Decker

Another thing I learned about Xmas is that it’s full of lots of songs. Mom and Dad played Xmas music non-stop at home and in the car, and as you may remember my mom likes to sing along to EVERYTHING, and I like to join in sometimes. My aunts taught me my very own Xmas song; it goes like this:

(sung by Katil and Tully)

Decker the Halls with Boughs of Holly / Fa La La La La

(sung by me!)

Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah Ah!

Tons of fun! If I’m in the ‘zone’, and you sing it to me, I might sing along with YOU! And then - I will clap my hands and look at you expectantly and wait for you to say “Yay!”.

Hi, Decker here.  I just want to thank everyone for a wonderful Christmas.  I got to see my grand parents and most of my aunts and uncles.  I had a great time this weekend and everyone was extremely fun and generous!  Thank you!

Hi all!

Keeping in tune with a previous post regarding potential future career plans, here are a couple of more possibilities for me:

• Physicist - I’ve discovered a new noise I can make, and my mom (reaching back for what little physics she remembers) calls it a “mini-Doppler effect“. I pat my hand up against my mouth while saying “ahhhh“ and it comes out “ah ah ah ah ah ah ah…“. It’s really cool - I like to do it a lot! Like in the car seat, at the dinner table, while having my diaper changed, while playing with my cars…

• Drill Seargent - As regular readers may know, I like to organize things. Especially in the tub - it’s great fun. I have 4 rubber animals that I like to play with and sort on the ledge of the tub, and today I decided I would line them all up facing backward to me (with their eyes on mommy). Then I had them line up sideways, all facing towards the faucet. Now if I could just teach them to make the “ah ah ah“ noise when I tell them to…

Mommy and Daddy keep playing these songs about Christmas - sounds like it’s a pretty big deal. My aunties put on some holiday videos that had people, muppets, and Sesame Street characters in them. I was sort of unimpressed with the people and muppets, but when the Sesame Street characters came on - yowza! It was really exciting! I let out a very happy noise!

Have a good one!

Hi everyone! Decker (cough) J (cough) here, ready to give you the latest (cough) on what’s up with me!

As you may be able to guess, I have been sick. Up till now, I’ve been a pretty lucky little dude - only one or two colds, and never worse than the sniffles. But this time, I’ve finally had what my mommy calls another rite of passage - ear infections, with a side dish of possible pneumonia. Yuck! Last Monday mommy noticed I was being kind of quiet, and even fell asleep at my lunch in my high chair! She thought maybe I was just tired from so much festivity over the weekend (we’d gone to a gingerbread house party at my grandpa Rick and grandma Chris’s, and saw uncles and aunts and I got to play with other little kids), and gave me some  baby tylenol just in case, b/c I felt warm. Well, the next three days I really didn’t feel like doing anything…I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to play…I just wanted to rest on my mommy’s chest and sleep or dazedly watch Sesame Street ad infinitem. I didn’t sleep well at nights and wasn’t getting any better despite everything my parents were trying. On Friday the doctor’s office finally said to bring me in, and I was diagnosed by my very sympathetic pediatrician as one sick kid!

So, mommy picked up some pink stuff called antibiotics, and added that to my medicine regimine of tylenol and robotussin. I have to say…I HATE TAKING MEDICINE! It’s really gross! They say it’s supposed to taste good, like cherries and fruit punch - this is a pack of lies. My mom’s pretty good at wrangling me on her own, but I give her a good fight every time, including clenching my teeth and making sad protest noises. When Daddy’s there to help, I double my efforts to resist. But - I do eventually give in and swallow some of the disgusting stuff. I hate to admit it, but I am feeling better - my eyes aren’t red and watery, and my appetite is coming back and I’m playing hide and seek with my folks again. I’ve also learned a new trick - if you say “yay!”, I’ll clap my hands! Sometimes I’ll even try to say “Yay” myself - it comes out more like “Ah!”, but I still mean it all the same!

I keep hearing about this thing coming up called “Christmas”, and from what I understand, it involves giving people things. To keep in the spirit, I gave mom and dad my virus, so they got to spend a good amount of time being ill right along with me! Mom kept calling our place the ‘house of plague’…it was neat, though, because it meant mom and dad would lay on the couch with me for long periods of time and let me sleep on them or play on them! They took lots of medicine right along with me, but they must have better tasting stuff because they didn’t raise a fuss when they took it.

Anyway - sure am looking forward to breathing better and tasting things again! It’s nice to be on the mend. Hope everyone else out there who got sick this past week (ie: a lot of my relatives!) are also feeling better soon.

Ho Ho (Achoo!) Ho! 

Hi all!

Well, being the plan-ahead kid that I am, I’ve been giving some thought lately to my future, and based on some of my interests and talents as of late, I think I may have a few career possibilities already lined up for me! For example:

• Parking Garage Owner/Valet - I love things with wheels, and I really like lining them all up in a row, and arranging them “just so”. I also enjoy trying to place them on top of each other. I think it would be neat to have a place where people pay me to park their cars, especially if they make some sort of noise when I move them!

   

• “Container Store” Manager - I love to arrange and sort things. When I’m in the tub, all my stacking cups have to be placed next to each other on one side of the bath, and all my plastic scooping cups have to go next to each other on the other side. There is also a separate section for my plastic squeaky animal toys, and then all my foam alphabet letters go on the wall at the end. If mom or dad moves them, this disturbs my plans and I give them a reproachful look and begin again. Such fun!

   

• Architect/Construction Worker - As long as the buildings consist of stacking blocks one on top of the other, I could create a whole town for you! I can stack all the way up to seven blocks on my own at the moment, and when I get taller I feel certain I can go even higher. I also like to do my own demolition!

Have a good Monday!

Last week I went to the doctor for my 15 month check-up, and I’ve grown some since my 1st birthday! I’m now 32 and 1/4 inches tall (I gained exactly an inch!), and I’m 22 lbs 8 oz! My doctor says she can feel some more teeth are getting ready to come in (my mom says that was pretty easy to figure out, with all the drooling I’ve been doing lately!), and then she gave me 3 shots! I tried to be brave, but really - that was asking an awful lot of me! So I just gave up and let everyone know I wasn’t thrilled about the situation. But then - I got to pick out a toy from the treasure chest, just like the big kids do! I chose a plastic green frog, and I chew on him when I’m in my car seat. By the way, I’ve graduated to my big kid carseat, too! I get to face out the front now, and see everything my mom does! I wonder when I’ll be able to convince her to let me drive…

Conundrum: The holidays are here, and you’d like to put up a Xmas tree but you have a little person wandering around underfoot in your living room - a little person who LOVES to explore things and often likes to see how they taste or how well they bang together. How do you still hang your ornaments or get that cozy feeling of tiny twinkling lights on the dark green boughs, with all the lights turned down low?

Solution: Paint your very own Xmas tree! After discussing the probability that a real live tree would most likely be more effort than it was worth this year, Sean suggested that we make our own tree on the sliding glass doors to the patio. Outside, he hung up lights behind the tree, which you can see very well through the green tempura gracing our abode. Frith’s dad and sisters helped add some “creative” elements to the tree (both normal looking ornaments and …well…um, “interesting” ones as well) with the extra paint, and voila! You have a Decker-proof  Tannenbaum!