Here comes Christmas

Things have certainly been getting a bit busy now that we are in full blown holiday mode. Over the past few weeks we have done the following:

* ate breakfast with Santa... last year for this as one kid screamed through it and the other one slept (guess which one was which)

* passed by Santa like 5 times at the mall... all instances involving Santa waving to us and someone hiding behind my legs

* seen Santa on firetrucks both at Grandmom and Granddad's house and at our house... again lots of cheers for the firetrucks, not so much for Santa

* been to two giant Christmas lights displays in Ocean City and in Columbia... we liked Ocean City better though Simon might disagree with that

* visited Santa's beach house in Rehoboth where Morgan actually accepted a gift from Santa... and then proceeded to break it moments later

And of course there's all of the decorating of trees and houses and the baking of Christmas cookies that has occupied our time as well. But yes, in the middle of all that we did manage to make our annual winter trip to the beach last week. A tad bit on the cold side but we had a nice relaxing time and celebrated Simon's first beach visit. Morgan did a great job playing host and tour guide to Grandmom and Granddad who came in for an overnight visit.

Speaking of Simon I suppose you'd like some sort of update on him. Well he's now 7 weeks old and starting to show off his dimples... yes, that means he's smiling. He's really starting to look more like Morgan when she was that age which is fun to see (on the camera viewfinder... still can't get pictures to the computer). He hasn't quite discovered his hands yet but we're really hoping any day now that will change so he can start to calm himself down a bit. I just remember with Morgan she started sleeping through the night in her own bed at around 2 months right when she started sucking her thumb. So I remember getting her in her bed... I just don't remember how we did it exactly. I'm sure it'll all come back to us eventually though. Simon has found the toy bar on his bouncy seat so I'm thinking Santa might be bringing him some new rattles for Christmas to play with... and play keep away from Morgan.

Random facts, part 1

Morgan is now at the age where she is naming her animal friends. So far we have Rexy the dinosaur, Donald the dog, Sockey the sock monkey, Shaun the sheep, Lamby the lamb, and Donk the donkey.

One month

No new pictures again this week. We've been taking plenty however I haven't had the time yet to get them off the camera. Stay tuned though.

Well here we are with Simon at one whole month. Hard to believe that one month ago last Sunday night I was laying in bed with Morgan thinking "man, these contractions are getting to be a bit painful, and coming in pretty close together, and seem to be concentrated rather down low." Naturally I thought we still had plenty of time before things got really exciting and went ahead and gave the green light to Patrick to take his Ambien for the night. Looking back on it I suppose it was a good thing we decided to go to the hospital when we did though and not wait until morning as I originally wanted to seeing as how for some reason I failed to come up with a nighttime contingency plan. Of course in my defense I really did not expect for Simon to come out within 3 hours of arriving at the hospital though in hindsight, I guess seeing the labor crew start setting up supplies and all like 10 minutes after I got checked out may have been a key indicator that things were going to be a bit speedy. Well that and the fact that my nurse and doctor kept saying "oh look, there's the head" every time they looked down there.

Anyway, one month later and we're all still here and dare I say it, starting to find our rhythm a bit. We've decided on a man to man coverage defense against both kids which seems to be working so far. Though recently we did rediscover one major advantage to having Pat stay home with the kids as Morgan came home with her first case of sniffles as a result of school. It's slowly making the rounds to Pat and unfortunately to Simon who, while I'm sure has to be miserable, is pretty darn cute with a stuffy nose. Here's hoping everyone is back up to snuff in time for Thanksgiving though.

Lots of big activities coming up in the next month - breakfast with Santa, annual beach trip, etc. And I suppose we do have one very screamy kid who may be in for a fun time on Christmas morning too. I hope no one was planning on sleeping in.

Welcome Simon!

And we are back to blogging with a new and updated look to match our new and updated family. Surprise to anyone who didn't know for the last 9 or so months but we now have a new addition... Simon Edward Jenkins born on October 25 at 4:08am. We didn't beat the family record of deliveries... I think Donna and Kerry will always claim that title... but we did have a personal best of being in labor for a total of only about 7 hours and about 18 minutes of actual delivery time. Technically speaking we were only at the hospital for about 3 hours before Simon decided to show up so all in all it was a pretty good showing. And seeing as how Simon was born on 10/25 he continues the family streak of being born on days that are increments of 5... Morgan already being 5/10 of course. Yeah, we're pretty cool.

So here we are at almost 3 weeks and I like to think things are finally settling down a bit and slowly getting back to normal. We've got the whole feeding thing down pretty nicely. Simon gained an ounce a day for the first 2 weeks so he's got the nice round pudgy cheek thing going on. Sleeping is getting better in that he does sleep at some point during the night. And if I may brag ever so slightly... this boy has got the best toots ever. If there were an Olympic event for tooting Simon would win hands down both in volume and in length.

And let's not forget about big sister (as if we ever could). Morgan absolutely loves Simon... for now. She really is very good around him and is a champion poopy diaper changer. I'm not even sure she realizes she's not the only kid around though I will say having Simon around has finally gotten her to call herself a big girl and not a big boy. Morgan has also started going to an early pre-school type of program for a couple of hours every other day which so far she seems to enjoy and she has also enjoyed the company of both sets of grandparents while Pat and I get in some bonding time with Simon.

I know I've been lacking in the pictures department. Not to worry as we've been taking plenty of pictures of Simon which I will get around to posting during the next nap time. And of course with the holidays coming up I have no doubt we will have plenty of adventures and silly stories to report on so hopefully it won't take me another year to update.

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes!

Colorful commentary

We're inching ever so closer to the big 2 year old bash - not that I have any plans for said bash mind you, just that we're inching closer so I better get planning. There has definitely been an uptake in the number of tantrums being thrown as well as a general increase in overall tonal volume. Luckily I only have to listen to it for a few hours a day and of course Pat's hearing is shot anyway so no worries there. But even more amusing is the general color commentary that often comes out of Morgan's mouth because as you see, Morgan is quite a vocal young lady and so often feels the need to inform us of exactly whatever she is doing at that exact moment. Or it could be, as is so often the case since for some reason Morgan has an outstanding memory, a recollection of past events. Of course she's not speaking in full sentences yet so usually what we'll get is "Terry cookies butter eat mouth" which of course means that while Morgan was visiting her aunt and uncle, Uncle Terry gave her cookies which he dipped in peanut butter which she then put in her mouth to eat - because of course you can't very well eat peanut butter-dipped cookies in your nose. Or now we'll hear about "Taylor blanket feet stinky" because Uncle Taylor's stinky feet were right next to Morgan's blanket. She still remembers the day she and Pat went for a wagon ride in the snow when the wagon toppled over and out Morgan fell. Or as Morgan describes it: "wagon fall Daddy". Or the time when Pat woke up with a nose bleed: "Daddy nose ouch happened" because we immediately had to ask what happened afterwards. And then of course there are the moments when Morgan will let us know exactly when she is "walking" or "running" or "hide" or if something is "fun" just in case we weren't already aware of those things. Still, it is always nice to hear.

[Blank] Two's

Hmm, looks like we missed a few weeks there. Well that's not entirely my fault considering the beginning of the month we had the Super Bowl, then we had like 80" of snow, and now we've got the Olympics going on so yeah, we've been busy. And did I mention the snow? Now normally Morgan loves the snow but for some reason she was a bit apprehensive at seeing 3 feet of it all of once. And I think that plus having two crazy deranged parents who wanted to throw her in a snow pile didn't really help matters. Morgan did help out with digging out the driveway. And then she baked cookies and watched A LOT of Abby in Wonderland. And then of course there were these guys -


All play and no work makes Mommy a little loony.

Speaking of the Olympics I'd like to announce that Morgan's favorite sport so far is the ski jumping but that's only because that's easy to play in the living room. Next year we'll work on downhill skiing and speed skating.

I'm not sure when or how this happened but somewhere along the line here we lost our baby and now have a rather opinionated, very silly, and quite fashionable toddler.


I don't want to say we're entering the "terrible two's" because so far they're not terrible but we're definitely entering something. And I also have to say that I think Daddy is going to have his hands full in a few years considering someone already has two boyfriends. Morgan of course loves Ben but now she also loves Jeremy who she only met once at the play land at Chick-fil-a when he offered to help her go down the slide. I guess it was love at first sight since she now wants Jeremy to come with us - and Ben - to the beach.

Morgan's also recently been experimenting with various career paths. We already know about her above average drumming ability -


She also enjoys taking her old bottles out of the closet, lining them up in a row, and saying that they are coffee. This is astounding not just because she's obviously preparing for her future career at Starbucks, but also because we don't drink coffee so I have absolutely no idea where she would have even learned about that. Clearly this just means she'll be the smartest coffee maker Starbucks has ever seen.

Of course even before Morgan was born we had intended her to have a successful run in some sort of Olympic winter sport. Actually that is partially how Morgan came to have the name Morgan. It is the perfect cool snowboarder name that you would hear announced right before she drops into the halfpipe. Also, she is becoming quite the entertainer - oh, and she knows when she's entertaining - so she would totally style it up for the judges. Either that or she'll be the 5th Imagination Mover - she already has plenty of experience dancing on stage in front of rather large audiences.

Random title

I'm trying really hard to live up to my promise of updating this thing more often even though I have absolutely nothing terribly interesting to say other then Morgan is cute as usual. We have a new game where Morgan will point at every object in the room and say what it is. Or she'll just say a random word and we get to guess at translating. We're getting pretty good. And yes, much to her grandparents' complete shock Morgan did learn the word "suck". In fairness though it was used in the context of "The Patriots suck and Tom Brady looks like he's going to go home and cry after having his a** handed to him" and not "The Ravens suck and seriously when are they going to beat the Colts and for heavens sake what the he** happened to the offense with only scoring 3 flipping points". So really when you look at the two distinct phrasing differences her knowledge of the word "suck" isn't really that terrible. In other news, Morgan has told me that she is taking a break from being "wacko for Flacco" and is instead switching to hockey.

Happy 2010

In honour of all of my faithful readers I have decided to make updating this blog on a semi-regular basis one of my new year's resolutions seeing as how I fell off the wagon there for a few months. And seeing as how we went from October straight through to January with a single update I suppose you're all wondering how the heck our holiday season went this year. Well hows about a recap...

First up we had Halloween where Morgan decided to dress up as a lion. Of course it also helped that Morgan is exceptionally gifted at making lion sounds.


We had a fabulous time dressing up and walking around the neighborhood especially when it started to rain.


Because of that little hindrance we ended up not getting a lot of trick-or-treaters to our house but no worries since we spent most of our time at the awesome halloween house down the block.


Patrick assures me this will be our house next year.

Following Halloween we jumped right on into Thanksgiving. Please forgive the lack of photos during this time period. Rest assured turkey was consumed along with a whole bunch of other delicious food and merriment was had by all.

The day after Thanksgiving we all piled up in the car and headed east to Rehoboth to join Gangy, Pop Pop, Aunt Donna, Uncle Terry, and cousins for the annual tree lighting ceremony.


Photographer's note: ignore the two d-bags in the upper right hand corner. This was the only decent picture where everyone had their eyes open.

We managed to hit the beach on Sunday when, after freezing for 2 days in a row, temperatures went up to about 60.


Of course Morgan had to sample the sand...


... and wave hi to a couple of seagulls.


This then brings us into December where by now someone is getting super excited for Christmas. Of course I am referring to Patrick who spent a good week decorating the outside of our house in all sorts of twinklery. I'm just hoping there's a cash prize for the neighborhood best decorated house award. Morgan, meanwhile, was absolutely beside herself with snowmen, candy canes, snowflakes, trees, lights, and of course, Santa. After several trips to the store we compiled her Christmas list and headed off to see the big man to deliver it personally.


If you look close enough you can almost make out her saying the word "bike." Santa seems to be listening intently.

Christmas Eve finally rolled around which had us over at Gram and Grandad's house in the early afternoon to partake in the first round of gift opening. Morgan got a very nice puzzle, alphabet blocks, and her very first tent and play tunnel. Of course all of that paled in comparison to her football hat!


Good thing we had that sucker for today's game. Seems like last week's suck ass game of 100+ yards in penalties didn't mean much after all.

After entertaining all of the devoted church goers and some quick travels through our neighborhood looking at everyone else's decorations (it seems the awesome Halloween house also turns into the awesome Christmas house) it was off to bed for Morgan. And showtime for Santa's elves.


Looks like Santa was paying attention to that list as Morgan clearly discovered when she came downstairs the next morning (after sleeping in to like 10am, much to the delight of aforementioned elf).


For some reason Bear got the first ride.


But with Bear out of the way Morgan gets her turn.


And decides it'll do.


Morgan quickly discovered she received some other stuff too but mainly seemed to favor a lovely pan and whisk cooking set. I believe she was cooking up some eggs while opening gifts at the same time.


And then checking on said eggs while holding her brand new football.


After a short "fake" nap we made our way over to Gangy and Pop Pop where the festivities were in full swing with aunts, uncles, cousins, Uncle Scotty (who came in from WA a week before), and pomegranate martinis. Morgan made an immediate dive for her new Curious George doll...


... until she really discovered what Santa had left courtesy of the Pennsylvania Dutch.


Of course we could really only go forwards and backwards but I'm sure we'll take it out for a more proper spin now that we've got that sucker at our house (much to the relief of Gangy and Pop Pop).

The rest of Christmas was spent opening more presents, drinking more martinis, eating some food, martinis again, and the playing of the annual family holiday game, Apples to Apples - which for some reason I don't seem to have any recollection of playing though people tell me I did and seemed to have a lot of fun doing so. Did I mention there were martinis? Oh, and wine! I almost forgot about the wine.

During the rest of my 2-week vacation we hung out with family some more, went into DC for the day, and of course tried out the new bike.


We had a nice dinner out on New Year's Eve and spent New Year's Day back at my parent's house celebrating Pop Pop's birthday. My vacation is just about up so it's back to work for me tomorrow and back to daddy-daughter days for Pat and Morgan.

And that just about wraps up the past holiday season. Morgan, any final words from you?