Titus Turns ONE!!

It is hard to believe a year has passed! After such a rocky start in life, it is fun to see what a healthy, happy, strong, funny little guy Titus has turned into in the past 365 days! Titus continues to be such a happy joy in our lives. However, with age, some of his easy-going, laid back attitude has been replaced with a short-fused temper every once in awhile! That definitely doesn't come from Dad's side of the family!Despite that, his smile is infections and one of our favorite things in the world and we love what a love he is; always wanting to snuggle and be by his family! At one year of age, Titus' favorites include: black olives, bananas, pop-up books, waving, signing "all done," blueberries, electrical outlets (even though they are covered), pointing, signing for his milk, Crosby (the blanket/stuffed animal he sleeps with), sucking his thumb, cuddling, music, dancing, reading books (especially if they have a beat to them), night lights, our carbon monoxide detector, climbing the stairs, saying "Ah Ah" (which we think means Evie), pancakes and waffles, chasing Evie, clapping, praying, playing peek-a-boo, giving high fives, "if you're happy and you know it," looking at pictures of himself, pretending to talk on the phone, throwing balls, applesauce, Ritz crackers and more! It took him awhile to get on the move (he much preferred snuggling in my lap and WATCHING everyone do everything), now that he has mastered crawling, walking and climbing the stairs, we have nicknamed him Titus the Destroyer! Nothing is safe from his curiosity! We also think he is a bit of a character/prankster! He loves to give us this little smirk that I swear I have seen before (hmmm...maybe from Dad?!?!)! It will be so fun to continue to watch his personality develop!

To help ring in turning one, Evie and I took Titus to an ornament making party, McDonald's for lunch (complete with the playland, his favorite place) and then celebrated the evening with Dad, dinner and cake! He was a fan (wonder where he gets that from?)! We look forward to celebrating with almost 50 friends and family members this weekend for his official birthday party (hockey-themed, of course)!

Titus loves to play with Evie...and has a great "fake cry!"

In the nearly three years our family has been going to Lifetime Fitness Center 5 times a week, never once have we had an incident report with Evie (in fact, I never even knew LTF HAD incident reports)! Poor Mr. Titus has been involved in two in the past four months!! Both times he has been "the victim" but my mother says I am just getting myself used to life with a rough and tumble boy (although, have you seen Evie?!)

Where Did December Go?!

With January blustering itself in, it is hard to believe December 2011 has come and gone! I shouldn't be surprised, our calendar had events nearly everyday and with Evie really getting into Christmas for the first time, we had a blast!

Our first December stop was at the Chaska Community Center where we welcomed in Christmas (and Santa on a firetruck, although we got there just a tad bit late for that) with cookie decorating (and, as you can see by the pictures, plenty of cookie tasting), crafts, a visit with Santa and petting one of his real live reindeer (Titus was all about this, Evie, not so much)!

Our next Jolly Stop was to the Mall of America for the annual Viking's Holiday Christmas Party! It's hard to tell who enjoys the limitless rides, no lines and all the treats, Caribou and food you could ever want more: the kids or the parents! Clearly, as you can tell from the pictures, Evie is not a fan of men who dress up as anything, especially Santa or Viktor! We actually took two cars to this event so Chad and Evie could stay and shut the very last ride down!

The following week, we had a fantastic Friday in downtown Minneapolis! I always forget how much I love it downtown: Christmas lights on every tree, hot chocolate vendors, great shopping, resturaunts: what's not to love! We spent the morning at the Children's Museum of Minnesota. What a treasure! We easily could have spent an entire day there and still gone back for more. Evie loved the art studio and storytime the best! That same evening, we made a second trek back downtown (due to naps we had to travel back home in between) to attend the Holidazzle Parade. Chad was able to get us tickets in the "hot seats" although we both agreed with such a great night, we would have perfered to be out on the street with everyone, although you couldn't beat the hot chocolate! Uncle Marc joined us for the fun and everyone around us got a kick out of Evie on her "cell phone" calling goodness-knows-who to tell them when to send the next float!!

We spent Christmas Eve in Alexandria with champagne, crab legs, cookies, swimming at the Y and of course, presents! The highlight for me was Evie lighting the Advent Candle at church (with a lot of help from Grandma Lucie). Christmas morning, after a wonderful visit from Santa, we headed to Little Falls to see Grandpa, Grandma, Auntie Enie, Great-Grandma Deen, Uncle Marc and even a surprise visit from Uncle Marco, Josh and Mitch! Again, great food, treats and presents were had by all! In fact, the next morning, Chad went into Evie's room thinking she was crying because she had to go to the bathroom, when in fact, she was crying because she was sad Christmas, and all the presents, and all the people, was over! Hard to blame her!

We hope your holidays were as eventful and joyous as ours and hope your longest list this Christmas, was the one that counted your blessings!

A Snowy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has come and gone and with it, comes another blog from the Lundeen Household! The weekend before the festivities, we took full advantage of the snowy Saturday by heading out and "enjoying" the snowflakes. As you can see, Titus really was enjoying himself in the snow! Neither he, nor his sister were real interested in keeping their mittens on! After the tears subsided, we blew the dust off of our sled, invited our neighbor Jackson over and enjoyed some fun up and down our driveway...and even more so, enjoyed the hot chocolate that came after!

We enjoyed spending Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving with Auntie Courtney, Uncle Scottie, Grandma Lucie, Bumpa and Hudson and Dutch (the dogs). Auntie Courtney cooked her first turkey (more than Mom can say) and the kids seemed to especially enjoy Uncle Scottie's homemade pies. We now turn our full attention to Christmas! Evie LOVES everything about it (hmmm, I wonder where she gets that from)! The lights, the music, watching Grinchy on TV, decorating trees, watching our neighbors put up lights, parties, egg nog, baking cookies, wrapping presents, looking at Christmas cards. She talks to a picture of her with Santa from two years ago most days and loves to wake up and find Sam, her Elf on the Shelf, each morning. Tomorrow, we start our Advent calendar! Thank goodness for the Dollar Section at Target and Michael's!

Thanksgiving 2009... 2011

Evie insists her pajamas say "What Santa Doesn't Bring Me, Grandma LUCIE Will!"

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

The Christmas lights are up at the Lundeen household and we are excited to start plugging them in (although when Evie eats all of her meals, I sometimes cheat a bit and plug in the ones on the front deck for an hour or so to both our delights)!

The highlight of the decorating came when Dad knocked down a now dormant wasp's nest and he and Evie spent some time investigating it. The wheels were turning in that curious mind of hers! She finally got brave enough to hold it herself even!

Mr. Titus is getting bigger, stronger and faster everyday. He now crawls with ease, although still seems to want to walk with some assistance rather than craw someplace. He hates to get his nose wiped. He loves to do big boy things, like sit at the picnic, ritz crackers, sucking his thumb, throwing balls, clapping, dancing and his new (to us) toy: the door! We even took him swimming last weekend at the indoor pool and he got such a thrill out of "jumping" into my arms from the edge (more of a fall really, but he couldn't get enough of it)!

Sibbling Love!

When we first brought Titus home from the hospital, Evie asked us when he was going to go back. I am happy to report that, in the past nearly 11 months, they have made some great progress! The highlight of my day is to watch the two of them interact. Titus loves Evie and Evie loves Titus. They are starting to play together and, with Evie's help, we finally got Titus to walk up a flight of stairs...anything to follow his big sister around! My favorite story happened a few days ago while returning home from Lifetime. We had left a snack-trap of goldfish snacks in the car and Evie had found them. All of the sudden I looked in the rear view mirror and would see a little hand stick out of Titus' car seat and Evie would put a goldfish in it. 45 seconds later, the hand came out again and Evie would put another fish in it. This went on the whole way home. Something about it was so sweet to me because it was like the two of them were speaking their own language without saying a word. Titus knew what he wanted and Evie knew what he wanted too!

Unfortunately, with that love comes loving on Titus TOO much! Last weekend Evie decided she wanted to "carry" Titus into the bathroom to join mom and dad brushing their teeth in there. Evie only weighs about 10 pounds more than Titus and she figured out pretty quickly he was a bit too heavy for her. As you can see in the above picture, Titus' nose took the brunt of the fall into the corner of the bathroom door! He bled pretty well from both nostrils and had a cut from the middle of his nose down to his mouth. Poor guy! He recovered from it well and just in time to contract pink eye from his sister! I guess it's more than goldfish they share!