Sexy and I Know It

Charlotte is famous for her love of food, and of smearing food all over herself. She really outdid herself a few weeks ago when I took these pictures. It was taco night. She managed to get chunks of meat tangled in her hair.


And the piece de resistance--she had a surprise for me when I took off her tray. No, she does not have an outie. That is a wad of taco meat jammed deep into her belly button.

Talk about saving food for later.

More Thanksgiving

I've finally come to the end of the Vermont pictures! Here are a few last random shots of the kids. As always, Charlotte is very entertaining during meals. At lunch one day, she was determined to get as much food as possible in her hair. She laid her head on the tray.

She eventually tired of trying to be creative and just squashed the food into her hair directly.

This is my favorite. I call it "Baby Hillbilly Garbage Disposal."

Charlotte was not a fan of her "lobster-claw" hands when I first put her mittens on.

Charlotte is such a sweet little girl, but she also has a temper. This is what she's recently started doing when she doesn't get her way:

We also got some cute pictures of Jack.

So precious. Jack was so worn out one night that he started falling asleep at the dinner table. We moved him to the couch and he passed out.

Jack and Charlotte discovered the wonderful noise that can be made on the washer and dryer. Fortunately this discovery wasn't made until our last night there.




We had a great trip to Vermont and were so happy to spend time with Grammy, Grampy, Uncle Paul, Great Grampy, Maria, and our extended relatives. We miss you!

Thanksgiving, con't.

We got to to spend a lot of quality time with family on our trip to Vermont. The kids, Grammy, and I went to Burlington one day to visit with relatives. First we stopped to see Great-Grampy and Maria. Charlotte had never met them, and Jack was 2 when he last saw them, so I was so glad we got the chance to spend some time together. Here's Charlotte "helping" Maria with some toys and Easter eggs.

Charlotte and Great-Grampy

We also visited with several other members of the Jarvis clan--Aunt Kathy, Aunt Marty, Uncle Cary, Nicole, Rachel, Justin, Jackson, Cooper, and Sam. We were so happy to get a chance to spend time with everyone! Regretably, time went so quickly this was the only picture I got of Jack and Charlotte with their cousins. Jack and Sam had a blast playing together. Charlotte, who normally sticks to me like glue, kept running away from me because she so badly wanted to play with the big kids.

Luckily we were able to get more pictures during our time with Grammy, Grampy and Uncle Paul.

Charlotte usually put up a fuss if someone else held her when I was around, but I at least managed to get 1 good picture of her and Grampy.

Grammy had a great helper all week. Jack assisted with loading the dishwasher, getting the mail, and going to the store most days.

Charlotte was also a huge help in the kitchen.

Uncle Paul arrived later in the week, and as you can see from the stare-down, Charlotte was a bit suspicious of the new stranger.

Jack, on the hand, took full advantage of his fun Uncle Paul. They spent quite a bit of quality time flying and reading together.

Grammy had a special surprise waiting for Jack and Charlotte on Thanksgiving night--a big tree outside decorated with Christmas lights. Charlotte hadn't really started pointing much before this trip, but she definitely pointed a lot at the tree!

Jack was fascinated. He did think it was important to tell Grammy that the tree was missing a star.

Andy, Grampy and I took an outing to a local brewery the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was small and rustic, but the beer was tasty and we had a good time!

More pictures to come....

Thanksgiving in Vermont

We had an absolutely wonderful trip to Vermont to visit Grammy, Grampy, Uncle Paul, and other relatives for Thanksgiving. Jack, Charlotte, and I flew up last Saturday (the kids behaved pretty well for me), and Andy joined us on Tuesday. The weather did a great job of cooperating--clear skies and warm on all days that we traveled, but plenty of snow for playing the day before Thanksgiving. The kids, especially Jack, had so much fun in the snow. Here's Jack with Uncle Paul and Andy:

Jack went on the sled with Andy and me a few times, but I was impressed that he slid a lot by himself. We used a couple of hills; one was short and steeper, and the other was longer with less of an incline.

Charlotte got in on the sledding action too.

So cute!

Little Stay-Puft.

Good action shot of Andy (what you don't see is the ensuing wipeout).

The snow wasn't sticking at first, so we had a difficult time getting the snowman started, but we eventually made one that was about Jack's size.

Frosty bit the dust the next day as the temperature warmed up.

Some video of Jack going down the longer hill, and of Charlotte being pulled around. She kept making these cute squealy noises.

We had such a great week and are missing everybody already! I have many more pictures to post.

Hawks game

Andy and I took Jack to a Blackhawks hockey game Sunday night--Andy's work had box seats, and several families attended. It turned out to be a really good thing that we were in the box and set back from the general arena, because Jack was pretty freaked out by all the loud noise. He especially didn't like the horns/sirens that go off when goals are scored, and of course it wound up being a high scoring game.

This is as close as Jack would get to the action.

Jack still mananged to have fun hanging out inside the box with some of the other kids. Here's a sweet picture of Jack and Will.

Jack also spent some time with "big kid" Nicholas. He was so cute, imitating everything that Nicholas did.

Jack also devoured chips and other junk food all night. So in the end, I think he still had a pretty good time :)

Jack

Happy belated birthdays to our cousin Tyler (the 7th), Grampy yesterday, and best birthday wishes tomorrow to Great-Grampy!

With Charlotte hitting all these developmental milestones lately, she's been hogging the blog posts, so I decided it was time to focus some attention on Mr. Jack. I had Friday off work for Veteren's Day, so Jack and I spent some much needed alone time together while Charlotte stayed with Elif.

I had needed to go to the Oak Brook mall anyway to pick up a couple things, so I took Jack with me, and we visited the Build-a-Bear Workshop. I had always walked by those stores in the past but never actually went inside, so I was pleasantly surprised at the whole experience. The staff were really great with kids, and also very understanding and patient with Jack when some of the loud noises scared him. I also had no idea there were other animal options to choose from besides just bears; of course once Jack spotted the monkey it was as if the other animals didn't exist.

For those of you that aren't familiar with Build-a-Bear, there really isn't as much "building" as the name implies. The kids basically just pick out an animal carcass, oops I mean, deflated animal. Then, as you can see in the picture below, the animal gets a pipe shoved into its back and the guts, or rather, stuffing is blown in. Jack really liked watching the stuffing swirling around inside the machine, but it took him a while to brave stepping on the pedal to activate the blowing process because it was loud. He eventually worked up the courage, though.

Giving the monkey a "bath" (because I guess after an anmial is stuffed they are dirty?). Jack was also not a fan of the loud noise from the air dryers here. He told the lady they "needed to turn it down."

After the bath, we picked out some clothes for the monkey. I kept trying to get Jack to pick out some sports uniforms (there was this great red football outfit), but he insisted on the motorcycle gear. Here's Jack working on the "birth certificate." He named the monkey "George."

Proud monkey owner. Jack and I went to a restaurant afterward and enjoyed a nice lunch together. An overall great day for mom and son. We're also looking forward to tonight, when Jack, Andy, and I are going to a Blackhawks game! Hopefully we'll get some great pictures.