January-February

 We finally made it to 2011! By which I mean that the blog has now at least caught up to the current year...
This was the first New Year's Eve in ten years that Will and I have not spent in Boise, so we were sort of at a loss as to how to celebrate. We opted to do something a little out of character for us: go to a movie as a family. We're pretty picky about movies, so we generally like to see something first before we let the kids see it, but we had it on good authority that "Tangled" was appropriate even for Antonia. She can get a little hysterical if something scares her in a movie, although it's a little hard to predict what she'll find frightening.  She has made it quite clear that she does not like the organ-grinder monkey from "Toy Story 3," or dinosaurs in almost anything. The witch in "Snow White" was pretty terrifying, and the sharks in "Finding Nemo." But she has no problem with Ursula the Sea Witch, the most disturbing villain in any Disney movie, in my opinion. (I think it's because she throws her buxom chest around menacingly.) As it turned out, there wasn't anything in "Tangled" that she couldn't handle. Thank goodness.

 After the movie we went to the Outback Steakhouse, which I confess is not really our scene, not generally being consumers of red meat. We had a gift card. But we must be in the minority in Henderson, in that regard at least, because the place was PACKED. I can't even remember a time when I was in a restaurant that busy, and I frequent the Cheesecake Factory regularly.  Anyway,  the shrimps were tasty, and the kids enjoyed it. And that was the extent of our New Year's Eve festivities, because after that we all went home and went to bed. 

Charlie's racing into 2011. It's a metaphor, or something....

Yay, 2011!

After Will went back to school and we settled back into our regular routine, I had my annual "readjustment period" when I realize that having Will home for two weeks has weakened my mom muscles and made me lazy.  Fortunately I had a fun thing to look forward to: I was the recipient of a very generous birthday present, a plane ticket to fly to Virginia for the blessing of my newest niece, Grace. I am also blessed to be the wife of a long-suffering man who (outwardly) expressed no reservations about being left behind for several days with our kids. The trip was so much fun that I wasn't at all bothered by the knowledge of what the kids were wearing and/or eating while I was away. I did, however, make a mental note to do a "Basics of Ponytail Execution" tutorial for Will in case I ever break both my arms or become somehow incapacitated. Even I can barely manage to tame Antonia's hair into something respectable, and I have at least 20 years of ponytail experience under my belt.  

Grace seems a little skeptical at my insistence that I be her favorite aunt...

Not much else of note happened in January, so it seems like a good opportunity to throw out some updates on Antonia and Charlie, with a few random pictures for good measure.

Charlie is, as ever, a conscientious, eager-to-please, sweet, predictable, self-disciplined kid. He's VERY much like his dad, with an occasionally intense streak that comes from me, I'm sure. Charlie likes structure, routines, order and predictability, and as long as he has that, he's a perfect dream to discipline. He is helpful, quick to obey, clever with numbers and extremely coordinated. He's very self-directed and motivated. He started doing piano in the fall and has already gone all the way through the first level of his program. He loves Legos, helping his dad with "projects," his friends at preschool, his robot shoes and hamburgers (he can down a single from In-N-Out in about 4 minutes-- his father's son.)

About 90% of the time, he's a wonderful brother to Antonia, he plays with her, is patient with her, helps her out of her frequent "predicaments" and reads books with her. The other 10% of the time he has a problem with teasing (pretending he's going to hit/poke/somehow injure her, without ever doing it. What is it with boys and violence?) and grabbing things away from her. But hey, what older brother doesn't.  He's really excited about the baby, he talks about it all the time, things we can do for the baby, things we can give the baby, things we can do WITH the baby... (funny side note: when Will and I made the announcement to Charlie and Antonia, they both gave my stomach a long, hard look, like they would be able SEE the baby in there. Another funny side note: on several different occasions, I asked Antonia what we should name the baby and she said "Cake." That's her suggestion and she's sticking with it.) 

Antonia is, basically, the exact opposite of Charlie. In fact, Will and I have made a game of discovering any similarities between them; so far all we've come up with is that they both like to tease. Antonia is a goofy, impish chucklehead of a girl. When I say chucklehead, I mean that literally. She laughs, and she giggles, but mostly she chuckles. Will and I are constantly wondering where her personality comes from, as it doesn't seem to contain many characteristics we recognize from ourselves. She is very opinionated, which is like me, but also very unpredictable in her opinions. She has no thought for routines, schedules, expectations etc. In fact, I think she thrives on defying expectations. And she's clumsy, oh my goodly heavens is she clumsy. If you've ever seen her run, you know what I'm talking about. She runs like she's drunk, and that's the only way I can think to describe it.

She's definitely a talker, much more so than Charlie. In January she hadn't quite figured out the who-what-where-when-why words, so she would just substitute "Where?" for any of those. If I said "It's Tuesday," she would say "Where?" If I said "Time for lunch!" She would say "Where?" If I said "It's time to get Charlie at preschool," she would say "Where?"  She's kind of bossy, by reason of her many opinions. She's always telling me "You needa" do any of the following: put my seatbelt on, get new tires for the van, clean up something that spilled, put shoes on, take shoes off, get dressed, and so on.  And she's loud, in a cute but piercing way. Life with Antonia is fun, never boring, and usually delightfully entertaining.

Antonia likes the sweet things in life. Only, just the sweetest part of the sweet things, like the glaze on the donut. (It's possible that she learned this by watching me.)

We gave Charlie this MP3 player for Christmas, he likes to pick songs for Antonia to listen to.

More evidence of Antonia's sweet tooth. And also her inability to get the food in her mouth without getting it all over her face.

My kids always surprise me by breaking out of my preconceived notions of what they can do. Antonia built this tower of blocks all by herself, something I never would have predicted she'd have the patience for.

Dancing after church

These are the moments that make all the hard stuff worthwhile.

Will's birthday. We only had four candles, but he actually was celebrating 32 fabulous years on this earth. Which means that I just turned 31. Which is fine, because the 30s are the new 20s!

The cousins and their blankies

These kids all have "the addiction;" Blankie Dependance seems to be in the Hall genes