We woke up Monday morning to a nice powdery snow covering the ground. Instead of trying to deal with the lack of after school care for Kate, and the nightmare that is traffic around Microsoft in the snow, we opted instead to stay home with the kids for a snow day!
Our house surrounded by the untouched snow.
A shot from our upstairs rec-room window that I really liked.
Mommy and Kate and their little snowman.
Daddy and Jacob hanging out.
This was Jacob’s first time to see and play in the snow. He was pretty good until we put him down in the snow then he just cried and wanted to be picked back up. It probably didn’t help that he was hungry before we even went outside. It wasn’t nearly as traumatic as the first time we took Kate into the snow, but he wasn’t pleased.
Many of you do know my background as a traitorous Californian invader (Roo moved Tricia and me to Pullman, WA in 1988). Well, some of our incredible family from down south paid us a visit this week and helped us relive wonderful childhood memories in addition to catching up on all the current events. Ron and Joyce Cattanach, of the original Gain Street Gang, joined us for a few days and brought us some of that liquid gold that California is so well known for; during their stay, in Redmond, WA no less, the sun reigned supreme with not a cloud to be seen.
Here is photographic proof of the weather and a lovely shot of the crew: Ron, Joyce, Jake, Kate, and Roo.
So for any other daring friends and family willing to brave the trip north, a reminder that we would love to see you and that it doesn’t always rain in Washington (just 42% of the time per the national average annual days of precipitation).
It’s official. Jacob is mobile. He was doing one or two shaky crawling movements forward, but still not very stable. Then this morning…we’ve got this action. Now we get to figure out how to babyproof the new house, which will be a challenge since it’s so wide open.
The past week everyone in the family has been sick at some point. Jacob has gotten the worst of it, and has pretty much been a snot-bucket all week long, coughing and choking on phlegm and really wanting to be held all the time. That’s made sleeping a bit rough. His appetite has been off as well, but today I got him to both eat and sleep without being held…at the same time! Here is Jacob sleep-eating…
For Christmas, Kate got a cash register. Today we finally opened it, and Kate got to open her own grocery store. Some of the prices were a bit outrageous ($234837 for a bottle of ketchup!), but luckily I could use her credit card to pay for it. She’s having fun scanning the bar codes, then putting in the price and ringing it all up. She even gave me some change afterwards ($1 dollar, 2 quarters, 1 dime, 4 nickels and 5 pennies). One of these days we’ll get her to understand what all the money means…
Kate went back for her 6 week assessment with Dr. Heidar to check progress on her eye patching therapy and we couldn’t be more pleased. With her glasses on, Kate improved from 20/250 to 20/60!!!!!!!
We are going to continue the patching therapy until her eyesight is 20/20 with glasses. Then we will just have regular checkups to keep her prescription up to date until we can move her to contacts and later, potentially look at surgery. Jacob will also have his eyes checked at Kate’s next appointment (2 months out) so that we can identify if he’s having any similar issues.
Dr. Heidar was very, very pleased with Kate’s improvement and she is certain that we will ultimately be able to resolve all of Kate’s sight issues.
Jacob went in for his 9 month check up today. In addition to his “moose” stats which I will convey shortly, his normal developmental markers are helping us to see his personality. He is “stealth” cruising (waits until we aren’t looking and moves 5 feet away), sitting up on his own, pulling himself up to standing, and holding very intense consonant and grunting conversations (never heard such emphasis with basic gutturals). Jacob definitely has a voice and he won’t let us forget that. Might be just what he needs to exist in this house.
So, without further ado, a shout out from Captain Drool.
Weight: 20 lbs. 14 oz. (50%)
Length: 30 inches (97%)
Head Circumfrence: 47.4 cm (50%)
And Kate wanted a photo with her giant-little bro recreating Tickle Monster vs. Giggle Monster. All I can say is watch out AVP.
Kate started taking dance–ballet and tap–at her new school last fall but she’s really getting into the swing of things now. She walked Jake and I through positions 1 to 5. Fifth position is her favorite.
And as many of you have heard, Jake is up to 3 teeth (1 on top, 2 on the bottom), but he hate’s to show them off. So I was very excited when I got this decent shot of the bottom 2. Enjoy!
We invited a bunch of friends over today to watch the Seahawks take on the Redskins in the first round of the NFL playoffs. It was a good game, especially since the Hawks came out on top 35-14. During halftime we busted out the Guitar Hero III that I got for Christmas and took turns trying to be the next legend of rock.
Here Candice and Francie take on Social Distortion’s song Story of my Life.
Jacob was sleeping for the first part of the game, but you couldn’t stop him once he woke up. He’s got his blue & green rings out to cheer on the Hawks as he sits on mommy’s lap.
The family had a very quiet New Year’s Eve. The kids went to bed early. The parents cleaned up the house from the holdiays and sat down together to watch the fireworks on television. It was an interesting start to the New Year as what was supposed to be an eight minute show synchronized to music turned out to be 20 minutes, not synchronized to music, with a bunch of delays in the middle.
We are hoping the upcoming year will be calmer than the last in which we bought a new house, both got new jobs, and added our son Jacob to the family. Here’s hoping everyone has a nice, calm New Year!
