel showing that she has two of her new teeth, and also that the other are just days from popping out. Something went wrong when cropping it down to blog-size, though and now it looks like an overexposed cellphone picture. Very sad. It lost all of the great detail, the sparkle in her eyes and everything. If you look closely, you can still see the teeth, though.

She's not walking yet, but she sure wants to. She stands all the time, cruises from object to object, and just wants to be like her brother.

We're slowly introducing Rachel to additional foods that she can eat on her own. Oatmeal is not one of these yet. We knew it'd be messy - and it was.

And that's about it for now. We're all glad to be out of the colds/infections, and starting to look forward to Christmas - we'll have Farmor and Grandpa, Aunt Sara and Uncle Michael and cousins Jacob and Leo all staying here. That's going to be a lot of fun all around.

Until next time.

ADRE.

Rachel is a booger-face!

It might sound like Daniel has started calling his sister names, but he was really just stating a fact. That poor little girl has had a snotty nose, crusted-up eyes, a cough, an ear-infection AND she has six teeth coming in at the same time. It hasn't been a good week for Rachel.


The cold is better, the ears are getting treated with antibiotics and one tooth is finally through (though there are 5 others that we'll see in the next couple of days/weeks). So she's not as bad as the first picture would suggest.


Rachel passed 10 months in the last couple of days, and will now stand independently for 10-15 seconds. The other day she tried to go from standing to walking and discovered gravity, but it's pretty clear she'll be walking before she's one. She loves to explore, and crawls all over the house - going up (and sometimes down) the stairs. The new house is a little harder to babyproof than the old one, but it's OK as long as we remember to close doors and put the gate on the stairs.

Daniel was over the colds, or so we thought. On Thursday he started to get another round of it, and yesterday he had a high fever again. And with that, another febrile seizure. Gosh those are scary. This one only lasted 2 minutes, and he recovered pretty quickly, but in the meantime we'd called 911, so there were firemen and paramedics and a trip to the ER.

We didn't really think the ER was going to be warranted, since we know the drill -> they observe him for a while, then send you home. Turns out he has an ear infection, though, so it was a good thing to get checked out and get some medication for it. We thought we were done with the seizures, but apparently medical literature now suggests that they can last until age 5.

Daniel had pictures taken at playschool, and we didn't think they were all that special, so we're not ordering any, but I thought - why not post the proof here, in case any of the fans want a copy? If so, let us know.

Daniel has figured out christmas is coming. Partially it's the decorations, but someone (probably at playschool) clued him in that there are presents involved. So he's been angling for some. The other day he carried his "tow-Mater" car to Anida and said in his tow-mater voice "Tow-mater says that Daniel wants Mack for Christmas" If you don't know that these are characters from the Pixar movie "Cars", you may be lucky. Daniel also has this obsesion with all things with wheels, and while in Houston, he saw a mini scooter at the Sharper Image store. Now every time he goes to the mall, he wants to "visit the scooter". He's not getting one - who the heck gets their 2-year-old a scooter that can go 15mph? But he sure likes to play on it.

That's it for now. We hope to be in better health next time.

D.A.R.E