White Christmas and toddler sledding hills

As I mentioned in a previous post, we had a white Christmas. Here's the view out of our front door on the morning of December 26th. I think Cheyenne only received a few inches out of the Christmas Day storm, but obviously all of it landed on our front walk. I even shoveled the day before but you can't tell. So with all of the snow, we ended up with a great toddler sledding hill in the backyard. This drift went all the way to the top of our 6-foot fence. It was a great toy for toddlers and neighbor dogs who wanted to explore a new yard.

Here's a step-by-step guide for a successful toddler sledding experience.

You start at the bottom of the hill.

You slip and slide around until Dad decides that it would be much easier to just carry you up the hill. You get distracted by the tree branches and ignore mom and dad's encouraging words. "Come on Will, don't you want to slide down the hill? It's fun! Come on Will, Mommy's getting cold. Will get to the top of the hill right now. Do you want to come inside? You want to come inside don't you? Will, stop pulling on the tree branches. You are going to break it. Will get up the hill right now!"
You get into sledding position while Dad manuevers the expensive sledding device (cardboard box) that we have procured. Nothing but the best for you kid!
Wheeee! Slide down the hill. Repeat until your hands get cold and the novelty wears off. Meanwhile, inside the house, is the cutest little jail bird. Doesn't that smile make you want to open the gate and let her play with the stairs?

Babyzilla

Reina is a big fan of the train set. She makes a beeline for it as soon as her bottom hits the living room floor. She scoots over to it as fast as she can and starts picking up as much as her little hands can hold. Here she's planted firmly on the tracks and a toddler screaming fest is about to begin. "No baby no no!" Good times.

Merry Christmas!

What a lovely day! It was Reina's first Christmas and Will's first Christmas where he really seemed to know what was going on. We all had a lot of fun. I was the first one up this morning. Well.... Reina and I were up together. Then Aunt Vicky joined in the fun and we tried to make as much noise as possible to encourage the last two members of the family to get out of bed. Will slept until 8:00 a.m. which is ironic because he rarely sleeps that late when we want him to. Finally, everyone was awake and downstairs, the Hansen grandparents were on their way over and the opening of presents commenced. Will enjoyed opening presents so much that he happily volunteered (and in some instances just went ahead anyway) to open everyone else's gifts. Reina was more interested in the wrapping paper, of course, but she had a good time too.

Will's big present was a Thomas the Train set and as you can see, it's a big hit. The adults in the group are enjoying it, too. In fact, there were a few times that I wanted to tell him to go find something else to play with so that I could get the bridge just right. But then I would have to remember who the present was really for, blah blah blah. Reina needed her caffeine fix to kick-start the morning so here she is drinking her daily Diet Coke. Just kidding. The bottle was one of her favorite Christmas items though. That and our telephone. And the train set. She's a big fan of Will's new train set. We are in the midst of a white Christmas. We don't have the big snowstorms that the Midwest are currently experiencing but it's been snowing and blizzard-y all day. What a great day to be stuck inside the warm house, with lots and LOTS of good food and time with family. Merry Christmas to all of you!

December festivities

It's been another wild week in the Pauley household. Between shopping, baking and busy days at work, we haven't had much time to blog. Both kids had ear infections that necessitated a trip to the doctor on Friday. We had Will's first preschool Christmas program (see more details below) and A LOT of last minute Christmas shopping. And baking, don't forget the baking. In between all of that, I did manage to catch a few shots of brother-sister-togetherness. Nothing like eating cheerios on the kitchen floor with your sib. Doesn't it look like Will told a joke that Reina didn't find particularly funny? She's so sophisticated already! As promised, here are pictures from the Montessori Christmas Program extraordinaire. Will's standing on the far right looking offstage in this picture. To preface this story, he's only been in this class since early November so we weren't sure how many of the songs he would know. When you add that to his general lack of interest in doing any one thing longer than 45 seconds (aka super-short attention span), I really didn't know how this would work. He initially balked at going on-stage but walked up there like a trooper.

As the songs begin, that's when the real fun started. (Attn Will-of-the-future: You might want to stop reading here because Mom is about to tell a very embarassing story about you.) Will sang the first song with both of his hands stuck down the back of his pants. And then he took a break from the pants and sang like an adult for a few minutes.

At this point, the photo portion of the narrative ends because I was laughing too hard to hold the camera still. During the next song, Will pulled his shirt up to mid-navel and sang with his belly hanging out. THEN, he found the waistband of his blue Diego underpants sticking out of the top of his pants, grabbed on to those and pulled, and sang the last song while giving himself a front wedgie. Good stuff. Next year he is wearing a turtleneck stapled into the waistband.

While all of the singing was going on up front, Reina was busy being the cutest little sister in the audience. I've mentioned before how much this baby likes music, but it bears repeating. She sways back and forth anytime she hears a song and if given the option, she'll sing along.

One more important event occurred this weekend. The Wyoming Cowboy football team played in the New Mexico Bowl. And they won! In double overtime! It was very exciting! The kids learned new words of exclamation from their Mom! The Cowboys were 14-point underdogs so not much was expected of them but it was a lovely end to their up-and-down season. If you want to read more, lots of great articles and photos can be found here. Go Pokes!

What Reina thought of Santa Clause

I think the picture says it all.

Chocolate milk and donuts

Today I took Will and Reina for their booster shot for the H1N1 vaccine. While we were driving there, Will asked me where we were going. When I told him "the dr's office" he happily announced that we would go get chocolate milk and a donut afterwards. See, like a month and a half ago, I had a few minutes to kill after taking him to the doctor in the morning, so he and I (as a special treat) stopped off and had (A HEALTHY!!) breakfast before I dropped him off at school. It struck me as ironic that he would remember an event from 30+ days ago but routinely forgets where his shoes, lunchbox, firehat, etc. are in the house. The toddler mind is certainly intriguing.

We are gearing up for Christmas here at the Pauley household. The tree is up and decorations are scattered throughout the house. Will is starting to figure out that something special is going on. He told me today that he wanted a new robot and when I told him that he'd have to wait until Christmas, he informed me that it already is Christmas! Dec. 25 can't come soon enough for some folks around here.

Hey look - it's a picture of the elusive toddler! He's actually saying "Merry Christmas" in this picture. It was the only way I could get him to stand still for 2 seconds.

Reina still isn't crawling but she's figured out a better way to get around. Here are the step by step instructions.

You start by looking cute. Then you lean forward as far as you can (it would take the removal of several vertebra for me to be able to bend like that) and push off on the floor.

Pull with your arms and scooch with your fanny. Continue this technique as you get closer to your target. Almost there! Gotcha! This was the last picture I took before the camera was pried out of my fingers.



Hope you are staying warm out there. We've had negative temperatures all week and that hasn't included the wind chill. There's a heat wave coming in and it's supposed to be 30 degrees tomorrow. Whoo-hoo! Hope your days are filled with chocolate milk and donuts.

Faces of Reina

Actually, this post should probably be called "What's up with Reina's hair?" It's getting thick (in spots) and a little unruly at times. I'm not used to baby girl hair. When Will's hair started getting too straggly, we had his first haircut. I'm afraid if I do that now, she'll look even more like a boy. I do have the obligatory little colored bows to stick on her head that shout to the world "I'm a girl!" but those fall out or she pulls them off and tries to eat them. Not sure what to do about her mustache either . . . Hey look, it's the Daddy again! Here's Glenn patiently trying to coax Reina into eating her sweet potato/chicken entree instead of wearing it. I think she started crying about 15 seconds after this picture was taken.

"There was a girl, who had a curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. When she was bad...." she was Reina!

Grandma Hansen and I have an on-going discussion/debate going on regarding whether or not Reina will have curly hair. Time will tell but this picture taken after her bath seems to indicate that she will be a curly girl. Poor little thing.

Any guesses as to what Reina wants for Christmas? She would like it to have web access and unlimited texting. Let's see, what else is new? Reina is so ready to stand up by herself. She hasn't quite mastered it but she loves hanging on to furniture and all of the new things to reach. Sitting on the floor is really boring and she gets fussy if we make her do it for longer than 3 minutes. Unless she has a cell phone to play with..... She's totally mastered the art of scooting around the floor on her bottom and crawling isn't far off. I'm trying to enjoy these last few weeks of immobility because wants she figures out the crawling business, our house will never be the same.

I haven't forgotten Will. It's super hard to get him to sit still long enough to take his picture. Shots of Will are becoming a bit like photographing Bigfoot. He's got plenty to say however. He talks and talks and talks and about 90% of it is a complaint, critique or suggestion on how we could be making his life better. His latest is to tell us to get out of his room at night when we are tucking him in. On the cute side, he thinks that the correct name for sheep is bah bah black sheep and that the restaurant with the golden arches is called "Old McDonald's." In between his critiques, he does tell both Glenn and I that he "yuves" (loves) us which still melts my heart. I yuve you too, buddy!