PICTURE FAILURE

Since Google decided to scrap the program used to make the slideshows, it's been difficult to find a comparable replacement.  Hopefully something will be found this month.  In the meantime all the photos are just going to be thrown up here....
(Things may not be in order.  Some pictures decided to move on their own and not be moved further....one reason I prefer not doing it this way)

Time to decorate

Mommy found a Polar Express to paint

"Dad, can you please be quiet?  I have a phone call."

COOKIE TIME!

Relaxin' and playing trains with Emmett

Showing Uncle Timmy Pooh's house

Looking sharp

Next year we are finding a different recipe for our gingerbread house

.

Such a serious ice cream eater

Playing trains with Hazel

Doing some coloring together

...and some coloring apart

More train time

We love beaters!

Writing a letter to Santa with illustrations

Found a spot in BestBuy while daddy was looking at some stuff

Intently watching some Dinosaur Train

His happy face???

Celebrating early Christmas

Present time

Next year Santa needs to bring one of these

Relaxing on the couch

Neighhbors Jen and Jennine brought us to the zoo to see the lights

There was also a dinosaur bone pit

and a reindeer in training

and a train

Neighbors has a Christmas Mater.  It was very exciting

Before everyone was up

The most polite opening of stockings in history

So much loot

First present opened

digging in

Playing some soccer

Snuggling with Percy

Visiting Yaya on Christmas day

Playing some tunes on his Ukulele

The proper way to get a small spot extremely soapy and clean

Out for a cool playdate

Building his pirate sailboat

Saw a tank at the park

So we had to sit on it

Using his eReader

Mr Expressive

Colin is getting very good at his expressions and expressing his emotion now.  His 'cross face' has been perfected for a while now.  His huff and slumping shoulders after being scolded is new.  It's hard to stay serious after that...it's so dramatic.  His rejections are very polite and loud.  A very loud NO THANK YOU will be his response to a few things now....followed by a time out with screaming involved.  So we are figuring out boundaries and trying to find ways around them.

We had an exciting month with all the Christmas stuff going on.  At first he was surprised that there were more presents after our first celebration.  Then when we had some people over for New Years he was expecting to get more presents.  We talked about that and once he got the Christmas was over he decided it was time to move onto the next holiday he could remember....Easter.  It was a bit shocking how well he recalled last year.  He seems to rebound from things pretty quickly.  Christmas is over???  Okay, what's next?   Even when Colin is told no we get a happy sounding "Okay" as a response.  Hopefully that never stops.

Happy New Year to everyone.  We'll see what this year brings...


Link for Dec Album:

Dec 2014 Album

Finally Some Snow

Colin has been talking about playing in the snow for months.  We finally got some for Thanksgiving and boy was it awesome.  He was so excited.  Too bad it only lasted a couple days.  We'll see when the next snowfall comes.

This month was a bit light with the pictures.  We had some birthday parties for Colin's friends.  We visited a farm and saw some behind the scenes stuff and plenty of cows.  We had Thanksgiving with Yaya and Nan.  Overall the month was a bit quiet.

Preschool is still very exciting.  We still aren't told much of what he does at school.  He is more forthcoming with what he doesn't do such as "I didn't sing the song.  Ms Pelletier did." or "I didn't run around on the playground, I just watched the other kids."  We definitely have an introvert.  He loves to observe others.

He seems to be an information soaking machine right now.  He counts almost everything.  There are a  few puzzles he loves to do.  Some Thomas puzzles, of course, and a states puzzle.  A majority of the states can be named and he can complete the puzzle on his own.  Even some of the states can be placed with no bordering states.  It was pretty amazing watching him do it.  There is still a lot of inquisition about things he's noticing too.

Christmas was here yesterday apparently.  At least according to Colin it was.  It will be interesting to see how excited he gets as it gets closer.  We haven't written to Santa yet but his list as of now is:

A sailboat (Santa was on top of this already)
workgloves
bubbles (Santa has an enormous stock of these)
and presents...

not a big list but we're working on it.

Here's a link for the small Nov album
(hover on the picture for caption)
https://www.flickr.com/gp/129072712@N07/qXwE87/

A Couple Videos

Taking a call on his phone.  Sorry for the crazy camera shooting

Christmas shopping should be interesting this year

Mr Handsome's Conquers His Nemesis

First off, sorry this wasn't out sooner. Halloween was very busy and then Mommy's birthday was also quite packed. So this is getting posted today.

The big news this month is that Colin had blood work done and it came back showing no allergy to peanuts!!  We went in to the allergist and did a peanut challenge (which is very boring...bring toys).  He passed, so peanuts are okay.  Hooray!!

The beginning of the month was quite busy.  We went to the Topsfield Fair which he thoroughly enjoyed.  We then drove up to N. Maine for a few days which he also enjoyed very much.  Colin climbed the 'mountain' up where mommy grew up, Haystack.  It was a bit over 1000 ft with some small areas of climbing boulders.  Colin did great and made it up to the top with no problem.

Colin is quite the debater at home.  Since he's figured out that no is an option and that just "no" is not an acceptable response, we get some arguments from him.  It mostly follows the format:

Not Colin: "Colin, it's time to [do something that needs to be done]"
Colin:  "Wwweeellll, I'm going to do [the exact opposite].  You can do [thing that needed to be done] if you want to."
 We don't know who does the long 'wwweeelllll'.

It's pretty funny watching him pick up or mimic some mannerisms.  We try and figure out which of us is the guilty party.  Sometimes we really don't know where he picks some things up.  He loves to answer his phone and carry on a conversation with someone.  He paces the whole time.  Neither of us do that so we don't know where he picked that up.  He's a little grown up 3yr old


This time we're trying Flickr for the pictures since most sites are cutting their embeding slideshow features.  Even Flickr is but you can work around that.  Hopefully this works out.  You need to click the Show Info tab to see the captions for the images.  At some point in the next couple days there are some videos to get posted as well.

New Superpower???

Colin has developed a superpower.  He has keen sense of selective listening.  It was very strong at the beginning of the month.  There was no reaction after multiple attempts.  Time outs and toys taken were not well received.   Now he doesn't use this power very often.  He's resorted to tantrums that look like demonic possession at times.  We are definitely being kept on our toes as this is a new thing for Colin.  It had to come at some point.  Good thing he's still cute.

Preschool is still going very well.  He still isn't very forthcoming with what goes on.  Luckily they send something home each week to recap what they have been up to.  He's excited to go each time and comes running out after in a great mood.

Earlier this month Colin had some blood work done for his allergist.  The results came back negative for peanut allergy!  We are going in  soon to do a peanut challenge with the allergist.  Maybe peanuts will be okay, we'll see how that goes.

Cool weather is here (except for the 80 degree days last week).  We've made a couple of trips to different farms for apple and raspberry picking.  (Unfortunately some of the pictures didn't save.)  There were some birthday parties.  We had a visit from Grampy.  We had a busy month.  The Topsfield Fair and Halloween are next month.  What will he be for Halloween???

Google keeps killing off some of their software so the album is just a link now rather than the slideshow.  Click the link and that should take you to a page where you can see them all.  There is a slideshow option on the page or you can just click on a picture and go through them one by one.

https://plus.google.com/photos/101037625380986242479/albums/6064840364263277697?authkey=CIvpt7Cl47D9Ng

Preschool

So how was your first day of preschool Colin????  He was really excited before school and when he got picked up.  He seemed to have a great first day with no mommy or daddy.  The hope was that he would still be just as excited when we went to lunch.  He was not.  He was getting a bit sleepy and silly so we couldn't get too much information from him.   Here's what we did get from him:

 

interview with some background music from the restaurant

He did talk a lot about playing in the playground at school.  A couple of names were mentioned, that we are assuming are classmates but it wasn't too clear.   Unfortunately he didn't share that stuff on the video.  Preschool is a big hit and he's ready to go back.

Summer is Finishing Up

We had a pretty busy summer with camping, birthday parties, camping again and people visiting.  That all seems to be coming to a close.  Colin is starting preschool tommorow and no more vacation plans are made.

A lot of time was spent outside playing.  Cities are constantly being worked on with Colin's fleet of tractors out in the sandbox and other dirt areas.  There are frequent walks up and down the street, which are more of runs for Colin.  We spent a week up in Maine camping at a very kid friendly campground with his play group buddies.  A bit on the cool side but definitely worth it.  Both GaMommy and Yaya came on the trip so he had plenty of adults to help him stay busy.  We also went back down to NJ to family camp to meet up with the Flanagans whom we last saw after we left there almost 10 years ago.  We just got back this morning at 3a (it seemed like a good idea at the time) so there may be things forgotten.  Hopefully the pictures cover the detail or maybe we'll post again with more very soon.

Check out the growth comparison chart down at the bottom.  Colin had his 3yr visit and is doing great.  In the 4% for height but everything is lining up and proportional.  He is amazingly similar in growth to his daddy.

The Big 3

 Colin is finally a big boy 3 year old.

He woke up to some birthday balloons.  (Thomas and green ones).  The first order of business was to make his birthday cake.  We spent the last few weeks trying to get some consistency with his answers.  Balloons, sprinkles and chocolate seemed to stick.  So cake pops were made.....and tested.....and cleaned up.

Ready to crush up cake

Each sprinkle on the table needed to be eaten

Outside the museum

 We went to the Wenham Train Museum which had trains, of course, and a couple other exhibits to check out.  Colin loves trains.

studying the train setup

A space ship to sit in

 We then had a delicious lunch

Lunch of ravioli

 After not having a nap, even though there was only 7 hours of sleep the night before, we opened presents.  So much good stuff.  A tent, wind up flash light and boat for camping, build-able cars, a bunch of Thomas books, a tractor/farm set, massive sidewalk chalk and bubbles, and a beach outfit.  He was pretty happy with it all and wanted to stop unwrapping to play with each thing.

Unwrapping presents

Finally getting to play with his loot

Cora and Hazel came down for some special birthday dinner of Mac & Cheese with broccoli (Colin's pick) .

yummy dinner

 Cake pops were enjoyed outside

 

Hugs for mommy

Bubbles with Hazel

Followed by some bubble popping.









We decided to try out an annual interview with Colin.  The idea is to ask the same questions each year.  This had to be tried quite a few times.  The first attempt was the best, but the camera froze up.  We finally got this one:

 

Now it's time to prepare for some camping in Maine and New Jersey and his big birthday party.