and now, a moment with Everett

Everett came first.  In the womb he liked bouncing on my bladder.  Out of the womb he likes cheerios.  He went thru a stage recently where he enjoyed sucking on his top lip, as shown above.  He takes it seriously.  I think Everett’s favorite color might be yellow.  I have little proof other than he seems to grab for yellow toys first when we play ‘group the objects by color.’  And, we’ve all seen him in his yellow Tupperware hat:

 

Everett sleeps really well, which I enjoy.

 

So I said that Everett likes cheerios, but he LOVES graham crackers.  He giggles when he eats them, and I’ve never heard him yell so loudly as the time I was eating a graham myself and had not offered one to him.  It was then I knew.

 

 

Aside from grahams, there are few things from which Everett will not be deterred.  One is the power button on the computer tower.  At random moments he becomes fixed upon it and will drop whatever he is holding and crawls (yes crawls, i haven’t mentioned that I have two crawlers yet) toward it in what can only be described as sheer determination.  I have had the computer shut down on me a few times.  There is no distracting him once he’s fixed, no amount of relocating will keep him from it - he heads straight back.

 

Everett laughs readily. It’s one of my favorite things about him.  We’ll all just be sitting there hanging out and Brookston will do something and Everett will just start laughing.  It’s so endearing.  

Everett knows how to relax.

how the boy’s room turned out.

A long long time ago I posted my plans for the boy’s room and promised to put up pictures of how it turned out, and I’m finally following thru.

bird mobile pattern found at: http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2008/08/bird-mobile.html

my silent prayer

So today, before thinking about it, and in total sincerity, I prayed:

“Heavenly Father, please give me super powers.”

And since that hardly constitutes an exciting blog entry, here are a few pictures:

 

                                     

  

Have I mentioned that B is crawling and standing?  He is.  E is too content to be bothered with things like that.  I mean look at him there in his Tupperware hat, who needs to go anywhere, really?

Everett wanted to blog tonight:

  He asked so nicely - we had to let him, so here he is:

-vc5nhg7hn8j  y6’’[65fc r5inbnl/k-[g                        70000        ngf hj,. ,. ,..jju76fd0000000000000000000000000000000ffffffffvvvvvvvvovvvvvvv vdddddddddddddddddtccccccccc   xxx                 b 3D      GG            7 T NM                                                                          hhhq7666666666666666666666666666666666666iiiiiiiiihhhh                          afesIL,                                                               NJBBBBBBBBBBBBOK MMMMM,                                          VVVGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN     GYYJ         NNN

Eh, not bad?  my favorite part is when he says ‘ok mom. ’

Going Home for the Holidays

the merry little Christmas roadtrip

All four of us piled into the family van (which was the Camry) and took the 14 hour trip to Indiana in style.

We left the day after a huge snowstorm and that morning was absolutely beautiful as you can see.

We met Mr. and Mrs. Claus at the local Food City in Newport, Tennessee:  Brookston tried to snack on Mrs. Claus’ glove and she found this uniquely endearing.

 

The stoplights are numbered in Newport, and we liked it.

If you look closely, you’ll see that this is stoplight number five.  We drove thru this stoplight after obeying all traffic laws.  We Empeys believe in that sort of thing.

 

We arrived at my parents house in good time and still in style.  We were fashionably on time of course.

 

Brookston, enjoying not being in his car seat.

 

 

  My parents Christmas tree.

 

The 12 days of Christmas Hair loss:

Nick was rocking around the Christmas spirit with an ever changing facial hair display.  Most men seem to enjoy this type of endeavor and Nick is no different.

Here we have the progression for your jolly-ficaton.  (note: it started with a full beard, but sadly we have no documentation of the early beginnings.

 

one goatee grinning

 

two handlebars

three pics of disconcertion

four hairs left in a soul patch

five …um, eh, I can’t keep this up… then a haircut, and then a buzz: a man from his hair set free (it’s uncannily like that partridge in a pear tree).

 

Christmas Adam

We made gingerbread houses with my parents on Christmas Adam*.   Here’s how they turned out                                                                          (*The day before Christmas Eve) 

 

Christmas DAy

We spent Christmas day at my brother’s.  I donned a Christmas onesie in honor of the occasion.  Donner the reindeer inspired me.  That and it’s an honorable Burke tradition that dates back, you know, centuries.

 

opening gifts:

     

^Sarah with Brookston.

<My brother with B & E.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures with the triplets and the twins together.  Those boys are fast.  I did get an all-star video of them however and I’ll have to figure out how to get it on here somehow.

 

The End of this Long Holiday post

There are our Christmas events.  I’m going to leave New Year’s up to Nick – stay tuned.

Not only is he hilarious asleep,

Nick is pretty funny awake too.  Here are some examples for your enjoyment:

One morning I extended a dry flaky hand (ew, sorry) for some lotiony relief to find this on my Aveeno bottle:

Yes, that’s right folks:

 

“soothing goat essence”

 

And yet another example of Nick’s creations: 

                                      Meet the Space Lamb

We have a video Nick filmed of the Space Lamb on assignment in outer space, but I can’t upload it here right now.  I’ll have to get Nick to do it, so stay tuned for that.

 

 

The Space Lamb’s next mission, I have been informed, will be to investigate this mysterious message:

 

And on other topics, the boys are doing well.  We feed them solid foods now, and they seem to enjoy it.

^Everett

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brookston v

Among other things they enjoys pulling the lights off the Christmas tree and eating them and playing with Tupperware. 

 

And here’s something that I’ve been up to: I made these for Thanksgiving (they’re from the book Hello Cupcake!  which is excellent.

Okay, someday I’ll post again.  =0  Bye now.

Nick’s on the radio

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to music other than classical on the radio.  However  tomorrow, Saturday December 5th, at some time between 3-4 pm Nick Empey Acoustic will be aired on the radio.  There’s a local radio station in Carrboro that has a low power FM frequency of 103.5.  They also have a live internet stream here that you can listen to anywhere.  We barely get the station clearly at our apartment, so we’ll be listening on the net.  Most likely the song “White Shirts and Ties” will be played.  Just in case you haven’t listened in a while or want to hear more Nick Empey Acoustic visit Nick’s official site.