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.

Role reversal

Zoe decided to take over Tommy's world-conquest duties today to give him a well-deserved rest. As you can see in this picture, she's already enjoying her part in securing global domination.


With Zoe holding down the fort, Tommy decided to take a well-earned rest. It may look in this picture like he's sleeping, but in fact he's merely concentrating his prodigious mental faculties on a particularly knotty problem of some sort. Not napping on the couch at all. And certainly not right before suppertime after absolutely insisting that he didn't need a nap. No siree, that's just not the kind of thing Tommy would do.

The awakenation!

We may be somewhat biased but we think Zoe's awfully cute when she's got her eyes open, and we felt like sharing.

Tommy's recruits an ally

Tommy's continuing quest for world domination took a major step forward on March 12th with his recruitment of a new ally, Zoe. Despite her lack of proven experience, Tommy clearly feels that Zoe demonstrates great potential, and he looks forward to indoctrinating her in all the subtle arts of global conquest.

Tommy on fast forward

Clearly, Tommy is superhuman and has simply been hiding it all along. I hid a video camera to catch him eating his breakfast in the morning... I was shocked to see how little time it actually took him. Watch the little monster go!

Eat your heart out, Hef!

Tommy was absolutely THRILLED with his new housecoat. As you can see here. He made me take an extra five or six pictures because he was concerned that the pictures we'd taken weren't good enough.

I can post again if I want to!

You can practically set your watch by how regular updates are around here! If your watch is broken and on fire.

Or something. It's too early in the morning for me to think. But I'm cleaning off a memory card so I can take my camera out tonight and found this picture on it and figured I'd share. It's from Tommy's birthday.

Ever wonder what a 4-year-old boy looks like?

He looks like this, that's what.

Happy birthday, monster!

Tommy finds a unique Fathers Day gift

Finding a unique and memorable gift for Fathers Day is a challenge for any 3-year-old boy, but as a future world conqueror, Tommy's challenge was that much greater. Then, a brilliant idea struck him: Why not conquer a castle and share that with his family? Here you can see the commemorative photo of the conquest.

Later, Tommy demonstrated his magnanimity by sharing the castle with his cousins.

Tommy recruits an animal companion

Tommy was worried that having only human lackeys was a real weakness in his future empire, and decided to overcome it by recruiting a lion as a faithful companion (and convenient disposal method for his enemies...) Tommy is seen here sharing a powerful bonding moment with Snickerdoodle.

Tommy gets a new car!

Of course, he made his mommy pay for it and register it in her name and he makes her drive it... but that's OK, it's still a very nice blue car!

Tommy ascends

Here we see the early stages of Tommy's ascension to godhood. Tremble before him! Or not. Your choice really.

(Why yes, I was playing around with my camera this morning. Why do you ask?)

Apparently there's been a request

Andrea tells me that her family has ordered me to put this up on here. So... there you go. At least Tommy's in the picture, so we can pretend it's relevant? I dunno. I'm just doing what I've been told.

Randomness on a Thursday evening

Tommy got new pyjamas. He's a super-hero! But it's a secret, so don't tell anyone!


And here, Tommy sings a song for your enjoyment. He's a little confused on some of the lyrics, but that's OK. It's still a pretty good song. Enjoy!