We Miss You Daddy!

Chris had to go for a short trip to Atlanta this week, so the boys and I have been holding down the fort here. We had quite a bit of snow last night to this morning, but other than that the week has been pretty uneventful so far! The boys have been very well behaved. No temper tantrums, they've taken very good naps, they've eaten very well, and slept well at night (so far - maybe I shouldn't speak too soon.) Anyways, we miss you Chris and can't wait to see you!

Andy has been trying to coax Jack into crawling to him. No success yet, but we'll keep trying...Yes, Jack is still a little bit drooly even though his bottom two teeth are pretty much in...
Here is Andy practicing some of his "YOGA!" moves (he yells out YOGA! when he is doing it). He sees me doing various poses and tries to copy me. He actually does it pretty well, and is a very limber little boy.

Jack was bundled up nice and cozy today. Still working off a bit of a cold :(
So many toys to choose from, what to chew on next?

Since Andy was such a good boy today, he got an M&M ice cream sandwich (his new favorite dessert). I think, Jack is looking at it thinking "that looks pretty yummy, Andy..." Andy is saying here, "No Jack, you're too tiny to eat this, it's just for big boys!"

I think that the 12 days before Christmas (we're not quite there yet, I know) I'll try to have the boys wear matching pj's - or at least color coordinated for the season :) Corny, yes, but also cute.

Jack has been getting more "talkative." I liked this picture because, he's not really angry or sad, he's just making some noise to be heard!
And yes, because Chris is gone for a couple of days, Andy is the man of the house. He took on the extra responsibility of shoveling with great pride. After Jack went to bed tonight, we got out there and finished up the driveway (we actually have VERY nice neighbors who snowblowed for us this morning - I appreciated it SO much!)

I can say that Andy does actually help some this year - he pushes the snow in the right direction and usually throws the snow to the side of the driveway. We were outside tonight more out of needing to get a little exercise before bed, than necessity for shoveling.

As we were working, Andy often would run up to me and say "What are you up to Sir Mommy?" I have NO idea why he added the sir to the sentence, but I think he was trying to make this work fun and was pretending I was his boss. He said it enough times that I'm positive that's what he was saying! Andy didn't even want to come inside, when we were done. But, we had already pushed his bedtime out a little bit and he realized he was getting tired.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

Santa's coming to town

A few weeks ago we all got a chance to visit with Santa. Andy didn't want to sit on Santa's lap, but he was happy to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas! (a ship for his Star Wars guys) It was kind of an unplanned trip, as you can see we weren't really dressed up for it. But we took advantage of the good moods of the boys and the short line!

A fun St. Nick's Weekend

We had lots of things going on this weekend. We started off with St. Nick's on Friday night. St. Nick rang our doorbell at 6:30, while Chris was just finished getting Andy into his jammies. Andy came running down to see who (or what) was at our door. A bag of presents for Jack and Andy! YEAH! Andy graciously helped Jack open his first, and then Andy went to work on his own. Andy was so excited about his first one (a little M&M guy fan with M&M's in the bottom) that we almost couldn't even convince him to open his second one. Once he finally did open it, he was very happy about the Star Wars guys he got too. After Jack went to bed, Andy and I made some yummy frosted sugar cookies. Andy helped a lot - he used the cookie cutters to cut out lots of the shapes (and eat the left over dough edges) and he frosted a couple of cookies very well - probably eating more frosting than he used though!

Saturday morning started off with a big trip to the grocery store, where Jack sat up in the cart for the first time (unfortunately falling asleep halfway through - I was missing the infant carrier then!). We had all planned on going to the Neenah Christmas Festival after that, but it was WAY too cold and windy for Jack to be out there, especially since he has a little bit of a cold. So, Andy and I repeated last year's tradition as a special Mommy & Andy activity. We rode on the back of a hay wagon being pulled by two horses (Dot and Dee). Andy got pretty chilly, even though I had him bundled up like crazy AND had a blanket over us. He was asking to go find Santa halfway through the ride. But we made it through, I got some hot chocolate at the end, and then we went to the next stop. We saw Santa and Mrs. Claus - Andy just said hi quickly. He was very excited for our next event where we went to meet some real reindeer. Rudolf and Comet were very nice and quite large. Andy said hello and had a nice little talk with them. We also went to go see people carving some ice sculptures which was pretty cool. Andy loved the drills that they were using.

When we got back to the house, Grandma Reinsel and Uncle Dave were arriving at the same time! We spent the afternoon with them and Dave got to meet Jack for the first time. Andy was wearing the airplane sweatshirt that Dave had gotten him and had lots of fun playing with Dave and Grandma. So much fun, that there was no way we were going to get him to nap! Jack doesn't have the luxury of nap skipping , so he took a nice long late afternoon snooze.

On Sunday morning, Grandma and Grandpa came up for a quick visit. We opened up a couple more St. Nick's gifts, played some more, and watched the first half of the Packer's game. Andy had a great time playing toys with grandma and grandpa! He got most of the attention, because Jack napped for quite a bit of the time they were here. Too much excitement for Jack in 1 weekend!

All in all, a busy and very fun weekend. We were so happy to have family come see us - and they got to see our Christmas tree too! St. Nick's weekend was so much fun, we just can't wait until CHRISTMAS!!!

Bath Time Just Got Better!

First of all, as a recap of last weekend, we had a great Thanksgiving in Madison! Andy and Jack played a lot with Grandma Reinsel, we had a delicious turkey dinner, and we got to do some special Madison activities. Andy got to go to a UW Volleyball game with Chris and I where he met Bucky again - he had so much fun! He was very brave and went in one of those big bouncy houses, but got a little freaked out and crawled out pretty quickly. Also, Andy and Jack both went with us to the Madison Zoo. Andy's favorite animals were the seals, but we also really liked the snakes & turtles. We did a little Christmas shopping at REI, where Andy enjoyed crawling into some tents and test driving a sled :) We also loved Riley, Grandma Reinsel's new dog. Bailey was a little less than thrilled with the new addition, but he will grow to love him! Unfortunately, we forgot our digital camera and did not get any pictures - so sad :(

And, to finally get to the title of my blog, today was the first time that the boys went in the same bath! Up until now, Jack has been using his blue baby tub, but he has quickly outgrown it. Because he is sitting up so well, I decided to try him solo in the big tub first. He was so sturdy in there and having so much fun, that I thought Andy could join him. Andy was an AWESOME big brother. So nice to his baby brother, sharing his bath toys and not bumping or splashing him once. In fact, after 20 minutes when Jack was getting cold and I took Jack out to get jammies on, Andy started crying saying "I want my Jack back in here with me!" Some of the pics have a weird yellow hue, but they're still cute...

Andy decided that he wanted to wear his construction worker goggles in the bath so that he could swim...

This was just a cool one of the water drops in front of Jack
Plenty of toys to chew on in the big bathtub!

Handsome guys...

Jack always finds the wet washcloths to chew on - they can't taste very good because I'm sure they're a little bit soapy...

Happy boy who has more space to roam - no more baby tub! You can also kind of see his two bottom teeth in this pic if you look very closely.

Andy with the goggles...
Peek a boo! One without...

Bath time = happy time!

After bath, Andy wanted Jack to lay down in his bed with him. Andy gave Jack a little blanket and covered him up - saying "I love my Jack! It's alright, Andy's here!"