Mastering the Anatomy

This has blessedly been a quiet week as we've all come down with some form of a cold - although Amy seems to have it the worst - thanks for nothing!  Oh well, it doesn't seem to be one that hangs on forever, so we'll be thankful for small blessings!

As Kaleb continues to learn new things, he seems to have mastered if you ask him to point to certain body parts - such as eyes, nose, mouth, check, teeth and knee.  Although, you have to be careful because  sometimes he points to his body parts, and sometimes yours - so watch out when you ask him to point to his eye!!

Kaleb can also click his tongue, and likes to mimic you if you start to click/cluck your tongue.  It is quite fun to try new things and see if he can do them as well.

He has recently learned how to get off of our master bed, which is a fairly high bed so he has to very carefully slide off the edge while holding on to the bedspread otherwise it would be a serious crash landing!  He has also learned how to pull the chair out beside the bathroom counter, climb up onto it and then have full access to the counter-top - what joys!

He continues to be a very loving child, and gets SO excited when people that he knows well come to visit - he'll run from where he is in the house yelling his greeting as he comes - and throws himself at their legs hoping to be picked up.  You certainly know that he is excited to see you!  If he doesn't know you he is still very shy around strangers, which frankly his parents are not discouraging!

One of the Christmas presents that the kids received this year as a stomp rocket and Zachary and we parents have had a blast playing with this thing.  It provides lots of fun entertainment!  It goes about 70 feet in the air if you get it just right - so we've managed to have it fly into a tree (thankfully the wind brought it down the next day), and onto the roof of our house twice.  So we try and be judicious about the direction that we aim it as well as how hard the adults stomp on it! :)

Phrase of the week:  The Christmas tree has fallen down!  Zachary was aghast when he walked into the front room to find that the Christmas tree had been taken down and was on the floor - he didn't realize that we had deliberately dismantled it, so he felt sure that something had gone dramatically wrong!  Kaleb's new word is 'Blake' this week - which works out well for him when he's at Jennifer's! :)

Christmas Update - Christmas 4.0

As most everyone is aware, a crazy person tried to bomb a plane coming into the US - which is concerning on many levels but once we realized what it could potentially mean for us on our return to Orlando, we began to panic about our 5 hour flight from Winnipeg to Orlando. The rules at the time were NO carry-on bags were allowed on the flight - only a very small purse, medication, baby items etc. We had three stuffed backpacks with baby items, things to entertain the boys with, changes of clothes (after our first trip with Zachary in which he peed all over Amy, we've vowed to never fly without at least the kids having a complete change of clothes), so we were in serious trouble. How in the world were we going to handle 2 energetic, overtired, HUNGRY boys for 5 hours with nothing? But, God was good and answered our prayers - the flight and security agents allowed us to take 1 backpack on board with food, diapers etc and they allowed us to take on Zachary's Thomas the Train backpack that had all of our entertainment items (she was so gracious - she looked at us, then looked at the boys, and said "Well, we're allowed to use our discretion as to what is REALLY necessary, and I think that you're REALLY going to need something to entertain them on that flight, so I'll let you take the little toy backpack on" Thank you God!!) With that, the flights back weren't terrible and both of them even napped on the first flight.

We headed back to Orlando where we were anticipating lovely warm weather to unfreeze our frostbitten faces but alas we learned on the flight down that the weather was only 42 degrees Fahrenheit! What? That's not Orlando!!!? But yes, a cold front has been stuck over us all week, and each morning the temperature has been hovering around 32. In fact, they are predicting a hard freeze Friday night with a chance of snow flurries. Bizarre!

Why is it that unpacking and getting re-settled after a trip takes so long? We arrived back home safely on Sunday night late, and we had both taken off Monday to recover. By the end of Monday we had basically managed to put ourselves back to rights, but it took some heavy work all day long to try and get everything done.

The boys have a few more presents to open this weekend (hence the Christmas 4.0), so they should have some fun to look forward to.

Phrase of the week: Zachary likes to sing the song "This Old Man", but can't get the phrase "Give a dog a bone" right, and he insists that the phrase is really "Dicka-Docka-Bone" even though we've said it multiple times correctly! Of course once he figured out that it makes Amy laugh when he says it wrong, it'll probably stick around for a while! "Wa-wa" is Kaleb's new phrase for water.  Not quite right, but at least we recognize what he wants!

Christmas Update - Christmas 3.0

After finishing our visit in Prince Albert, we boarded a plane to fly to Winnipeg where we would visit Amy's Dad and stay with our long-time family friend/adopted Grandma, Norma. As you may remember reading from Christmas 2.0, the trip to Prince Albert had been fairly successful, so we were feeling fairly relaxed about our trip to Winnipeg - too relaxed it appears!

We were thrilled to see Amy's Dad, and visit with him in his new apartment at the lodge in Winnipeg. However, his apartment is only a 1 bedroom apartment and the boys had been used to running all over a 3 story house with their 3 cousins all week, so containing them in a small apartment that was not childproofed (think of a 52 inch flat panel TV that was at child level with no real protection around it), and with children who had no naps? Nightmare! Our angels in Prince Albert turned into little demons. Karis tried to sell Zachary off to the highest bidder at the local grocery store, but no-one would take him! :)

Aside from the frustrating way that our children behaved in Winnipeg, we had such a lovely time visiting with Amy's Dad, Norma (she was so gracious to open her home to us so that we could stay there with her and not all have to sleep in the same room), Amy's childhood friend Nicole, and several other friends from Amy's time in Manitoba. All of our visits were entirely too short but we're thankful that we had the time together. Norma taught Zachary how to play the game "Trouble," which was his first official game that he's ever played (although he calls it the Numbers game). Norma also had taught Zachary when he was a baby to climb down the stairs, so it was appropriate that he had another "first" at her home! :) Kaleb slept in our room with us, and reminiscent of Zachary when he was little, once he figured out that we were all together in the same room, he would wake up at night and start shouting "Up!, Up!, UP!" The weather was absolutely frigid in Winnipeg, -46 Celsius with wind chill, so we were not spending much time outside AT ALL!

The Rintoul Family - Thanks for Such a Fun Time!

Grandma Norma & Zachary

Amy and her Dad

Playing the Numbers Game (aka Trouble!)

Christmas Update - Christmas 2.0

Christmas 2.0 began with our trip to Canada in which we headed off to the teeming metropolis of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We were scheduled to leave Thursday, Christmas Eve when we found out on Wednesday that there was a huge storm going through the Midwest beginning that night and continuing through Saturday which was expected to be as bad as the blizzard of 1991 (isn't it a bad sign when they have a specific storm that it is going to compare against that is all the way back in 1991???). Even worse than the upcoming storm was the realization that if we were stranded in Minneapolis (which was becoming more likely with the fact that there were already flights being delayed and cancelled) was that we would have NO chance of actually arriving in Saskatoon that Thursday as there was only one flight to Saskatoon that day. Thinking through the ramifications, we realized that we wouldn't actually make it to the farm until Saturday if we missed the Thursday's flight as there was only ONE flight on Friday to the farm, which was super late and we'd be forced to spend the night in Saskatoon before ending our trip.

This all culminated in our scramble to re-book our tickets and fly out Wednesday night with the thought that at least we'd be in Minneapolis when that single flight took off the next day. Our flight Wednesday ended up being delayed, so we didn't arrive to Minneapolis until midnight (thanks for nothing) but luckily we had reserved a hotel ahead of time once we knew the flight was going to be delayed. However, traipsing through the airport with 5 pieces of luggage and 2 screaming children at midnight was NOT our idea of a fun trip! Zachary had managed to sleep most of the flight as we were in the bulkhead so he could stretch out on the floor but poor Kaleb didn't fare as well trying to sleep in our arms (poor kid). We managed to arrive at the Hampton Inn where Amy begged for something to feed the ravenous child (aka Zachary, the bottomless pit) where they informed her that they had nothing except junk food for sale! (What is up with that??) but they were gracious enough to allow her a box of Cheerios from the complimentary breakfast bar which was very acceptable to the bottomless pit.

The sleep that night was low in quality, and low in quantity. All four of us in one room does not equal sleep. We turned on the fan when we went to bed so that we'd at least have some white noise to try and muffle the sound of all of us in the room, but didn't notice that the switch on the heat control was on "Off." This meant that as the blizzard raged on and the night passed, it got colder and colder in the room. Zachary woke up around 2:30A and began to fuss and count his numbers, so Amy crawled in bed with him to try and keep him quiet - which meant that he then slept with some part of his body slung over hers all night long (at one point, he was perpendicular to her, with his feet on her neck and chest!! Prayers were answered when he didn't actually kick her in the face!) With desperation to keep the child asleep and not wake up Kaleb, Amy lay there all night (awake mind you) praying "Please God, if I get up to turn on the heat, I'll wake up Zachary and then all of us will be awake - please let Karis wake up and go turn on the heat, I'm freezing here!!" No such luck. In the morning, Karis casually mentioned that he was freezing all night as well!!! Dude - GET UP! Ah well.

We arrived safe and sound in Prince Albert where we spent a really fun 6 days with Karis' parents, his brother Kent, wife Lorie and their kids Emily, Connor and Kaylie, and brother Korey and his wife Rachel. All five cousins had a blast running around the house - up and down the long hallway roaring like lions! Good thing the house is big! We had Christmas 2.0 up there - and part of the presents was a remote control train set that was a huge hit the rest of our time there.

Zachary and Kaleb both loved going outside each day - the weather was about -15 Celsius, which actually wasn't terrible once they were all bundled up. Karis would pull Zachary around on the sled doing power slides which made Zachary laugh uproariously. Kaleb isn't too steady on his feet yet, and bundled up like a marshmallow made it even worse, so he was carried a lot of the time. We actually went downhill sledding as well, which Zachary adored, and Kaleb would giggle after each run. So, all in all, the snow was a big hit!

  

Another really fun event during our trip was going to the 5 pin bowling alley. They had bumpers for the kids, so they had a grand time seeing how many pins they could knock down. Kaleb just wanted to throw his ball and then chase it down the lane, so we had to hold on to him tightly.  There were also kiddy rides and blow-up bounce houses there in the bowling alley to play on afterwards, so Zachary thought that he was in 7th heaven.

Kaleb manages to escape his parents and makes a run for it down the lane

All in all, Christmas 2.0 was a great success - we had so much fun visiting with everyone and letting the cousins play together. The kids were mostly well behaved (not entirely, but close enough), the weather was bearable, and Amy was able to read 3 books - what could be better? With that, we were off to Christmas 3.0!

Doing puzzles was one of the daily highlights

The Zbaraschuk clan

Christmas Update - Christmas 1.0

Now that we're back from Canada, we will attempt to give an update on all of our happenings! Because there is lots to say we'll break them up into the different phases of our trip.

Christmas 1.0 started the weekend prior to our trip when we had Grandma come join us on Sabbath for a day of celebrating - to be ended with opening presents after sundown. The boys had caught a stomach flu bug from Blake & Evan however that manifested itself that Sabbath - of course! So, we hunkered down for the day with them - Zachary slept a great deal of the day, while Kaleb actually threw up all over poor Grandma! When Zachary got up around noon, he had a fever (the only one of the 3 who got a fever!) so we popped in the Motrin and he went back to sleep until about 2P. When he got up from that nap, he was in a fabulous mood and no fever - in fact so fabulous that we were all shocked and amazed as he typically is a very slow "waker-upper" and is usually crabby. Amy and her mom then went to deliver a cake to a friend, and when we walked back in the door, Karis was yelling for Amy to get Tylenol. Yelling for Tylenol can only mean one thing - Zachary was having another episode, and sure enough, we ran into our bathroom where Karis had Zachary in a lukewarm bath trying to get his temperature down.

Karis relayed that Zachary had been fine, and was watching a Christmas DVD in our room when Kaleb woke up about 4P. Karis was out of the room for about 5 minutes and when he came back in, Zachary was slumped over in the loveseat. At first, Karis thought that he had gone back to sleep, but as he got closer he noticed that Zachary was drooling and twitching. He called Zachary's name loudly and asked if he was okay, but Zachary was unresponsive. At that point, Karis felt him and his fever was back with a vengeance. So, he rushed him into the tub to try and get the fever down, and that's when we walked in.

As this wasn't the first time that he's had a seizure, we at least knew what to expect to some degree - Zachary was completely unresponsive - we were calling his name but he would not open his eyes, he wouldn't move and he wouldn't talk to us. We'd actually lift his eyelids to see if his eyes were normal looking, and he still wouldn't give us any response. We took him out of the tub and after about 15 minutes decided to call the ambulance. We took him to the ER and it was finally on the way to the ER that he started to at least respond by crying when they put on the blood pressure cuff. Anyway, the doctor said that most likely he'd had another febrile seizure from the fever shooting up (when we got to the hospital it was 105 degrees), and that they can remain unresponsive for up to 60 minutes after the seizure. They're supposed to grow out of these things by 5 or 6, and we're praying that they do in fact stop after that time! We went to the FH Children's ER, which we do have to say was awesome with its rooms, and the staff was very kind. It did take 4.5 hours though for us to get through all of the tests, which wasn't so great. We were very thankful that Amy's mom was here to watch Kaleb so that he didn't have to come with us.

So, Christmas 1.0 was delayed until Sunday morning, but the boys definitely had fun opening all of their presents. For months Zachary has been telling us that he was getting a guitar for Christmas, so we obliged the child by getting him a kid sized guitar. He's been having a good time learning how to "play" it (or at least make sound with it). We bought a giraffe that is like a stationary bike for Kaleb, and they both are having a lot of fun with that as well! :) The boys had a fun time though opening all of their presents, and helping us to open ours!

Sadly, both parents ended up getting the stomach flu on Monday - Karis in particular was hit hard with it so stayed home on Tuesday to try and recover. Amy embraces the "throwing up" experience early on, so always feels better faster than Karis who refuses to throw up at all costs. Embrace it!

The other fun event of our pre-trip Christmas week was the arrival of our friends Will and Heather Cochran and their son Kieran. They had come to visit Will's family, and due to overcrowding there, they decided to house-sit for us while we were gone. It was a win-win for all sides! It was great fun to meet little Kieran and to catch up with Will and Heather.

Phrase of that particular week: Mommy, it's too cold outside - when is it going to be warm?? I don't want to wear socks! At that moment, we began to worry that Christmas in Canada was going to be a disaster if Zachary was already complaining of the cold!

Zachary with socks on his hands as make-shift mitts before we left for Canada

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

The excuses to get out of bed are universal to all kids, but I thought that it would be fun to capture just a few of Zachary's recent excuses so that we won't forget them when he is 15 and wants to sleep all of the time! Zachary has always been a good sleeper until he finally figured out how to get out of the crib, and now that he's in his own bed. Now, we often have a night-time wake-up trip from Zachary - usually about 1-2A in the morning. We've made it a practice that he doesn't sleep with us (unless you want a kick or "punch" as he flings arms and legs about in his sleep!), so Amy always just walks back with him to his room and off he goes back to slumber-land. In addition to the middle of the night wake-up calls, there are also the times that he just doesn't want to go to bed, so he gets up several times after his bedtime for one reason or another. So, knowing that our memories fade very quickly, we wanted to memorialize some of those excuses!
**I need two hugs
**I am not tired
**I need another hug - the first one wasn't your best (we had to chuckle - this was particularly clever!)
**I need to go poop (he seems to realize that this is a foolproof excuse because he is never sent directly back to bed, so this gets used a lot)
**I want to sleep in your closet (this was the first night after our visitors went home, and he wanted to come back to mom and dad's room to sleep in our closet)
**The skeeters are biting me under my bed! (After playing outside in the evening and getting bitten by the mosquitoes)
**My blankets aren't right! (Such a good excuse to be re-tucked back into bed)
**I need another drink (we have a sippy cup by his bed, but it conveniently is empty in the middle of the night!)
**My toes aren't growing (this was an interesting one - Amy finally figured out that he meant that his toes WERE growing and that his footy pajamas were in fact getting too small and putting pressure on his toes! Now the journey of trying to convince him that he doesn't need to wear the footy pjs anymore!)
**The monitor is talking to me, and it bites me (this is the baby monitor camera that we have so that we can see/hear Zachary during the night)
**You didn't brush and floss my teeth.
**You didn't tell me that you loved me bunches and bunches
**I didn't tell YOU that I loved you.

In other news, Amy's Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Louis were here last week, so we had a lovely chance to catch up with them. It was great fun to see them as we haven't had that opportunity now for several years. In addition, Amy's mom's cousin and her husband have now re-located to Hudson, Florida (Mary and Harry Rimer) so we're hoping to enjoy seeing them more often now! It was fun to catch up with everyone last weekend, and we were doubly thankful that Kaleb did not manage to break anything while we were there! Whew!

It is hard to believe, but we're leaving on Thursday for Canada. Our friends William and Heather, along with their son Kieran, arrive on Monday as they join William's family here in Orlando for the holidays. They will be house-sitting for us (win-win situations are fabulous!) while we're gone, so that will give us peace of mind. Canada was beastly cold last week (we're talking minus 46 degrees in Edmonton, and with wind chill it was minus 69 degrees!!!), but it seems to have "warmed up" to only minus 10 degrees Celsius - thank you!!! So, we most likely won't have any posts (unless we luck out with time and computer availability) until January 8th'ish. We wish everyone a very merry Christmas as we celebrate the birth of Christ (yes, we realize that this isn't the real day, but it is still a joyous occasion to celebrate!)

Phrase of the week: "I'm going to leave and live somewhere else." Zachary is pulling the age-old trick of saying that he's going to go live somewhere else. It doesn't seem connected though to any great disappointment/anger that he's going through - he always says it very nonchalantly, such as when he's eating breakfast or running errands. When Amy asked where he was going, he said that he was going to live at Auntie Kelli's house! On the Kaleb front, we believe that two days in a row he has now said "Daddy" much to Karis' delight!

Aunt Bonnie, Aunt Louise & Amy's Mom (the three sisters)

Kaleb hasn't had a true haircut yet, but when we get back from Canada it will most likely be time to at least shorten it a LITTLE BIT. Mommy is having a hard time cutting it! :) So, before the haircut, we wanted to capture what it looked like from the back with all of the cute curls!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

Last weekend, we had lots of fun Christmas-y events. Saturday night, we joined friends at Celebration for a "nightly snowing" event where they produce soap bubbles from machines up on the light posts to make it "snow" - it was a bit chilly last weekend, so it was actually quite fun. They pre-"snow" the road so that it really has a snowy feel to it. Both Kaleb and Zachary were enthralled by the snow falling, and then they went on a little train ride around the town.

The next day, we headed off to the AHS Christmas party which was held at Universal Studios. We took the obligatory picture with Santa, which is never a hit with the Z-boys, but they had a nativity scene complete with a live donkey and sheep that was a HIT in a big way for them. Afterwards, we went to Islands of Adventure to take in the kids area which is all focused on Dr. Seuss. It was quite fun as Zachary has read a lot of those books. When we read "The Cat in the Hat" this week, Zachary commented that "he'd been in that book" because one of the rides is "through" the book in a "couch" seat that spins and moves as the story is narrated and all of the parts of the story have been set up along the ride. Quite fun!

Not interested at all in the Santa experience (oh well, it's no wonder as we've never told them that Santa exists/is real etc, so it should come as no surprise that they're aren't too wild about it!)

Zachary riding the carousel while Kaleb caught some "shut-eye" snuggled in with Auntie Kelli

Kaleb wasn't big enough to go on one of the rides, so he found amusement in looking at all of the Christmas decorations.

We're down to less than 2 weeks before going to Canada, which we're very excited about. We were supposed to fly out on the 25th, and Karis ended up getting the 24th off but we'd never changed our flights as we didn't want to pay the change fees etc. Well, God was watching out for us, and Delta ended up changing their flights on Christmas day to very late in the day, so they let us switch fee-free to the 24th on our original times! Very exciting. Amy purchased the last snowsuit for Zachary, so both boys will at least have something in Canada to protect them as it is SUPER cold right now - something like 30 below! Brr! There is not a lot of snow, so we're really hoping that it starts to snow a LOT soon!

Kaleb is now getting in on the teeth-brushing routine on a nightly basis. He is actually cutting his cuspids right now, so he's got a runny nose and diaper rash. Doesn't really make sense why that happens, but oh well!

Phrase of the week: Kaleb's new word this week is "baby" - very clear and out of the blue, so that was kind of fun. Zachary is VERY good with his days of the week, and knows what happens on particular days of the week. He has a bit of trouble though, so when he recites his days of the week, he'll say "Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Fursday, Friday, Sabbath, and Saturday." We've tried to explain that Sabbath and Saturday are the same day, but it doesn't seem to be quite connecting yet. His favorite day is Sunday when he gets to do "sprink-a-lurs" (lawn sprinklers) with Daddy to make sure that they're all working properly (such a fun excuse to get all wet and dirty!)