Christmas Day!

Santa Claus left this dollhouse all set up and ready for a little girl to play with! Zoe was, as you can see, intrigued by it. She kept ignoring everything else so she could go back to playing with it more. Santa clearly knows what our little girl wants! 

Tommy got very excited when opening his present from Uncle Martin. You can't see it in the picture, but it's a really nifty Mario Kart Wii - themed racetrack set that Uncle Martin will be helping Tommy set up.

Later, we went to my parents' house to celebrate Christmas with them and Sean & Nadia and their girls. Tommy took a few minutes to read some of his new book to Screech, my parents' cat. Screech was surprisingly excited about the story. Either that or he was trying to make Tommy notice him and give him a pet. Hard to tell.

And here Zoe is engaged in the traditional Christmas activity of all children everywhere - ignoring the toys so she can play with the wrapping.

All in all, a very nice Christmas. I hope everyone else had a great one too!

Christmas Eve!

My Christmas gift this year was a new flash, to replace the one that was destroyed by a leaky battery. I went out and bought it early so you could all see a few pics of the kids enjoying Christmas!

Here we have Zoe and Mommy being silly together. I think Zoe was pretending to try to escape at that point, but I'm not quite sure. Just so it's clear: That's just hair whipping around. She's not actually a freakishly deformed super-child or anything.

Next up: Joel, Tommy, and Zoe sitting quietly together on the couch. Tommy felt the need to show off his Optimus Prime toy. It was originally blocking his entire face, but Joel managed to get it pushed a little way out of the road.

And here's Zoe running around like a crazy girl! The best part is that she actually was doing this on command - I asked her to go running back and forth and she obliged me! Getting her to hold still for a picture is almost impossible so I decided to try deliberately having her running around instead. It seems to have worked!

Sometime later this week I'll post pictures from today. I managed to catch decent pictures of both of the kids this morning, and we're about to head over to visit my parents and I'm hoping I'll get a few more there. No promises though.

Eating cookies is hard

Zoe enjoys cookies, but she has difficulty with the concept of eating them calmly. Instead, she does her best to obliterate them. The end result is, as you can see, gruesome.

Tommy also enjoys cookies. He too can get carried away and cause a little carnage, but overall he's developed his self-control to a much higher level than his sister.

(Yes, I know it's been FOREVER since I posted an update. We're at the point where it's hard to get a picture of Zoe without her running over to see the camera before the picture's taken.)

Summer has (almost) arrived!

As you can see here, Zoe's learning how to walk. She's actually getting quite good at it, but grinding her enemies beneath her heels (or walking on grass, as the case may be) takes a little more balance so she decided she would allow Mommy to hold her hand.

Tommy got another haircut! He was getting a little scruffy, now he isn't. But he's still the same lovable tyrannical dictator he always was.

Sorry for the lack of entertaining update, I just wanted to post a few pictures before I forgot. As it is, these are over a week old.

Zoe dissects her birthday cupcake

Zoe turned one year old today, and naturally, she had to have a birthday cake of some sort. Being fairly small, she agreed that a cupcake would be sufficient. Upon being provided with her cupcake, she proceeded to dissect it in order to learn what made it work.

Most kids would perhaps have eaten the cupcake, but Zoe's clearly too advanced for that.

Tommy and Zoe investigate the ocean

Tommy and Zoe recently made a trip to the ocean to investigate progress on their armada of doom. While there, they took a quick side trip to scout out local beaches -- they claimed to have been looking at possible landing sites for their mighty armies, but I suspect they were really just horsing around. Tommy, as you can see in this picture, spent a great deal of time just hanging out with his feet in the water.


Zoe, on the other hand, was all business. She even disapproved of me taking this picture of her instead of taking appropriate tactical photos of the scene. I think she kind of missed the point of the whole thing, to tell you the truth. There were witnesses who claimed they saw her crack a smile later, but those witnesses have all met with unfortunate accidents since then so it's difficult to verify those stories.

I have no interesting descriptions for these

No interesting story behind these pictures, I'm afraid. Just some cute pictures of the kids. Here's Tommy laughing because I'm taking his picture.


And here's Zoe being happy because, well, she's Zoe. I think she was just eating her hand and that always makes her happy. Except when it doesn't, of course.