Ready for Christmas

So we've been getting ready for Christmas around the Kies house the last couple of weeks. I've been taking the kids to various shops on Mondays/Wednesdays and Eric has been able to stay with the kids on the weekends to allow me to do some kid free shopping to get everything checked off my list. Can't say that I'm totally ready yet but very close. Last week I had a cookie exchange with the moms in our neighborhood playgroup. It was a lot of fun. Maddox helped me bake up the cookies before I went. They were sort of a healthy cookie with almonds and dried cranberries. She was sure to let me know that she didn't like them!! But, she was happy to help herself to the sweet frosting. Lucky for Maddox I came home with a lot better goodies than I left the house with :) She loves to cook/bake, and is always asking to make brownies. I'm looking forward to making Santa's cookies with her on Saturday. Maddox has started using scissors at school. You can see in the pictures she found our scissors. Unfortunately they aren't the safety kind so she needs lots of supervision but enjoyed cutting the wrapping paper up today while I wrapped presents. Kennon enjoyed getting his hands on the crackly paper and any bows/ribbons I would let him play with. Although that was fairly short lived because he tended to put everything in his mouth. He doesn't really need the BUMBO anymore but since we were all working on wrapping presents I put him in it up on the table so he could join in. HEALTH UPDATE: So Kennon got his 4th ear infection this past week. We had actually been to the audiologist last Monday and she thought his ears looked a little infected so we made an appointment for that afternoon and sure enough his right ear was definitely infected and the left one didn't look all that good either. So he is back on antibiotics, but hopefully for the last time. We scheduled Kennon to get tubes on the 27th. We aren't too happy to have him go through the procedure, primarily the anesthesia, but the alternative is continued antibiotics until he outgrows the infections and who knows how many he'll have before that occurs. It is a very short procedure, only 7 minutes. Eric and I will take the rest of the day off to be with him. Hopefully he will do well and we'll be making less trips to the doctor in 2012. We all ended up with a terrible GI bug this weekend. Kind of made getting things checked off our Christmas to-do list a bit harder. But, Eric and Maddox rallied this afternoon and made it out to the mall to get a few more presents while Kennon and I recovered at home. We are looking forward to the upcoming holiday weeks getting to celebrate with family. You will all see how much bigger Kennon is getting and how much naughtier Maddox is getting!! She is definitely going through the terrible 2's. In fact I think we saw her absolute worst tantrum today. She was upset because she couldn't make her scissors work to cut the wrapping paper. Mind you, the scissors are way to big for her and she wouldn't have a BIT of help from us. So the cutting session ended in tears, pounding on the floor, kicking, screaming, finally exhausting herself into a nap. Hmmmm how much longer till she turns 3. Something tells me that won't be a magic fix though :)