Memories

Angela was telling me a funny story, and she said the punch line in a funny voice. Christine immediately repeated the same line in the same tone of voice, and then let out a huge Guffaw. "Isn't that funny mommy?"

When I was bathing Christine the other night, she wanted to sing Twinkle Twinkle little star. After that she said, "Daddy do you want to sing Good Night Pony?" I assumed this must be a song from the music makers class that Angela and Christine go to each week. "I don't know that one Christine."  "Oh, I'll teach you!"
Then she began singing "Good Night Pony" to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star...  Pony Pony, pony pony pon, pony pony good night, pony pony pon pon pon, like a rainbow up high! good night pony pony pony pony, like a rainbow in the sky!"  And then she laughed.

Jacob loves to do everything Christine does and be wherever she is. He is constantly on the move and is extremely fast. My least favorite part of the day is trying to dress him. He kicks and squirms around.  Today was the typical wrestling match. I had just gotten the last snap snapped when he escaped from my grasp and takes off out of the room. By the time I stood up to follow him he had already made it into the bathroom to where the action was!

Jacob loves the book Run Mouse Run.  It is, in fact, the only book I can get him to sit still long enough to read all the way through.  I'm not sure who's side of the family has the crazy energy gene, but both of our kids got it, go figure. Jacob will also let me read him Barnyard Dance if he can watch Christine act it out. Barnyard Dance is a Sandra Boynton book with the rhythm of a square dance. Christine uses Tangy bear as her partner.  She especially likes promenading with Tangy Bear, 2X2.

We went to Sam's Club yesterday to buy a new battery for the car. As we were waiting we found some really good deals on some Disney DVDs. We decided to get Brave. We thought it would be a good surprise for Christine for Valentine's day.  The whole shopping trip Angela and I were incredibly careful to hide the DVD from Christine to keep it a surprise.  The next morning, Christine told Angela, "Mommy, we should get ALL my princess movies out so we can count them."  "Why do we need to count them?"  "Because I got a new princess movie at the store last night, so we should know what number we have, yeah we should do that."  Angela at this point is thinking to herself, there is no way she saw us buy that DVD yesterday.  So she tries to play dumb, "What new Princess movie did you get?"  "The one that Nana and Papa have."  Angela thinks to herself, How the heck did she notice that! Well there's no way she could have seen it long enough to tell which one of the princesses it was. "Which princess movie?" "Oh the one with Merrida!" Dang it! our kids are too smart.

Jacob loves looking out of the front windows. He especially loves when cars drive by. My favorite part of the day is coming home.  The kids are often sitting at the window watching for me.  They then run to meet me at the door. Actually Christine comes barreling through the door and Jacob is crawling right after her.  I'm not sure if Jacob is as excited to see me, as he is excited to try to get a hold of all my work stuff like my stethoscope and bag that I change out of.  He loves getting in to anything he is not supposed to.

Christmas

Remember our little tinny tree? Now that we finally have a house we were able to buy a REAL Christmas tree! I went out with the kids on black Friday all by myself and got us this beauty. I was really excited to finally have a real tree. I had grand plans to make a bunch of new ornaments and fun things, but all I had time for was the Christmas tree skirt.

 GiGi and PaBruce drove out to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with us. Christmas Eve we made Cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and for dinner our traditional Chimichangas with Spanish Rice. yummmmmm.

 Christmas night Christine sang us all her favorite Christmas songs (With help from Pooh Bear who came along with GiGi)

I made Christine and Jacob matching Christmas pajamas but I just realized now while looking through my pictures that I didn't get any photos of the pjs! ahhh.

This is the best pictures I have of Christine's pjs. There are zero pictures of Jacob's pjs because he had a diaper blow out that required changing into another pair.

Christmas morning Jacob was up bright and early, but Christine slept in. When she finally woke up, she came out and saw all the presents and broke down into tears because the presents were all wrapped and she couldn't tell if she got her most wished for present, clothes for minnie mouse. It was rather disappointing to mommy who was looking forward to the magic of Christmas morning. After Christine saw her stocking though, she turned around.

Speaking of stockings, the green bear on the right is named Candy Cane who we got at McDonalds at Thanksgiving. Christine loved Candy Cane so much we went back to McDonalds in hopes of getting another cute little bear but they were completely out of the toys. It was so disappointing. Christine was really hoping for the penguin and couldn't stop talking about the purple penguin. So Santa got on ebay and got the entire set of all 8 animals. It was a Christmas miracle.

 Minnie Mouse did indeed get some new clothes.

and Jacob got a new play center with balls, lights, and even plays lots of loud music.

Thanksgiving

We were sooooo lucky this year that Jeff got Thanksgiving off! (he also had Christmas day off! this is why we choose Scott and White) 

As some of you know, Jeff's brother Mark and his family live in San Antonio which is 3 hours away from where we live.  They were so nice to invite us to spend Thanksgiving with them and Dana's family. It was a quick trip for us since Jeff had to work the next day, but it was definitely worth it. The car trip wasn't too bad for the kids, and Christine loved getting the chance to eat at  "Old McDonald's" and getting the best bear ever (that she named "Candy Cane" as her happy meal treat.

Christine and Jacob were so happy to get to play with their cousins. Christine's favorite part was having a sleepover with Berkeley and Emmy on a big air mattress. There was a lot of jumping involved.

And of course, who doesn't love Gigi time?

November to December, Where did these months go?

November and December flew by quicker than any other months in my entire life. Jacob was 6 months old and now he's 8 months. What? It was Halloween, and now all the holidays are over. I feel like I blinked and missed it all!

The reason for this is mostly this little guys fault. He keeps me running ALL DAY LONG. Last post update I said he was crawling, then just a few weeks later he stood up for the first time. (He stood up for the first time November 13th @ 6 months old). He loves to get into everything he possibly can, and put it ALL in his mouth.  He is a TROUBLE MAKER.

He outgrew his little barn (see any animals hanging down? nope, because his favorite activity was yanking them off)

He is mystified by the sun/shadows

photobomber

This is Jacob right before he was able to stand up.

almost there!

Before he was standing there was a lot of trying to climb Mommy, Daddy, and even Christine. (It drove Christine nuts! "no Jacob noooooooo!") He is SO determined.

On the day that Jacob stood up for the first time, I was in the kitchen doing dishes and Jacob was playing with his little sit n' stand walker toy and I walked over and saw that he had pushed it against the wall and was standing against it! I was completely shocked and ran to snap some photos with my phone. (Can anyone tell me the easiest way to pull photos off my iphone?)

I thought it might have been a fluke, but after that Jacob was a standing man. There was just too much stuff to play with.

Hamaker Christmas Card?

For all of you that thought that we snubbed you and left you off our Christmas Card Mailing List, or maybe are thinking in your heads, "Maybe we're not as good of friends with the Hamakers as we thought"... lay your fears and dashed hopes aside, there will be no Christmas Card this year.  The best we could muster together this year is a lame ol' blog picture post.

In the usual style of Christmas Cards I will attempt to outline this years happenings.

Our year went like this... Interviews, match day, yes we're going to Temple, we better buy a house, oh yeah Angela's pregnant, early labor, just push through it babe, actually maybe we want that baby to come like NOW, why don't you keep lifting those heavy boxes! Yes! we are dialating! Boom bam baby Jacob, I'll just be moving us while you try to recover, oh you've had a whole 3 days of rest, come on and help us unpack, Wait a second does this baby have GERD too? It's Graduation time, got to hurry unpack residency is starting, wait a second where did Jeff go? we are missing our Daddy. No really, has some one seen Jeff???

So here is our family Christmas Card. I did show up long enough to take one.

Don't we have a perfect family?

Just so that our memories do not paint an un-realistic, perfect children, always smiling picture, below are the pictures of what happened while we were trying to get our beautiful final product.

"Hold really still, love. Ignore Jacob ripping out your neck hairs."

"What was that noise? Christine!"

"Let's try one with the kids."

"OK Jacob you sit next to Christine."

"Christine give Jacob a nice hug."

 "Aww, no Christine don't smush his face."

 "No! Soft around his neck!"

 "Soft dear, Soft!"

"Mommy, Jacob's try to escape!"

"Cheese!"

 "Take two."
"Yeah let's have them sitting a little ways apart."

"Now let's do a family photo. We'll add in the timer to spice things up a bit!"

"Oh that's good, Stand right there."

"O.k. everybody get ready!"

"Here I come..." And... "I want to see!" 

...Click

"No Christine, you have to wait until it flashes to run and see the picture. And where are our heads?"

 "Maybe try it kneeling."

 "Oh can, I be on your knee too?"
"No Christine, just Jacob. You stand next to us."

 "And smile!"

 "Christine!?"
"Oh I was just looking at the toys for a little bit."
 "Take two! And smile!" "Eh, we'll just edit out the toys."