At Grandmother & Granddaddy's house

Today was a pretty laid-back day. We spent most of the day at Jeremy's parents' house again. I did laundry and caught up on my coupons, and the kids played mostly happily. It was a nice day of just spending time together and practicing with my camera.

Ian loves his new Elmo backpack. It's hard to get him to ever take it off.

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Rinnah carting around their new blocks

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I tried to get shots of them together in their coordinating pjs today. As you can see, I was less than successful.

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Rinnah tickling Ian, backpack and all

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They're playing and singing "Deep and Wide" here (click on the 'latest videos' tab for a video of the same song)

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Rinnah on her new bike from Grandmother & Granddaddy

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He's going to love this picture when he's older, don't you think?

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My handsome little man

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I took Rinnah outside for a couple of pictures with the new lens my mom gave me for Christmas. I love this lens! It focuses so much faster, and blurs the background so much more smoothly. These aren't photoshopped-this is how they came out of the camera. Even her eyelashes are in focus in some of them!

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From Sunnnyvale CA

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And one from indoors that I did a color conversion with

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I'd like to think it's all my photography skills improving, but my successful shots have gone up dramatically since I put this lens on my camera. I'm so thrilled with it!

Discovery Museum

Today we went to the San Jose Discovery museum again. I really wanted to take the kids there one more time before we left, so today was the day. Somehow we managed to be lucky enough to stumble across some sort of special event/publicity/fundraising day, so there were a crazy amount of people there. It was completely packed. Still, the kids had a great time and I was really proud of Ian. He did a great job sharing and taking turns patiently.

Rinnah playing in the water-her favorite thing and this museum has by far the best water exhibit we've seen.

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Ian played with just about everything today. Here he is sitting in a Vietnamese boat.

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At the sand table

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Rinnah had a ball in the art room. Here she is pouring colored water on a block of ice. Her favorite part was the salt shaker full of glitter. She carried it around and poured it on everything.

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She also loved the big paint wall.

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I'm really glad we had a chance to visit once more this week!

Christmas train ride

For Christmas this year, Jeremy's parents gave Ian a train ride. He still talks about his birthday and riding the train in Salt Lake City, and as we've seen the trains go by he's said numerous times that he needs to "get more birthdays" so he can ride the train again. So his gift was that we all got to ride the Caltrain together. He loved it!

True to form, we were late for the first train, so we ended up going an hour later than originally planned. Eventually we did make it to the station platform.

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The kids watching the train approach

From Christmas

I know he doesn't look that excited, but believe me, he was! Ian's kind of a strange kid in that he doesn't seem to show much emotion during the experience, but he will talk about it and get all excited later. This was about as much of a grin as we got at the time. He was concentrating on taking it all in.

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Rinnah also loved looking out the window

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From Christmas

After watching the train depart, we walked to our destination:

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Round Table pizza is so delicious! This was a huge treat for us since we almost never go out to eat. We really enjoyed it, and the kids were pretty well-behaved, considering we had them out an hour later than we originally intended. Jeremy and Ian had fun playing the arcade games.

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The guys

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A little playing around at the station waiting to go home

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It was really a fantastic day!

Christmas cookies!

We have been having a lot of fun with the kids getting ready for Christmas. Ian helped me decorate and both kids love turning the light on for the tree. Both kids, but especially Ian, enjoyed picking out toys to donate for Toys for Tots and putting them in the giant wrapped box at the store. Ian has been helping me wrap gifts (we bought him his very own set of scissors to use), and yesterday and today I let the kids decorate sugar cookies with red and green frosting. They had a blast! I think it was one of their favorite things we've done.

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From Christmas

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From Christmas

Sleep battles

This has been a challenging week with the kids.

Both kids have been very resistant to naps lately. And I find it nearly impossible to wrestle both of them to sleep at the same time. Admittedly, this is compounded by our small space here, but I think we'd be having similar issues even in a big house. Ian is at the age where he wants to stay up past naptime, but when he does he has complete meltdowns by 5pm and it's a major test of our sanity to make it to 7 or 8 when we can get him in bed. Rinnah is only 17 months old, but it's getting harder and harder to make her nap. She is clearly nowhere near outgrowing naps-in fact, she may still need two naps and not just one, but lately nothing works for getting her down. Even car rides (our last desperate resort) have failed this week.

So now we're caught in a vicious cycle of overtired kids, who need sleep but are too tired to fall asleep without screaming for hours and making Jeremy and I want to pull our hair out. Ugh. This has been one of our most challenging and exhausting weeks as parents of two kids. One of those weeks where we think of our dear friends, many of whom we admire greatly, with 6+ children and have a simultaneous feeling of awe at their superhuman patience and bewilderment at how they haven't lost their minds completely.

We did have a few bright spots. This morning (before they were too tired again) we went for a quick trip to the children's museum, and that was fun. Rinnah has started saying, "Yeah!!!" excitedly when she wants to do something you suggest, and Ian has taken to doing the same thing, so it was a nice feeling when we'd offer an activity and they'd be all excited about it.

We do love our kids. I am so thankful for them, even during weeks like this. I'm thankful that sleep is our biggest issue right now. But still, hopeful that this coming week is better and we can figure out what we need to do to get them to rest so we can have our (mostly) happy kids back again.

Wonderful day

Today was really a great day.

We spent some time together this morning-the kids played games with Jeremy for awhile, and Ian helped me make bacon wrapped little smokies. After Rinnah's nap and lunch we rode the light rail out to a nearby mall. We spent quite awhile in a toystore, with the kids playing with the toy trains, cars, & marching dogs that were out. We walked around for awhile just stopping at whatever looked interesting. It was so refreshing to just be together again, not worrying about a schedule or meeting up with anyone or trying to be back by any certain time. The kids really loved it too. Ian didn't want to leave the mall-he kept saying, "I'm still having fun!" We took an extra long ride on the train home, thinking about hitting the children's museum (it's on the same train line) but Rinnah was getting tired and the museum was close to closing anyway, so we just came home.

Then we had dinner and a nice, long, relaxing bedtime routine for the kids. So many times lately we've pushed them too late and we get home and try to rush through everything. It was nice to do baths, and read stories, and have longer to talk about our day and pray together.

Not an overly exciting day, but a really wonderful day where we were just able to enjoy our kids and being together.

The kids

Since I've been unable to upload pictures for awhile, I thought this would be a good time to give an update on the kids.

Ian is three now, and he is learning so much so fast. He recognizes quite a few letters now and can say his ABCs. He is starting to sing songs. His memory is incredible (especially right after waking up when I bribed him with a promise of something if he would go to sleep). He is very logical and perfectionistic at times. It's really something to watch him park his toy cars with such precision. He parks his trike backwards, since that's how we park the truck, and is very good at steering to do so. He's very compassionate towards Rinnah 90% of the time and shares with her and is always making sure he knows where she is and that she has something to play with. He loves garbage trucks, trains, buses that bend in the middle, and any other large vehicles. He also loves it when we go over speedbumps. Even though he's starting to catch on to storylines in movies, he far prefers to have one on one attention playing a game, reading a book, or playing with his toys and insists on getting that attention. He loves to help me find the items in the picture on a coupon.

Rinnah is seventeen months. Her personality is just bubbling over right now. She loves to laugh, and to make other people laugh. For example, the other day Ian was being cross and grumpy at lunchtime, and he was whining about something or other. She was sitting there quietly, and suddenly places her lunchmeat square on her head like a hat and gives Ian a huge grin. He burst into laughter of course. She is talking now, probably about 100 words, and she'll mimic anything you say, especially if she thinks it will get her what she wants. She's learned to sing the "hey!" in Jingle Bells at the right time. She's very smart and is quick to jump in and copy/help you with whatever she can reach. Her favorite thing is to play in the water-sinks, bathtubs, puddles, hoses-anything she can find. She can entertain herself for long periods of time with just a few items, coming up with all sorts of ways to use them. She never gets tired of hiding under or behind something, only to pop out with a huge grin. Her smile and laugh are infectious. She loves shoes.

They can drive us batty sometimes, but it sure is a blessing to watch them grow and discover the world! I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Festival of Lights

Finally, I can post an update! Our internet connection has been less than reliable lately, and I haven't been able to get very many pages to load, hence the long delay in updating.

Anyway, we went to the Los Altos Festival of Lights parade over the weekend. It was really awesome! It started at 6pm, so it was dark, and there were all sorts of floats and marching bands and storybook characters, all decorated with lights. Some of them were simple, and some were elaborate like something from the Disney lights parade. It was a neat experience and Ian loved looking at everything. Poor Rinnah was exhausted and it seemed like every time she'd start to drift off, a drummer or other loud thing would come by and she'd get startled. She went right to sleep though once we got in the car, and it was definitely worth going to.

We also went to the San Jose Children's museum, both on Saturday with everyone and just me and the kids today. This museum is great. The water feature is the best we've seen yet-all sorts of water tornadoes and things to squirt and spray....the kids played there for 45+ minutes each day, and I had to practically pry them away when it was time to go. We'll definitely be there several more times before we leave.