It's Really Cold

Winter's cold and snow has finally hit us.  Colin and Hobie both are ready to go out and play in the snow before breakfast.

 Colin and mommy cleaning of the bench outside....because, what else do you do??

 Probably the best  'bundling up' job of the winter so far.

 Colin had 2 areas shoveled out for him to play in while daddy shoveled.....moving snow onto the newly shoveled paths was more entertaining though.  He tractors were kept busy in his areas for a while still.

The neighbors came over to say hi to Colin and Hobie.

 Mommy decided it was time for a vacation.  This is the list.  It was pretty straight forward but took weeks to find the right place.  The plan right now is that we will be going to Mexico in April.  That should be fun.  Now we need to get passports in order.

 We had a few outings and play dates this month.   What better place to go when it's in the single digits than to get ice cream?

  Some bumper bowling was tried with some friends.  Some of them were excited.  Colin was very focused and serious about his bowling.























Aunt Ursula came over with Luke and Emmett to do some crafts.  Then we went to the furniture store.  It sounds odd but they have a water/light show, ice cream shop, Fuddruckers, jungle gym with harnesses, fire truck strollers...it was a busy place.








We have Colin's first report card from school.  It told us what we thought.  He really knows the academic stuff for preschool.  He is very quiet and introverted.  Not much surprise.  He is excited about going and will come out happy.  So preschool seems to be going well.


At home Colin loves to help out.  He's doing a lot more stuff on his own.  We'll see how long until he decides these things are not fun.

 Helping build a shelf for his toys.  Vacuuming the couch.  Changing the sheets on his bed.  What a big boy.

He also has been picking out his clothes for the day.  This was one of his first which wouldn't be bad except that it's well below freezing outside and that's where he wants to go. 

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.