A long overdue update!  I have pictures and news to report from February-December 2012.  I'm going to break it up month by month.  Here is the first installment - a summary of February 2012 in the life of the Yatzecks, as best I can remember, with the aid of our family wall calendar, photos, and facebook status updates.  Enjoy!

February 2 - We went to LaFleur's Gym for open gym.  Gymnastics fun with friends!

February 3 - My brother Adam and his girlfriend Devin came to visit us before Adam leaves to move out to Seattle for his new job.

February 6 - Mary had a small birthday party at our house with a bunch of her homeschool friends.  We had cupcakes baked in ice cream cones - yum!

Some time during the first half of February, Joey put a shirt on all by himself for the first time.  It was inside out and backwards, but he did it on his own and was very proud.  Lily, on the other hand, is already showing an interest in dressing herself at just 10 months old.  She will go into her drawer and pull out leggings and try to get them on her feet.  This is totally a personality thing, and quite amusing actually.

February 13 - We went to a Valentine's Day party with all of our homeschool friends.  Lily looked adorable.

February 15 - Mary turned 6 years old!  Grandma Terri took her to the movies, and told Mary she could pick whatever movie she wanted.  She picked Star Wars Episode 1 3D!

They also went out to lunch at McDonald's, where they happened to have Star Wars Happy meals!

It was a fabulous day.

February 18 - Mary had a birthday party at our house with a bunch of family members and friends visiting.  Every year we let her pick out whatever she wants for her birthday cake and try to make it for her ourselves.  This year she really wanted a Dr. Who birthday cake!  We told her that almost none of her party guests were familiar with the show, so they wouldn't know what the cake was supposed to be, but she didn't care.  At first I was a bit reluctant to make a cake that none of the party attendees would "get," but then I came to my senses and realized that it was MARY's birthday party.  None of the party guests would probably ever remember what sort of cake Mary had, but Mary would definitely remember a totally awesome Dr. Who cake!  We used up all of our blue food coloring.

Joey also enjoyed the cake.  In fact, he ate so much of the frosting that later on when he went poop it seriously looked like blue-green play dough.  At first I was worried, but then I remembered the frosting and made the connection.  Didn't seem to bother him at all!

Fun with party friends.

February 21 - Lily is 11 months old!

She is eating lots of foods now, and is super happy about it.

Time for our monthly photo shoot - these just get more and more interesting!

Joey really wanted to be in some pictures too.

And so did Mary.

And Lily again.

February 23 - I took a picture during bath time!

February 25 - I don't remember the story behind this picture, but it's pretty cute.

I also found this picture on the camera that Mary took of herself and thought it was neat.

February 27 - We took a tour of a Pizza Hut restaurant.  It was really cool - they led us all around the kitchen and showed us the walk in freezer and refrigerator.  Then we all got to make our own pizzas for lunch.

And that wraps up February!  Hopefully a March blog post won't be too far behind!

Happy New Year!

Here are some highlights from January 2012.

January 4th:  Lily was playing in the toy room and found this echo microphone.  She had a great time listening to her own voice echoing inside it!

Mary was playing in the toy room with us.  Here she is dancing in an outfit a friend bought us from Russia.

Also, we made creepy crawlers for the first time today!  Joey loves them!  He had a good time finding out what things in the house he could get them to stick to.

January 6th: A sunny winter day.

Mary and Lily playing peek-a-boo under the kitchen table

January 10th: Having a "monkey platter" lunch!  One of Mary and Joey's favorites.

January 11th: Joey swallowed a penny.  He was very upset for about a minute.  And then we all forgot about it.

January 18th:  I went grocery shopping.  I often like to try to buy something new and interesting for us to try.  It could be a fruit or vegetable we haven't tried before, or anything really.  This time I noticed that there was a big sale on Twinkies.  I realized that Mary and Joey had both NEVER had a Twinkie.  So here is a picture of Joey eating his very first Twinkie!  They both said they were pretty good.  Joey could only handle about 2/3 of his.  Then he ate a whole bunch of fresh blueberries, which were also on sale.

January 19th: The kids and I made paper snowflakes out of construction paper and decorated our patio doors with them.  We also made God's Eyes out of popsicle sticks and yarn and stuck them to the window too.  So pretty!

January 20th: Lily started cruising today!  For those unversed in baby developmental terminology, "cruising" is when babies stand up and walk while holding onto something for balance, like the couch.  

January 21st: Another big day for Lily!  Her 7th tooth came in!  Now she has four on the top and three on the bottom.  She also is clapping now!  Here's a video of her showing off her new skills.

Tens month old and loving it!

Ta-da!

Mary, Joey, and Lily had something else exciting happen today - their cousin Maximus was born!

January 23rd: We went to go see a children's opera performance of The Three Little Pigs.  It was put on by members of the Florentine Opera and was actually very good.  Afterwards, we drove up north to go visit baby Maximus!

January 24th: Pictures of us with Maximus.  He was born weighing 11 lbs 3 oz and measuring 22 inches long!  

January 29th: All dressed up to play in the snow!

January 31st: The kids had a morning bath.  Lily really loves taking a bath!

She has also discovered the joy of emptying drawers and cabinets.  

Merry Christmas! (A post about December 2011)

A few of you have probably been wondering when I'm going to get this blog back up to date and get back to posting regularly.  There's just so much of life going on over here that it's hard to make time to get on the computer and blog.  In my defense, I did have this post halfway written when Mary crawled underneath the desk and hit the power switch on our power strip and everything vanished into cyberspace.  But I really would like to get back into the swing of things, so as a first step, here is a summary of what we did back in December.  :)

December 1st: We got our family pictures taken, something I had been meaning to do since Lily was born.  They turned out fabulously!  Mary put her feet into that cute little ballet stance all on her own - that's just the sort of thing she likes to do.  Joey very much did NOT want to get his picture taken, but we managed to get a few shots of him anyway.  I think that's why I look a little over-enthusiastic about getting my picture taken (Hey! Joey! This is so much fun!  Smile!). 

Later that night:  I was busy doing something-or-other and Lily woke up.  I asked Mary and Joey to run in there and entertain her for a bit.  I heard TONS of giggling, and when I went in their room I found Lily buried in hats and pillows and assorted toys!

 

December 2: Carli and Ada came over to play at our house with their kids.  Happy cousin play time!  Here is a shot of all of our cute babies.

December 3rd: I took the kids to a holiday festival in downtown Genesee Depot.  We met up with another family from our neighborhood and had a good time visiting some of the local businesses.  The kids got to decorate and eat cookies at a local cafe, visit Santa, go Christmas shopping, and more!  Here's Mary with a cookie she decorated.

 

December 6: St. Nick came and filled up the kids' stockings!  We went to "Celebration Day" to celebrate the completion of Mary's home school art and gym class.  Here she is posing with the kids in her class (cute one with pigtails and a yellow dress on the left). 

Afterwards we went outside to walk along the river and look at the ducks.  Never gets old!

Later that day:  Lily standing up next to our toy piano!  She loves to play on it. She's wearing some of the leggings I sewed up for her.

December 8th: We all went over to Grandma's house to celebrate Aunt Ada's birthday.  Joe and I made her this bouquet of fabric flowers and a matching set of cloth napkins.  I thought they turned out really cute so I took a picture.  I thought it would be nice for her to set the flowers on the table and eat with cloth napkins and feel all fancy.  :)

 

December 9th:  We went to a cookie exchange with our home school group.  I made dozens and dozens of snickerdoodles - one of my favorite cookies.  Turns out, they were a lot of people's favorite cookies because two other families made them too!  Oh well.  The kids had fun making gingerbread houses too. 

Mary's Gingerbread House

Joey's Gingerbread House

All the gingerbread houses!!!

 Lily had a good time crawling around and stealing pacifiers from other babies.  She loves to grab them out of other babies' mouths - it's such a tempting little ring dangling down!  However, since she doesn't use a pacifier, she has some very unique ideas of what to do with them...

December 11th: We must have had pancakes for breakfast because I have this great picture of Lily eating them!

 

We also decorated our Christmas Tree!  I think it turned out rather impressive this year.

 

December 12th: Lily's 5th tooth came in!

Also, we played with play-doh.  I might not have remember this, because we play with play-doh a lot, but I have this picture Mary took of her play-doh living room set for her Polly Pocket doll.

 

December 15th: Joe, Mary, Joey, and I went to go see the Milwaukee Ballet perform the Nutcracker.  We left Lily with Grandma Terri.  We were gone about five hours and it was the longest I had been away from my baby girl, but everything went splendidly.  We all really enjoyed the ballet too.  During the performance, Joey whispered to me, "E...X...I...T....does that spell 'exit'?"  I thought that was pretty cool, even though I guess for him the glowing exit signs were more interesting than the performance!  He's recognizing a lot of signs and logos now.  Mary also had a bit of an epiphany during the dance of the flowers, excitedly whispering to us, "Two plus two plus two plus two is EIGHT!  And two plus two plus two is SIX!"  There were eight flower dancers twirling around on the stage, separating into pairs and merging back together again.  I think watching ballet is a GREAT way to learn about math - much more fun than flash cards and worksheets!

December 16th:  We got new carpet!  It is awesome!  I don't know why we waited so long!

December 17th:  It snowed a little bit!  Mary and Joey insisted on going outside to play in it.

December 18th: Lily's 6th tooth came in!  We also had a family Christmas party for Joe's side of the family at our house.  The kids had lots of fun playing with their cousins and opening presents.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any great pictures of the whole shebang.  But there was good food, and family, and Christmas celebrations all around!

December 19th:  We painted!  I might not have remembered this either, because we paint a lot too, but I have this great picture of an Advent wreath that Mary painted.

 

December 21st: Lily is nine months old!  It's getting harder and harder to get her to pose for these, but I love them!  Can't wait to have the whole series all lined up!

Runaway baby...

December 24th: Christmas Eve!  We got up and went over to Joe's parent's house to have brunch and open up gifts over there.  We all went to mass together, and when we came back we discovered PRESENTS under the tree!  Joey was really excited about the new magnetic marble roller coaster he's got his hand on in the picture - he kept asking to open it up and play with it right away!  We unwrapped everything and then drove up to my parents house and spent Christmas Day with my side of the family.

Here is Lily with her cousin Autumn, who is six months older.

On December 28th, Joe and I flew out to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a home schooling conference.  We brought Lily with us, Mary stayed with my parents, and Joey stayed with Joe's parents.  So we all had a little bit of a vacation!  The conference was fabulous, and Lily was an excellent traveler.  During the conference one of the other dads snapped this photo of her sleeping in Joe's arms.  Such a sweet little face!

Unfortunately, when we got back from the conference we came home to this:

Still, all in all, not a bad December!  And only a few of our favorite ornaments were broken.  It was a good motivator to get all the Christmas stuff down and put away though!