He Speaks

Rooney...Life of the Party
Originally uploaded by Q.

After finally uploading all of our Christmas-time photos I realized we really didn't take that many. We've been so bad about taking photos when family is here. I assume it's just because so much is going on, but this really is the time to take them. I did not get one photo of my mom, Rooney w/my mom, Kristi, Andy, Dan & Kim. Well I guess their feet are in alot of photos. Anyway I'll like our Christmas and Christmas Eve photos here. If you have any photos you'd like to contribute I'll add those to the sets.

Besides Christmas, car break-in's and new houses there have been some other exciting things going on...specifically with Rooney. Over the last few days Rooney has really increased his communication. He has started to let us know he wants specific things by pointing and saying "Eh, eh". So that might not be "exciting" but it can be very helpful and frustrating at the same time. Not only has he started pointing for what he wants but he has also started to shake his head to let us know when he doesn't want something. I have found this new move very helpful. Now I can ask him 'Do you want...?" and he can clearly answer me! So nice.

He has also picked up some new verbal communication. He has started saying "Hi" to everyone and everything. I think it is so cute when he bends down and says "Hi" to the dogs. Just yesterday I noticed that he is starting to say "this", as if he's saying "What's this?". Finally, he has started to grab my finger and lead me to where he wants to go. I think this is very sweet...right now. I've had a lot of experience, through my nieces and nephew, with this little maneuver. It's cute now but can become really annoying soon because he'll have me up every 2 seconds to look at every piece of lint on the carpet.

I'm going to have to brush up on my distraction techniques.

One last little development that is in the works...I'm getting Rooney off the bottle. This is something I've been kind of trying to do, but not really, for awhile. I just decided this weekend to just stop giving him the bottle and use a cup this weekend.

So far, so good.

Santa Came, He Saw and He Conquered

So it's been awhile since I've posted. Alot has happened since then. I think I should talk about Christmas first. Rooney's Grandma Peggie, Grandma and Grandpa Wade (seen in picture) , Aunt Kristi and Uncle Andy all came to visit. They came under the guise of the holidays but Rooney knows it was really just to see him (I would have done the same thing). Rooney still hasn't discovered the joy of opening gifts but as you can see he enjoyed playing with the gifts (these are electronic drumsticks from Gma & Gpa Wade). Rooney is still learning where and what are appropriate surfaces for banging drumsticks on (Courage asked me to send out a personal thanks). Oh poor Courage! They're pretty sweet drumsticks though. Maybe Mom plays with them when Rooney is sleeping.

Of course we had a great time and it was wonderful to see so much family. If Rooney plays his cards right, maybe one day, all of them won't have to fly in to visit...they'll just be able to drive over.

Big news since I last posted...WE FOUND OUR HOUSE! Mike and I decided to put in an offer on a nice house that we first looked at a several weeks ago. Seems we should have stopped looking after the 1st house, but it took looking at all the other houses to tell us that. Anyway despite the windstorm and a 5 day power outage we were able to get into the house again, decided we liked it even more the 2nd time (and the 3rd) and put in our offer the next day. Thankfully it was accepted and we should be closing mid-January. Yikes! That was fast. I would like to show you a picture but it appears once it is off the market it vanishes from the internet. Just picture a nice,big house in your head.

So that's the good news. Of course the world needs to be balanced out, so once you have good news, there inadvertently has to be bad news. I'll post the picture first:

As you can see some jerk-off's broke into my car and ripped out my stereo, Sirius receiver and the brand new FM transmitter I got from Mike's parents! They also got my Wolfmother CD!

Jerks!

I got the last laugh though...I've still got the stereo remote control!

'Tis The Season

As you can imagine the last 5 days have been really rough for Western WA. We lost our tree which was sad but so many others have lost their houses, cars, power and sadly lives (using BBQ's & generators in their houses to keep warm). Rooney's Uncle Dana was on day 5 today without power, but as he was emailing me telling me about it, he heard from Renae that it came back on! After hearing everyone else's horror stories the loss of our tree, without any further damage, is really nothing. We have been counting ourselves very lucky.

So beside the chaos kind of going on around us, it seems alot of Rooney's buddies, and himself, have been sick. I can't imagine what it must have been like for some of those people not having power and then having a sick baby on top of it. Again I am counting myself fortunate. Due to this we really haven't done much this week and have pretty much stuck to the house. I had to break out some toys for Rooney that I was holding onto. They weren't Christmas gifts but I thought I would just wait to break it out until we had a bigger place. Guess what? I found room right in the middle of the living room. Rooney was kept busy for a little while. He found the box it came in interesting too!

Mike, Rooney and I will be out today house hunting. I have a list of 5 good candidates. Hopefully we'll find our future home today. We are looking in a blackout area though. I'm hoping that Dana's good fortune of getting his power back on today means that the houses we're looking at also got their power back on.

I don't want to seem greedy with good fortune though. I think I'll pack a flashlight.

A Mighty Wind

Let's just start out with the Big News...we had an awful windstorm last night (gusts up to 69mph) and our beautiful Twisted Willow fell victim. Mike and I were pretty devastated because we felt this tree added alot to our house. Thankfully no one was hurt. When the tree fell it miraculously missed the house, my car and the power lines! However, my car was blocked in the driveway and our tree partially covered our neighbors driveway so Mike wanted to clear out some of the smaller branches before anyone needed to go anywhere. He's been out there all day with a handsaw cutting off branches (it's partially my fault he was not using a chainsaw. I told him the Darwin Awards were full of men trying to do/use stuff that they didn't know how to).

Let me tell you times have changed. It took over 4hrs before a neighbor came over to offer Mike any help. The neighbor that finally came over was gone all afternoon and to give him credit I think he would have come over alot sooner had he been home. Plenty drove past and gawked but none even stopped to say "Man that really sucks about your tree". We did have some come by to take little twigs for their flower arrangements though. I was pretty appalled by this. Seemed like the vultures were circling a bit. Mike was very gracious though and of course anyone that wanted any twigs for their flower arrangements were allowed to pilfer. They rummaged around and Mike didn't even give them any attitude.

I can't say I would be the same way. I suppose that's why Mike handles all the family "PR". Here's your Post Picture of Rooney (it is his blog afterall):

It's Starting To Look Alot Like Christmas

Things have been a little crazy around here lately. I haven't written about this yet because everything has kind of been up in the air, but it looks like Mike and I are shopping for a new house! Tiny house no more! So that is exciting and of course searching for houses has consumed alot of my time...besides MOMS Club events, toy parties, Christmas shopping etc. I managed to come up with a list of 25 houses to look at, but our realtor was on vacation and we were still trying to figure out how we wanted to handle our financing, so the list shrank to 19. The last 2 weekends we have driven by some of the houses on the list and edited (also shrinking our list). Hopefully we'll be out this week and actually get to see the inside of some of these houses.


Today is the big MOMS Club Cookie Exchange. Renae has graciously agreed to host this event at her house. She may be sorry about that decision now. So far we have 17 moms signed up as "for sure's". With kids that means there are going to be 33 people in Renae's house plus a few extras she invited. Yikes! Wall to wall cookies! What was I thinking agreeing to this? Truthfully Mike talked me into doing this (not that there was alot of arm twisting). I think he wanted to make cookies again (there has been a pre & post pregnancy ban) and it was too hard to resist 16 other types of cookies. Here's a pic of Mike burning the midnight oil and baking 5-6 dozen cookies. The apron is mine but I let him borrow it. I taste tested the cookies & they are pretty good. Thanks for the recipe Mom Wade!

Finally we got our Christmas Tree this weekend. I am embarrassed to report that we opted for a fake tree this year. I am very Pro real Christmas tree and normally the bigger the better. We decided that for 1 year only, since the tree area is so cramped, and since Rooney can reach pretty far these days a small, fake tree made more sense this year. I decorated the tree last night while Mike baked. I tried to make it look as pretty as possible. Since the tree is so small our tree topper did not fit. I had to improvise & put a picture of Courage and Rocco with Santa on top. Those ingrates. I don't think they even noticed.

North Pole or Bust

Today was Mom & Rooney Day. We went to Factoria Mall as part of a MOMS Club event, but I was the only one that could go in the afternoon, so we went by ourselves.

First, Roonster and I took in the huge clearance sale they were having at Osh Kosh. Rooney didn't seem too jazzed to be clothes shopping though so we headed over to KidsQuest Childrens Museum. This place is great. Rooney can run around, throw toys around (and I don't have to pick them up), touch everything, get wet and play with other kids for a mere $3 (thank you Prime Card). Jeez I should take him there everyday!

After playtime Rooney and I thought it was time for some serious shopping. We got a few more Christmas and birthday gifts out of the way before we made our final stop to visit Santa. This also was great. There was absolutely no line, the Santa had a real beard and despite there being tears when Roon first sat on Santa's lap, I think we got a successful picture. So this is Rooney's first real picture with Santa Claus.



(Christmas 2005)




Not that I am downplaying how great his picture from last year was.

This Christmas Cheer Makes Me Feel Like Dancing

A day or so ago I posted a link on this blog of Rooney's Elf-y Christmas Dancing. This link seems to be a big hit with my mom (Rooney's Grandma Peggie) and passing the Elfmorphasis link around the family has been cracking her up. I received the link for 2 of Rooney's Great Grandparents Elf-y Christmas Dancing and thought it would be fun to post them here. If anyone else wants to create themselves and wants their link posted here let me know.

Great Grandma Morse's Elf-y Christmas Dancing

Great Grandpa Morse's Elf-y Christmas Dancing

Grandma Peggie's Elf-y Christmas Dancing