Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas! Henry, though he didn't fully understand it, was in love with the idea of Santa! My parents drove from Sonora to join us for he holiday. We spent the days leading up to Christmas cooking and enjoying all of the Christmas festivities around town. We met up with my brother's family and watched the Christmas ships which was a lot of fun. We also went to the Microsoft party and decorated cookies and played around! Henry and Titi also went ice skating!

Henry awoke each morning asking for Titi and Papa and was more than happy to wake them to get the day started. He did a lot of cooking with my Mom. His specialty is limes in water with cinnamon! He did a lot of handiwork with my Dad and loved how Papa let him use the tools just like a big boy!

Henry became accustomed to having a Titi cookie after every meal. Funny thing is he likes my Mom's spritz cookies with the cherry in the middle! No one else in the family like those ones except for my Mom so she was very happy! He loved all of the attention and did lots of showing off for them.

My favorite part was having my parents here to take care of me! As I have entered my third trimester I notice that I am slowing down quite a bit. So having someone cook all the meals and do all the laundry, etc was quite a treat! My Dad took over as resident handyman and we finally installed our new pot rack which I love! We had a little misstep while installing a back splash in the kitchen but we will blame that on the materials (those little glass tiles are really hard to install perfectly!) My Mom cooked and cleaned and let me sleep which was magic!

We all logged a lot of time playing our new Kinect and it is quite a fun workout! My Dad was amazing at soccer and my Mom has the routine to Poker Face down pat! My brother and sister in law and their kids came for Christmas Day as well as our friends the Hubert's. We had a great time. Holidays are so fun with kids running around and family and friends to relax with. We had an amazing Mexican fiesta courtesy of my Mom and everyone went to bed full and happy!

As for gifts I decided to let Henry open only two. My reason was that we could slowly open the rest as I get bigger and bigger and also have some things to open once baby girl arrives and we are figuring out how our little world is going to be. Also after opening just one, a motorized fire truck, I realized he was quite content. So we gave him a car ramp from Santa and that was that. He still is consumed by both and happy as can be. Also this means I have another awesome fire truck and train set for him to explore once we bring the baby home (thanks Nana and Piper fam!)

Here are some pictures from all the fun

Henry cooking with Titi



Henry's cookie decorating skills!


Henry by the tree


Party at Microsoft



Henry loves wearing Titi's glasses!


Ice Skating time!


Reading with Papa

Big Boy Bed

Two weeks ago we transitioned Henry from his crib to a big boy bed! Bill and I couldn't decide if it was the right thing but finally in a spur of the moment decision (big boy bed had been in the garage for weeks) we decided to just do it! We asked Henry if he wanted a big boy race car bed and he said yes so we started the process. Henry helped Bill take down the crib and set up his new bed. We realized once we had the new bed set up that it needed a twin mattress so Bill rushed out and got Henry a big boy mattress too. We topped it off with some race car sheets and Henry was in 7th heaven playing in the bed. We decided not to say anything to him about getting out and let him play in it all evening until bedtime.

First night was the roughest but he never got out. He just seemed a bit confused and was waking up every hour crying. We still considered it a success because he usully is up throughout the night and he never got out. His first nap was great. He played for 30 minutes and then proceeded to take a 3 hour nap! Ever since he has been doing great. He is sleeping through the night and last night he did an 11hour stretch of sleep which has not happened for soooo long!

Overall I know we got lucky but I kind of feel like with all of the sleep troubles we have had with this kiddo we deserved one easy transition! The only hard part now is resisting the urge to curl up next to him and cuddle!

Grandpa Steve's visit!

What a wonderful December and Christmas we had! It is going to take a couple posts to get caught up so we will begin with Grandpa Steve's visit to Seattle. We had a great time and celebrated our own little Christmas which was a lot of fun. Grandpa gave Henry a balance bike which he loves. He gets better each time he rides it and in a couple months as he grows taller it will be a breeze! Henry loves reading and playing with Grandpa. He often puts him to work with play dough and they did a lot of playing around and building with all of Henry's toys. Grandpa even got to see Henry at Little Kickers soccer class and Henry was quite the show off!

We even got to have Halle and baby Thomas stay the night with us, which made for a full and fun house. The only bummer of it all was that Henry got a double ear infection which made him miserable! He did impress Grandpa though with how tough he was when it came to pain. I noticed he wasn't feeling well as his Mom but he had Grandpa believing he was in tip top shape!

We all ventured to Portland to meet our new niece sweet baby Lucy or as Henry says Baby Wucy. She is absolutely precious and is a little thumblelina. Anna and Andy are doing great and loving that little sweetie up. They humored Henry's love of playing and constantly talking about fire poles which made him very happy. We had a great visit and I stupidly forgot my camera so I will have to take pictures the next time we go, which I hope is soon!!!

Santa

I am putting together a bigger post for tomorrow with some pictures and updates of what we have been up to, but for now I will post a look back at our visits to Santa. This year went much better than last. No tears but also no real smiles! He had Santa laughing by the end because he was making some very wierd noises and asking if he could just go home!

Year #1- very cold out so we bundled him up and then forgot to unbundle him for the picture!



Year #2- This one explains itself!



Year #3- A little hesitant but we got him on the lap and he didn't cry!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

We are in full holiday swing at the Birkholz house! We had a wonderful thanksgiving with Bill's cousins and Aunt and Uncle. Henry showed off his new talent of being able to pull his pants down and Bill was very excited to show Henry that his new Windows phone played cartoons, which kept his pants up and allowed us to enjoy an amazing feast!

I actually started that morning with my Christmas decorating and am proud to say we are pretty much complete. Lights up, tree chopped down and decorated, advent calendar all filled up and Santa mantle completed (though we have space for one more on its way from my mom!)

We got our tree and had fun riding the tractor and hunting down the perfect tree. Henry loved the candy cane and puddle jumping most of all!








I have a big tree advent calendar for Henry that I have filled with ornaments and random little gifts that he gets to discover each morning. He has a little tree in his room he gets to hang the ornaments on and he loves it a lot! This is my favorite time of year and it has been so fun to introduce it to Henry. I think he may have inherited my love of the holidays! He can often be found singing Jingle Bells while playing!



We still have lots more big plans for our holiday fun but we have all been battling a cold for the past couple weeks and just when we thought it was gone it returned yesterday with avengance. That means no one is sleeping or feeling all that festive. He is so stuffy and looks so sick but not so surprisingly it has been hard to keep him resting. He does love the claymation Santa Clause is Coming to Town so we have watched it 100 times while drinking warm apple juice!

I hope to take more pictures of all of our festivities as the season continues. We have cookie making and some crafts to do. We also are going to watch the Christmas Ships and go to some light displays around town and I promise to bring my camera.

Snow Day

Yesterday we had snow! It was so nice to watch the snow fall all day and we took many adventures out to the yard to play in the snow. The only down side is that it is so cold (16 degrees right now) that the roads are just sheets of ice. This means we are stuck at home and might have to miss our soccer class today...boo!

So we spent the day yesterday entertaining ourselves with playing in the snow and playing inside. My favorite moment of the day was Henry's Frosty performance. The video and some pictures of the day are below.

Baby It's Cold Outside

The weather has taken a turn for the very cold! We are expecting a low of 17 degrees tonight...brrr! So we had a cozy week and weekend with friends. The kids love to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse all cozied up in my bed. Little baby Thomas is getting so big and he is starting to be able to hang with the big kids, at least for a photo opportunity. I love see Henry with him. Its kind of like big brother training.

We had a light snow storm yesterday. Nothing stuck to the ground but Henry loves trying to catch snowflakes with his tongue. It doesn't look like it was snowing in the picture which makes it seems wierd but I am sure I will have plenty of snow pictures if the weather keeps up for winter.

Power Play

Yesterday was just one of those days where everything required some effort. Just getting out the door took 20 minutes of conversation and frustration! So I had one of those days where I kept trying to send Bill telepathic messages to come home early. When Henry woke up from nap I hd all but resigned to the day and decided we would stay home and be lazy. Henry had different plans and decided we must go to the park. I went expecting it to be a bad experience because our last trip to the park had ended in tears and a tantrum because I had forgotten our sand toys. We brought Henry's bike, and the sand toys, and he rode through the entire park and we just played and had fun. It was exactly what I needed!!!! It was empty which is always fun because it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. Henry also shared in the sandbox which is major. It took some persuading and tears but it happened!!

So I realized that my 2 year old has the power to take me from the most frustrated person in the world to the happiest. I am beginning to think that it is a lot of power for such a little guy!

Here is a picture of Henry riding through the park. I dare you not to smile just looking at this picture!

Celebrate

We had a great weekend! The Ducks won, I went to brunch with friends, we saw lots of pictures of our sweet new neice Lucy and we got to celebrate my nephew Davis' birthday! We went over for dinner and Henry had a blast. He even sat at the table with us and ate some dinner just like at home. He loves his cousins and Auntie and Uncle a bunch and it is so fun to get together. The picture below is when we were eating birthday cake and Davis put the birthday hat on Henry. As you can see he loved the cake and the hat! We also go to go ome with a bunch of hand me down books and toys!

Tea For Two

Henry and I had a tea party this morning. It was so chilly when we woke up that we decided to warm up with a yummy drink. I should also mention I was out of coffee and it was 6am and we needed to kill some time. Henry enjoyed the first few sips but by the time I took this video I think it was a little bitter for him. He did keep saying he loved it. It was a really sweet and silly time for us this morning!

Happy Halloween

We kicked off Halloween on Friday with the big Microsoft Halloween Party. It was so much and the two little tiger cubs had the best time. They both learned to trick or treat and ate a fair amount of sugar! They ran and growled and just had an excellent time. Below are some of the best pictures of the day. The one where Hen is stripping down was towards the end of the night and he walked way from us and proceeded to get naked around the hundreds of other party pe0ple!









As we were leaving my crazy sugar high junkie child decided to put on a show. The whole thing lasted close to 15 minutes and was really funny. He is singing the itsy bitsy spider for the crowds around him and he has a back up dancer who is also on a sugar high! All of the funny stuff and sweetness really does make up for the fact that he can't sleep through the night!

Titi and a Little Sister!

We have had a wonderful string of days! First off last weekend Bill and I headed to Vegas for a memorial golf tournament for our dear friend Tom, who we lost last November. It was a great tribute to such a great person. Only a memorial of Tom could allow a 5 month pregnant gal to have fun! While we were gone Henry got to hang out with Grandma Titi. They had a great time and he didn't miss us at all. He even kept saying "No Mommy...Titi!" As always we came home to a clean and happy house with a fridge and freezer full of yummy food! My Mom truly is the best Mom ever! We didn't get any pictures but here is a short video of Titi and Henry playing. Henry loved it that Titi was pretending to be stuck!



The week kicked off with our 20 week ultrasound. It's a girl! The baby is perfectly healthy and made it a challenge to get the pictures we needed because she was moving around so much! We are very happy the baby looks great and we are still trying to picture what it will be like to have a little girl. We are so boy consumed with trucks, balls, stomping and craziness that we are having trouble imagining ourselves with the opposite. But by the looks of the baby during the ultrasound and the increasing movement I feel each day she may be just as crazy as her big brother! Here is her profile. It is a little bit blurry because she wouldn't be still. The body part is her shoulder turning away from the picture.

WEE WEE WEE

We put Henry's rocking chair back in his room this week to see if some nighttime rocking would help him settle down better. He has loved it and we are slowly having good bedtimes again! Today I was emptying the dishwasher and heard a sound in Henry's room. I grabbed the flip and went to investigate. Here is what I found...

Pumpkin Patch and Sunday Fun

We ventured out to Fall City Farms yesterday and went pumpkin hunting. We decided to try a new patch this year and it was a lot of fun. Henry had more interest in pushing pumpkins over and trying to lift them than actually picking one out. So after about 30 minutes of running around Bill picked one and we headed for the hay maze. Henry just loved it and ran around in it for what seemed like forever. I ran with him for a bit but then sent in Bill so I could give my belly a rest. Here is a picture and a video of the adventure.






We also had Auntie Dawn, Uncle Rich, Davis and Sierra over for dinner last night to watch the Giants games. It was a really fun night. Henry loved playing with (or shall I say annoying) his cousin Sierra. He actually loved having both older kids around and kept screaming Sierra's name when he couldn't find her. The icing on the cake was when Sierra gave Henry a picture she had drawn of all of us. He is still admiring it today! He also gave Davis a big hug at the end of the night which was just too cute. Below is a cute video of Hen and Sierra playing. They had no idea I was filming them and it is just so cute to watch them hang out.

T.G.I.F.

Thanks Goodness its Friday! I am so looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and having a great fall weekend. We may even venture to the pumpkin patch. Henry has been fighting some bug and he has just not been himself. Up all hours of the night and also lots of upset crying. While Henry has always been emotional this crying seems out of his control. So either he is getting his last tooth, has an ear infection or is simply just being 2!

We have had lots of fun since our last blog. We went to diner at our cousins Laura and Justin's house. They made us an amazing Indian meal and we had a great time catching up. Justin pulled out his guitar and played us all a song, which Henry loved! He danced his little heart out and was so happy. He even hugged them both before we left and let Laura put him on her shoulders, which is something he never lets us do!

This week we went to the aquarium with Em and the kids and had a great time. They loved the jellyfish! I only got a couple good pics because the lighting was so dark.

Salmon Days

What a difference 8 hours sleep can make! Everyone awoke feeling much better today. Henry's nose is still a faucet and he is coughing so we have decided to skip our soccer class this morning. Anyhow as he plays nicely with his kitchen I thought I would share some stuff from our trip to Salmon Days on Sunday.

We had a great time. The highlight for Henry was that we got to ride a yellow school bus to the festival which might be the highlight of his life so far. He must have said yellow bus a thousand times with a smile on his face! Salmon Days had tons of fun stuff to do. Henry almost sat in a fire engine but at the last minute he got overwhelmed and cried. It was like he was confronting something he had been dreaming of and it was just too much! We quickly fixed that with his first bite of cotton candy which he loved. We also got to watch a water dog jumping competition and play with play dough. One of the funnest things was Henry got to "fish" at a booth and win candy, which he thought was amazing. Before we left we also got to watch the salmon make their final trip upstream which is always so interesting and Henry loved seeing all of the fish. Overall it was a great day and we can't wait for next year!




Here is a video of the first bite of cotton candy. You can see the tears on his cheek from the fire engine fiasco a few moments earlier.

Out Sick

My little boy awoke with a cold last night and had a rough night of sleep. Poor guy was frustrated that he had to breath out of his mouth. We spent a lot of the night trying to get comfortable and he was able to get a couple good stretches of sleep. Bill kept asking me what are you doing to make him feel better and I told him all the stuff my mom used to do for me. I remember her sitting with me, rubbing me, singing to me and getting me all cozied up. I think he is a little young yet to get a fuzzy poster to color but we will definitely have some popsicles. So today we are taking it easy. We rented Thomas Misty Mountain Rescue and Henry is watching it bundled up on the couch half awake. I am about to join him but before I do I should probably say thank you to my mom! You always took/take care of me and I appreciate it!

We went to Salmon Days yesterday and I promise to post pictures this week but for now I am on Mommy duty. Here is a picture of my little patient all cozied up!

Farm Park

My new favorite place to go with Henry is Ferrel-McWhirter park a.k.a Farm Park. It is so much fun and free! He loves looking at the animals! His favorites are the baby goat and the cow. This morning we met up with our friends the Herrmann’s and had a picnic. Their daughter Claire is a couple months older than Henry and she is sweet as can be! They played so well together and even though Henry speaks his own language it was like she understood him! Here are some videos of Hen with his girlfriends at the park on two separate dates.

The first one is Henry and Claire just playing. It may seem a bit boring but I am so intrigued watching them just play. The best is when Claire jumps at the end and is so proud!

This is Henry and Halle at the park looking at the animals. It is so sweet to hear their little voices saying hi to the goats. Also I have never seen a pig that big. She is a momma pig and this is her first year off from having babies. Her last litter was 16 piglets! No wonder she is resting!

Decatur Island

We took another trip to the San Juan Islands this weekend with Bill's dad a.k.a Grandka. This time we stayed on Decatur Island which is a very small and very pretty island. The ferry system doesn't even travel there so we had to take a water taxi, which Henry loved each time until he fell asleep. We had to pack in all of our food because there isn't even a grocery store on the island. The house we stayed at was great. Lots of outdoor space, our own dock and beach, a shed full of sporting goods and kayaks, crab pots and a row boat, and even a bunch of arts and crafts supplies for Henry inside. It really was the perfect vacation spot! Henry played his little heart out and was a big fan of throwing rocks into the water from the dock. We must have walked up and down that dock a thousand times. Bill and Steve did lots of crabbing and fishing until they had a run in with the DNR and then they stuck to more dry land activities! Here are some pictures from the weekend. The weather was rainy the first few days and then we got some great shine on our last day. What a great time we had!

Cupcakes...Yum!

We took a whirlwind trip (less than 24 hours) to Portland to celebrate the upcoming arrival of Auntie Anna and Uncle Andy's baby. It was a great shower and every age group from 2 months to 4 years was represented. That meant no nap, lots of playing and lots of treats for Henry. Here he is enjoying a cupcake with his friend Mia and cousin Oscar. They were quite a cute group!

Future Blackmail

This is my new favorite picture of Henry. It makes me laugh. I remember doing weird things as kid and I think that Henry has entered this phase. Some days he loves to wear his bike helmet backwards in the car when we go somewhere. I happened to catch him falling asleep, picking his nose wearing his helmet...classic. I actually pulled over to take this picture and it was worth it. Hope this brings you some giggles too!

Farm Park

We ventured out this morning with Emily, Halle and baby Thomas to Ferrel McWhirter park which is awesome. It is a farm open to the public with a bunch of animals to look at...and its free! I think Henry's favorite was the baby goat! We also saw a huge pig, a calf, lots of chickens and a big turkey which made me question eating at Thanksgiving! There was a lot of mooing and oinking from the kids as we walked around. It helped us get out of our stay at home and play rut. Now that I am in my second trimester I am getting my energy back which means lots of fun stuff for Henry and I to go out and do! So hopefully that will mean more things to blog about. Here are some pictures from the farm.