Christmas Eve Mass

Armed with goldfish and sippy cups, we attempted to continue our tradition of Christmas Eve mass with the entire crew.  Owen was an angel, stopping in the middle of mass to turn to Pops and tell him "I'm being a REALLY good boy." When awake, Ben was great.  He was a little tired but Jen was able to rock him to sleep instantly.  Parker and Jack, well, they were a little different story.  I prefer to stay in the cry room as it is just better than attempting to join the general public which requires making a great escape when things start to get crazy.  Well, I gave in and we attempted…

Let's lead into this story and say that Jack and Parker aren't terribly fond of having long, in depth conversations, but they love letters.  LOVE THEM.  Whenever they see letters that are distinguishable or ones they are preferential to, they shout them out (the X on an EXIT sign, the N from the NBC logo on TV, the O on everything, etc).  Why oh why did we not remember this before going to a church filled with crosses that look like T's?

"T" Jack shouted, "T, T, T!!!" Shouting and pointing at all the crosses.  If we weren't supposed to be celebrating the birth of Christ, it would have been pretty funny; but instead, it was a little bit embarrassing.  We definitely had our fair share of dirty looks, the "I'm glad my kids aren't acting all crazy like that" expression, and a couple of "I remember that phase" smirks.  We had to immediately leave the general population, enter the cry room, eat all the goldfish we brought, and then bring P and J outside to walk around and point at the letters on the church sign.  As a whole, the church outing wasn't necessarily a win or a loss, it was more like we just stopped playing in the 9th inning, took our ball, and went home. 

The Jumper

There is a new movie now showing in the Connisonville backyard theater…

Title:  The Jumper

Rating:  G

Starring:  Owen, Parker, and Jack Connison

Storyline:  Purchased to serve double duty to give Mommy another outdoor activity for the dude ranch and as a "let's wear out the kids until exhaustion" toy; this Little Tikes bounce house will provide hours and hours of entertainment as all the kiddos jump to their hearts content. 

Soundtrack:  Jump Around by House of Pain (hopefully this is not a self fulfilling prophecy)

meanwhile..

Its frat day at the clubhouse

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ben is 4 months already?!

Hi I'm Ben. I rarely cry. I barely fuss. I never beg to eat. I'm by far the least neediest human in the entire house. I coo. I laugh. I'm adorable. I constantly smile. I'm totally go with the flow. I've slept through the night for the last 2 months. Just rolled over for the first time this morning. I'm the best baby who ever lived. Shh don't tell the others. Good thing the babymaking party is over in this house because it doesn't get any better... Just sayin..

.
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Fosstule Bosstule and other Christmas stories

If you don’t know who Fosstule Bosstule is, don’t be alarmed.  He is our Elf on the Shelf that goes back to the North Pole every night and reports to Santa on how good the boys were during the day. He then comes back to our house in a different location to watch the next days activities. Many of Santa’s elves have funny sounding names, but we are completely unsure of where this name came from, except Owen’s little noggin. Who really knows what is going on in there or what he was trying to say when the name Fosstule Bosstule came out.

Owen is very anxious to find Fosstule everyday when he wakes up and the one day he “left his elf hat at the North Pole,” Owen was very distressed because his head was cold. Good thing he goes back to the North Pole every night and was able to retrieve it. We don’t necessarily see a dramatic improvement with Owen’s behavior with the addition of this magical elf at our house, but it is a consequence that Owen has to deal with when he knows that Fosstule saw him do something wrong…

This weekend, Pops dropped all of us downtown. We took Parker, Jack, and Owen to see Santa at the Miracle on Fulton Street. With manufactured snow (read: Dawn bubbles) dropping down from overhead, Parker was a little apprehensive about the entire thing. He quickly got over it and decided to watch the rest of the sights from his front row seat in the wagon while he and his brother were chauffeured around the place. They have live reindeer and the boys all got their picture taken with the antlers and we were able to take a decent pic with Santa (which by the way, is only available via printed picture so I now have to scan it in order to post it here...). The lines weren’t very long and we had some goldfish keep the little guys occupied for a while and then were able to get everyone looking in the same direction.

The big stage had a band playing Christmas carols and room for Owen to dance around. They boys all had a good time, but we were definitely sad that we left little Ben at home. We weren’t sure of the crowds and effort it would really be to take a Santa picture, so we are definitely getting one of our WHOLE family next year. Sorry Ben!!

This was better than the previous two years where we didn’t even make it out last year as we were still in survival mode with twin 10 month olds who were constantly fighting ear infections. Then there was the year before with Jen uber prego with the twins, Owen was 16 months old, and there was a line at the mall a mile long. We did get this shot that year…Santa is about 40 yards in the background, but he did make the pic.

I love Christmas time and can’t wait until the big day when the boys get to open their stuff from Santa. They have all been good boys this year, so I think they will have lots of presents (I also know this because I check our credit card statement...good thing I love Mrs. Claus)!

I’m pretty sure Dora’s hitting the sauce

All the boys really like watching Dora the Explorer  (a little too much if you ask me), but we are still in survival mode so the TV helps entertain the kiddos when things actually need to get done in Connisonville (dishes, laundry, dinner, adult conversation, what-have-you). Well, Dora likes to teach Spanish to her children viewers. Owen has picked up on “hola” and “si” and “vamanos” and especially on “delicioso.” Anything and everything he eats is delicioso.

In true holiday spirit(s) the other night, I recommended that Jen and I wrap all the presents while watching TV (I'm sensing where the boys get there TV watching skills) and drink hot chocolate spiked with Kahlua. As I was pouring our glasses, I noticed that “Delicioso” is printed right on the label. Apparently Kahlua is imported from Vera Cruz, Mexico and this is part of their marketing campaign.

I think I now understand why Dora is always in such a good mood, but also why she needs you to repeat things multiple times…

mr happypants strikes again

I go check on Ben during his "nap" to find him quiet as a mouse, wide awake, leaning up on his little arms looking like he's saying some prayers. Always always smiling. Love this kid!
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living the dream

One of these things just doesn't belong. another day in paradise.
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Video from Santa

Santa Claus sent Owen this video from the North Pole:

http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/watch/guest/LVHuGlqmhmCQWdiIuqJC5w

He watched it for about 15 seconds and thought it was cool, but lost interest in Santa quickly...maybe next year he will like it better.

2010 Christmas Card

This is our 2010 Christmas card.  Jen is awesomely awesome at creating beautiful cards of our family (with a little help from Shutterfly of course). 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Connisonville!!

-Brett, Jen, Owen, Parker, Jack, and Ben

A day of firsts.

Today Ben giggled for the first time playing peek a boo with me. Not just a coo and a smile. A full on adorable baby giggle.

Jack decided today he'd crawl uP the slide and then slide back down. He'd be so proud when he got to the top he'd clap his hands and say "yay!" then head on down... Must have repeated this new skill 20 times.

Owen walked into school with katie and Mack today. Mack isn't adjusting to being back to school since Joseph has arrived and has started crying crying crying upon drop off. And since owen is now totally happy about going to school (after crying for six weeks when he started), today he told Mack "i'll take care of you this time buddy".

Parker's first is borderline vile. Apparently when owen got home from school he went to the potty without telling anyone. and I didn't happen to go in the bathroom all afternoon to notice. But as I was fixing the boys dinner I realized I hadn't seen park in a few minutes so I went to find him and oh yes. He broke into the bathroom, potty turned over, contents everywhere with Parker laying in contents snow angel style.
Immediate bath commenced following immediate cloroxing of bathroom. (sigh)

Daddy and I even had a first. We went to a christmas party tonight and left all four of you with sweet dear Louise without putting anyone to bed first. Whaaaaat?

just like elmo says, "you did something new today... hooray! hooray! hooray!"
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this about sums up the year! and what a year its been....

Ben’s Bad Night

Newsflash: Ben isn’t perfect. I know it is tough to believe, but we had a not so great time the other night. He’s got the boogie-woogs and it pretty congested, so it isn’t his fault, but it still wasn’t pretty for us. It started with a 12:30am wake up call to feed him, another one around 2:50-3:45am which ended with me rocking him in the chair, and the last one was an hour and a half sleeping/feeding on and off with Jen around 5am. We were both exhausted and at that point realized how lucky we were that Ben usually sleeps from 8 or 9 something into the 6 o’clock hour. He is 3.5 months and sleeps like an angel, and so do we because of it.


I guess we have to take the occasional bad night in exchange for the peacefulness that usually takes place.

On a similar note of Ben not being perfect, the times that Ben is usually the fussiest is when he is OVER tired. If we miss that window of opportunity to put him down, he kind of goes berserk. We recently had one of those nights too when everyone else went to bed, he screamed for about 25 minutes. He fought me tooth and nail and eventually had to be soothed, rocked and passed out in my arms rocking in the chair…it was pretty pathetic. 

Ben, let's try not to do that again.  Love, Dad.

A Special Date

Snowman sippy with hot chocolate

We took Owen on a “special date” to see all the lights at the Baton Rouge Zoo the other night. They have a Celebration in the Oaks type deal (but not quite as dramatic) so we figured we could take him while MM and PP were in town. I think Owen just liked the idea of having some one on one time with his Mom and Dad. We had hot chocolate (in the special snowman sippy seen above) and shared a pretzel, and walked around the zoo bunded up in our winter garb…it was pretty chilly. After a run in with the anteater and a pretty ornery yak, we headed home because the “train was sleeping” so we couldn’t ride it.

Days later, he is still telling me about that “late car ride” and how we were up way past our bedtime. I think he had a pretty good time...I know Jen and I did.

Previously our party of 3

Too Cool for School



Field trip to the BR Zoo

Since I haven’t been consistently updating on Owen's progress at the Mother’s Day Out program, I am choosing to wrap it all up into one post.

After a lengthy period of adjustment, Owen has finally accepted that he goes to school on Monday’s and Thursday’s. Almost daily, he says…”no school today?” regardless of what day it was. He just didn’t want to go. At first, he would melt down, then he got over that, but just got sad about the morning and would whine  (Side note:  3 year olds whine...a LOT).  We would do our daily dance of explaining how great school was and on and on and how we love to pick him up and drop him off, etc. Eventually he didn’t have tears and would go without a fight. He loves to have me pick him up in the afternoons – probably because I tell him that he should love it...

We had about 6 weeks of tears, some days were bad (2-4 hours of crying) and some days were much better (5 minutes-30 minutes). Owen got used to the routine and he is now tear free. As a matter of fact, we have had some fun outings that he was able to look forward to: a trip to the fire station, a Thanksgiving Feast, and a trip to the BR Zoo. They have music class, play on the playground and have even helped tremendously with potty training (more on that later).

We have been very happy with Owen’s teachers (Ms. Marilyn and Ms. Anita) and they seem to love him too. Overall Jefferson Baptist has been great and we would highly recommend them to anyone. There was a spot that opened up so they can now fit Owen in 3 days a week. We are starting that in January after the holidays and we are pretty confident that he will adjust fine. It will be a break for Jen another day of the week so that will also be nice. After we thought about putting Parker and Jack in a 2 day program starting soon, we considered the cost – which would equal about $450/month! Hopefully, Daddy will learn some creative accounting between now and the fall and we can send them all over there without breaking the bank.