April 11, 2011

My Teacher

I’m definitely not keen on showing my faults to the world.  I wouldn’t normally share this side of me in this forum, but my gratefulness and proudness of my son is so overwhelming that I need to share.

My Jack-Jack has become my best teacher. 

Lately, I’ve been feeling… out of sorts.  Surprises (some good, but mostly not-so-good) have been popping up everywhere I turn.  And I lose my pleasing personality sometimes, if you know what I mean. 

[Enter Jack]  “Mommy - don’t be bad, mommy.”

[Cue my heart breaking]  “Okay, baby.  I won’t be bad. Thank you, my lovey.”

Those big, gorgeous brown eyes are watching my every move.  And can tell that I’m losing my temper faster than I can regain control.

Pete sometimes gets the brunt of my frustration and this morning was an example of that. 

[Enter Jack] “Mommy – don’t yell at daddy.”

[Cue my heart breaking – again. Add in a gulp this time] “Okay, baby.  I won’t yell at daddy.”

Are these the type of things about me that I want my toddler to learn?

No.  Absolutely no.

And I forgot to say thank you.  Duh, Keri.

So, here’s my thank you to you, Jack.  In front of everyone I know and even some I don’t know:

Thank you, my beautiful son.  I’ll do better, I promise!

I am so proud of you.

April 8, 2011

Another One Hit Wonder

My very first blog post was about Jack’s one hit wonders.  Well, now he’s teamed up with Tommy and they’ve come out with one more:

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Falling asleep on the floor without any effort on my part!

That’s never happened before!

Nor do I expect that it will happen again.  Especially since we’ve given all of Jack’s binkies to the Binky Fairy.  :-)

April 7, 2011

Jack is 3 years old!

Of course I’m a little late posting this but Jack turned 3 years old on March 18th!

The stats:

Weight: 27 lbs
Height: 35 3/4 inches
Binky: not any more!
Diapers: yes, they are still around
Favorite color: orange
Favorite show: Curious George
Favorite toy: any type of car
Favorite comfort item: a yard of dress lining fabric in white
Favorite candy: chocolate (always said in a whisper – I wish I could record it cuz it is soooo cute)

Some of our favorite things: how he says I love you.  How he gently touches and kisses Tommy.  How he says thank you or no thank you or your welcome – even for other people who have forgotten their manners.  How he wants to cuddle with mommy and only mommy sometimes.  How he jumps up and down when he gets excited as though he just can’t control it.  How he picks up on some of our phrases: that’s cool, dude and how awesome, etc.

Jack is becoming so independent!  He wants to dress himself, brush his own teeth, pour his own drinks, cut his own food, put in the movie by himself, turn on the Wii by himself, take pictures with my camera even though he has his own… you name it, he wants to do it by himself. 

Taking a trip through memory lane, we find it incredible that we’ve been parents for three whole years.  I know, that sounds pathetic to most.  But it seems like yesterday that we were looking at this:

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or this:

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or even this:

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But look how old he is looking now-a-days!

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Anyway, we digress…

We celebrated his birthday practically all month long and it was so fun to see that so many people love our little gus as much as we do.

THANK YOU to everyone who helped make his 3rd birthday so memorable!!

April 6, 2011

The Love Affair

Tommy has a crush on Melina, our neighbor.  They are two weeks apart and a world apart when it comes to their size.  Melina is a petite 9 lbs, while Tommy tips the scale at hardy 18 lbs.  It’s like Beauty and the Beast! And they can’t get enough of each other:

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Tommy reaches for her every time he sees her  - and succeeded this time. :-)

 

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I love how they play with each other during “tummy time” – these cuties are too much fun!

March 11, 2011

Tommy’s Smiles

Tommy smiles

ALL

THE

TIME!

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We love you, little Tommy boy!!

Russian Tea Cakes

Darn you, Russian Tea Cakes!

Sorry, baby.

(I ended up throwing away the last five so that I would stop eating them.  I gained a few more pounds this winter than I needed to – all because of those cookies.)

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March 10, 2011

Baking with Jack

I am really loving Mel’s Kitchen Café!

Pretty sure I use a recipe of hers once a week… or more. 

On this day, we baked up some delicious french bread for her Italian Meatball Subs.

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The boy.

 

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The bread.

 

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The boy!

 

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The bread!

March 7, 2011

Christmas!

I’m finally at the last 2010 event – Christmas!

But I really don’t have the time that’s needed to do all these pictures justice… so here’s a slideshow. 

Enjoy.  :-)

 

 

And one more…

And for those of you who are interested in videos, I’ve uploaded them to YouTube. We have a grand total of 67 now – wowza! 

They are not awesome/funny/entertaining videos for everyone but they are meaningful to us so we’d like to share them.

https://www.youtube.com/thecrossleyclan

Thank you to everyone that spent time with our little family. We had so much fun and you helped in making memories that will last a lifetime.

And thank you for all those gifts! They were very much loved and appreciated!!

March 2, 2011

Old MacDonald Had a Farm…

Love, love, love this!

February 20, 2011

December!

I’m getting so close to completing my catch-up marathon… I see the light at the end of the tunnel!

We really did a lot, starting with our church’s Christmas party.  I’m pretty darn sure that I was more excited about Santa than the children were.  I heard some rumor that a guy from church was going to get dressed up as Santa (don’t' get  me wrong – I wanted to see that) but when the real Santa came through the door I think a little-girl shout escaped my lips and probably a little-girl “Santa is here!”  I was sooo bummed when I got home and searched through my pictures only to salvage these:

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Jack was more happy with the candy cane than with anything else.  He wouldn’t even look at the camera for a smile because he was too busy digging through Santa’s present to find more.

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I’ll probably get over my disappointment by next Christmas.  I have a new motivation to track Santa down again and get better pictures.

 

Anyway, Jack has become a good little photographer! Here’s some of his best ones so far…

He would take a bunch of pictures and then run to me, “Mom, please help - I wanna see my pictures!” He was having such a blast with it! For Christmas, he received a camera and a video recorder from his grandparents, which makes me so relieved.  I don’t have to worry about him breaking mine!

 

Another thing we did was visit my sister in Portland.  Jack LOVES his cousins and I thought it would be a good time to go because they were moving to a new house.  So while I helped pack, he played non-stop:

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Tommy has been growing and growing and growing.  He is definitely a heavy weight! And he is starting to sit up, laugh and grab for things.  But sleeping is still his favorite pass time.

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Spending time with Grandmom and PopPop was another favorite pass time for the boys and we got fun Christmas shots at their house:

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A discovery that I’ve made is I need to eat every few hours to keep my sugar levels up and a smile on my face.  But I didn’t realize that Pete discovered that same thing until one night when trying to decide what snack I wanted before crashing for the night.  He offered to get something from the kitchen for me and after a while I started to wonder if he had forgotten or had fallen asleep… but he finally appeared with this:

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Gorgeous! Yummy! But way too late to eat such a meal.  I laughed and thanked him but was feeling pretty guilty about mentioning that I really can’t eat so much before going to bed.  I promised to be more clear about what “hungry” meant and then enjoyed it together.  So sweet, Pete!!

 

Jack made his first appearance on stage with his classmates performing in a Christmas recital and I… I really don’t know how to describe it.  They dressed Jack in an angel’s costume – which is like dressing a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  I love, love, love my Jack-Jack but he is definitely all boy.  The halo didn’t stand a chance.  The belt made of tinsel lasted maybe 5 minutes before being torn up and then thrown into the audience.  the glow stick just went straight into the audience.  The jingle bells stick was used as a tool to explore the holes in the stage and then thrown into the audience.  And the microphone apparently needed tweaking throughout his time on stage.  Sigh.  Afterwards, I apologized to his teacher but she was very kind, saying, “Oh, it went better than I thought it would!” Sigh again.  Jack.  You are too cute, my son.

And it took us two months to meet up with our next door neighbors and introduce to two newest additions to the family: Tommy and Melina.  They are only 3 weeks apart, but Tommy looks like a giant next to petite little Melina!

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Then we were off to Utah for Christmas! That needs it’s own blog post so -

 

To Be Continued…