The chase is on

The kids find endless amusement in chasing Truman when he has "their" ball. Below is an exciting chase scene from earlier this evening. This is pretty impressive considering this episode was only 30 minutes after Dylan stuffed himself with peas, lima beans, canteloupe, peaches, and bread at Golden Corral.

Bluebonnets in bloom

The recent rains have been helpful for allowing Texas bluebonnets to come into full bloom. We took advantage of the beautiful weather yesterday to trek a patch about 20 minutes from home.

You can probably notice the difference over the past few months photos --they're 15 months old now. Grace loves saying "thhhocks" when we point to her socks and "dog" when we point to Truman. Dylan loves making noises, but so far his "adult" vocabulary focuses on saying "dada!".

Dylan cam

If you're wondering what it's like to live a minute in the life of a little dynamo, here's a brief snapshot on the Dylan-cam.

Playing house

Dylan and Grace seemed to enjoy their first foray into playing "house". As you can see below, Dylan was particularly enthused about opening and closing the window shutters (fortunately made out of plastic). This video was taken in the main hallway of the Montessorri school that they will be attending starting in April. In order to get them acclimated to the environment, we have been taking them there on Saturday mornings. From 10am to noon each Saturday, the school has "open playtime" in the main hallway between the classrooms , as well as the outdoor playground.

Needless to say, will be a significant adjustment for all of us when the kids start going to school. Hopefully they will enjoy the classroom activities and interaction with other kids as much as they enjoy the hallway toys. Stay tuned!

Sliding time

While we've taken and sent several pictures lately, we've been a bit remiss on the blog front...so here's an overdue installment.

Grace and Dylan have gotten some new skills -- and sharpened some existing ones -- over the past month or so. Some notable items:
(1) Their proficiency in eating finger foods has increased. Dylan will eat practically anything, while Grace is a bit more discriminating in her tastes and sometimes gets rather vocal in her discontent!
(2) Both of them have gotten fairly good at drinking from sippy cups. They love running around with them, and often deposit them in random places.
(3) We've reduced them from 2 naps per day to 1 nap (early afternoon).
(4) They've recently learned how to climb stairs and go down their slide! They picked up the stairclimbing fairly readily, but needed a bit of assistance for some time with getting into sliding position and pushing off. Now it looks like they've reached independence in this regard. Look out below!

Captain Chaos

Gasp!
Today Dylan learned how to open and close doors.

Happy birthdays!

Grace and Dylan celebrated their first birthday recently! December 20th landed on a Saturday, so we were able to have the party on their actual birthdays. We invited a dozen or so folks over for the party, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Both sets of grandparents were able to come and spoil the kids shamelessly! One of the items that was a hit was the combination ball pit / slide that Denise bought them (naturally, assembled the night before the party.) It turned out that a few of the bigger kids (2 years old) enjoyed flopping around in the pit, and Dylan really enjoyed playing with the bigger kids.

Here are a few photos of the event.

Snow in Houston?

Earlier this week, the kids got to see snow for the first time. We didn't think they'd get to enjoy a snowfall for quite some time. Denise bundled up the kids and took them out to frolic -- see attached!

Turkeys, giraffes, and fish...

We enjoyed a dynamic family Thanksgiving at Denise's parents place. Denise's brother David and his family came down from Dallas with their 5 kids in tow, and it was the first time they had met their little cousins. Thanksgiving meal was fantastic, particularly a certain butterscotch pecan pie which seemed to vanish rather quickly! After the meal, we played our annual "Turkey Bowl" game in the street...generally a dizzying pace of touchdowns driven by lot solid offense and porous defense. We concluded the event by each team claiming victory (another tradition).

On Friday, we trekked to the zoo -- giraffes, lions, birds, meerkats, monkeys -- and managed to avoid the rain showers that came through (a merry go-round is good cover!). After that, we proceeded to the Aquarium restaurant downtown. Dylan was fussy, but when we took him to the fishtank, he was mesmerized by the wiggling floating creatures. Maybe dad can take him fishing once he gets a bit older (no, not next month).

Attached are a few photos from the holiday weekend -- enjoy!

The zoo within the zoo

Grace's encounter with the kimodo dragon

Tooth Count

Dylan= 4 teeth.

Grace= 3 teeth.

Bananas= Scared.

Happy halloween!

Tulip (Grace) and Pony (Dylan) enjoyed their first halloween! We took them out with our neighbors the Orsis and the Powells, who also have young ones. Of course, we didn't let them have any candy (although we did enjoy some ourselves). Below are a few pumpkin patch pictures from the front yard as well as a few halloween photos.

Got game face?

Dylan and Grace watched their first UT football game yesterday. They marked the occasion by sporting their team colors, and brought their game faces since we were playing OU. Needless to say, their outfits were clearly a factor the Longhorn victory. Don't mess with Texas!

Spreadsheet Man is back in business...

Hold on to your pocket protectors -- spreadsheet man strikes again! Grace and Dylan have each grown almost a foot since birth, and our pediatrician tells us they are quite tall for their age. We're happy that they're growing, healthy, and happy!

Morning at the Zoo

We recently got an annual membership to the Houston Zoo and took Grace and Dylan for their first voyage last weekend. We stayed for about an hour -- just long enough for them to get accustomed to some of the sights and sounds, but not so long that it protruded into naptime. During our short stay, we toured the bird exhibit, saw the antelope, zebras, and more. At the beginning of the visit, the kids seemed a bit bewildered by the whole experience, but after some time seemed to warm up to some of the sights and sounds.

Grace was particularly enamored of one of the zoo staff feeding a raccoon and watching him (the raccoon) do tricks like shaking hands, putting his hands on his head, etc. Grace was leaning forward in her stroller during the entire raccoon playtime episode and smiling. Dylan really enjoyed the children's petting zoo and petting the goats. We're looking forward to many more trips to see our animal friends.

Happy Dylan and his goat

Grace is wary of her new friend

The eagle has landed...right above the stroller

The kids' first hurricane!

Dylan and Grace got to spend a week at the grandparents place as Ike rumbled through the Texas gulf coast. Denise's parents live about an hour further away from the coast than we do (in Spring, just north of Houston). Even though we weren't in an evacuation zone, we wanted to be particularly cautious with the kids, so we made the brief journey northward the day before the storm arrived. Ike whistled through late Friday night and power went out about 12:30 am. The kids slept soundly through the whole storm.

While we were without power for a week (and without water for 2 days), having a generator and a gas stove at the grandparents place made everything quite manageable. In fact, Denise's mom cooked a great meal every evening, causing us to remark that the "hurricane diet" was not exactly slimming us down! Grace and Dylan did great through the whole week, and really enjoyed their time with the grandparents. After we got power back at our place in Pearland, we returned home.


It was pretty amazing how much energy the hurricane still had even north of Houston. We feel very fortunate that the whole family is ok. We sustained minor damage to our house, but nothing irreplaceable, just inconveniences that can be fixed in due time.