For the Folks in Mexico...

This blog was created to keep family and friends (near and far) updated on our lives. With my mom and dad in Mexico, I hope to do just that with this post. Mom, Dad ... while you're soaking up the sun, we're freezing out butts off in Michigan and missing you like crazy.

On with the post...

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All is well in Zoe's world. Most days, she's happy to be a 'big girl' and help with little tasks around the house, like making dinner ...

... or pulling Mitchell on the sled on a rare above-freezing day.

On those days that it isn't above freezing, we try to find things to do that are a) inside and b) cheap! The Chelsea Library fits both criteria. They have this great little playroom that the kids love.

Currently, one of Zoe's favorite activities is practicing writing her letters. She says she wants to do it perfectly. She's also convinced she can read. Granted, she's doing pretty well with letter sounds and is beginning to sound out simple words, but it'll be a while before she's occupying Mitchell and Alyse with board books. I can't wait for that day!

Speaking of Mitchell and Alyse, they recently had their nine-month check ups. All is well and only one shot! I also learned something: I used to think Zoe's slight build was due to one too many respiratory illnesses in a row when she was an infant, but now I attribute it to genes (and not mine). Rich always says he had to fight to keep weight on until he discovered beer and nachos. I guess the kids take after him.

Mitchell weighed in at 17 lbs., 15 oz. and is 29 inches. That's the 20th percentile for weight and the 75th for height.

Alyse weighs 16 lbs., 10 oz and is 28 inches. That's the 10th percentile for weight and the 75th for height.

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Zoe was 16 lbs. 3 oz. and 28 1/2 inches at her nine-month check up. See a pattern here?

Mitchell's favorite activity is trying to stand up using anything as a prop, including his sister's head. He's still content to zoom around on his belly, combat-crawl style. When he's on the hardwood, he drags his legs and reminds me of a penguin sliding on the ice. I'm convinced he's going to have massive shoulders by the time he's walking. He also has a mouth full of teeth (four on top, two on bottom) that he's discovered are great for biting into things, like mama's shoulder and sister's foot. Luckily, he also has become such a love and gives slobbery open-mouth kisses whenever asked.

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Alyse finally became mobile (not counting the rolling) and actually beat Mitchell to hands-and-knees crawling. She's slow, but effective. She's more focused on communication than her brother. For quite a while now she been clapping and waving and is working on expanding her vocabulary, which currently contains one more word than Mitchell's. It is this word that she utters about a hundred times, from the moment she wakes to about two minutes before she drifts off to sleep. That word is "YEP!" She will demonstrate her formidable 'yepping' skills in a video at the end of this entry.

Now a couple more recent photos.

The kids like crawling through this tunnel. Here's Mitchell after spotting the camera.

Dziadzia stopped by for a visit before taking Zoe to a U of M women's basketball game on Sunday. He and Alyse played with her toy ... until she spotted the camera.

Zoe after the game, which she kept referring to as the football game (her sports-writing daddy loved that).

And now, some video for no other reason than I finally downloaded them to our computer and thought I'd share a couple. I have the hardest time getting candid photos of the kids and capturing anything spontaneous on video. They stop what they're doing and grin like The Cheshire Cat as soon as either appears.

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Here's a time I was acutally able to capture something as it happened, thanks to Busia. It's from the beginning of January at the exact moment Mitchell figured out how to clap when Busia sang Pat-a-Cake to him.



And here is Alyse doing what she does best ... yepping!

Take care,
ZMA's mama

Happy Thanksgiving ... Birthday ... Christmas ... New Year ... (Did We Miss Anything!?!)

Our holiday season meant excess. An excess of food. An excess of gifts. And, most relevantly for this blog, an excess of pictures on the camera. Allow us to purge. (The pictures, not the food. That's gross.)

It's been a while since our last post, so we start off way back at Thanksgiving. Busia and Dziadzia and Aunt Steph and Jason braved some nasty weather to travel to our town to celebrate.


Everyone seemed to enjoy Daddy's Thanksgiving dinner ... except Mitchell, who wasn't a big fan of mashed potatoes:

Speaking of dinner, Zoe has become a great helper in that area. She loves to feed "my babies," as she calls Mitchell and Alyse:

Zoe helping out at feeding time is cute, but her desire to help with certain tasks has actually become quite a luxury. She now insists on feeding Mitchell his pre-nap bottles twice a day, and about 75-percent of the time they'll both have enough patience for the process to end in a full tummy and a sound-asleep baby. It's kind of ridiculous, when I take time to think about it, that I need help from my 3-year-old to make it through the day. But I do, and she's great at it.

Switching holidays ... Santa came to our town via a parade through downtown. Zoe and Daddy had a great night on the town while Mom hung out at home with the babies. The night started with a little Christmas shopping and was followed by watching the parade from a park bench on Main Street, cookies and caroling at a local business' warehouse and, finally, dinner out together.

Here we pause for a photo in front of our town's oft-photographed clock tower.

Zoe waved to Santa and Mrs. Claus on their sled, but opted not to visit with him at the post-parade party.

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She got another chance to talk to ol' St. Nick at preschool a couple days later. Mom, Dad and the babies were invited to school that day ... and when the door swung open and the jolly old man came "Ho-ho-ho-ing" into the room, Zoe bolted out of her Indian-style stance like her pants were on fire. She spent the rest of the visit on Mrs. Buss' lap, as pictured below. "Maybe I'll talk to Santa when I'm five," Zoe told us later.

She had one last chance a couple days later at a local department store (not noticing, thankfully, how distinctly different Santa looked each of the three times we spotted him over a six-day period). She passed, and we opted instead to email him her wish list: A purple mirror, new fingerpaint and roller skates.

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Daddy's birthday falls somewhere amid the anticipation for Christmas. Here, Alyse and Zoe watch his cake baking:

And, later, Daddy contemplates his fleeting youth (or fantasizes that somebody wrapped him up a nap):

And then ... Christmas is finally here. The first one, anyway.

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We found enough nooks and crannies in the house for twelve members of the Honeycutt clan (plus Charlie, a.k.a. "Mini Wheat) to sleep when they came for a Christmas prequel.
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Here, Mitchell and Aunt Shawnie capture the mood of early in our little celebration. A good time, indeed.

And here, a very tired Honey and Alyse sum up the end of the night:

One of Zoe's favorite new toys is a wooden train set from Honey and Papa. You can't play it, of course, without a conductor's outfit:

And just in case a train set might be considered too masculine, it was complemented with his Cinderella dress.

For the first time since Sonja and I first co-habitated, we woke up at our own home on Christmas morning. While it was strange to change what had become our holiday traditions, and it was a bit sad not to be celebrated by our extended families, it was certainly worth it to see our children experience the whole thing in their own house.

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Here's Zoe, who was quite thrilled that Santa finished most of his cookies and milk -- and the reindeer apparently enjoyed their carrots.

Mitchell and Alyse seemed to thoroughly enjoy their first Christmas loot:

And it didn't take Zoe long to get the hang of her new mini-trampoline:

Busia, Dziadzia and Aunt Steph joined us later in the day for lunch and more (many more!) gifts. One gift from Busia that we tried to keep secret from Zoe was put together in her bedroom on Christmas Eve ... while she slept in our bed. We kept her out of her room without much effort for much of the morning, but she wandered in while Mom and Dad were putting babies down for a nap. She might have had the reaction we hoped for ... but if she did, we missed it.

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Here Busia and Zoe relax on her new princess bed. Sonja spends a lot of time in it, too, saying it's the bed she dreamt of as a child.

And, whaddya know, Zoe must have been a good girl. She got everything on her list, including the roller skates. (That item was added to her list after watching a Little Bill episode in which he learns to skate. Thankfully he didn't learn to ride a horse.)

Up next, New Year's Eve. Boy, that holiday has changed a little for Mom and Dad.

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Our crazy bash was held at noon at Chuck E. Cheese. Although, in this photo, Mitchell actually looks a little like Daddy used to look on New Year's Eve!

And Zoe actually did get that horse. One ride, at least:

To top off the day, Mom and Dad watched a movie ... and Mom actually stayed up past midnight for the first time in four years! Such a big girl!

That catches us up on all the holidays. We'll try to report again before Easter!

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Hope y'all had as much fun this holiday season as we did. We heart you.

The Park and Pumpkin Pickin'

I always forget how much I like fall until it's here. I love the cool, sunny weather and gorgeous colors, all of which make me want to get outside before winter hits and has me wanting to hunker down in the house for the next five months.

With Daddy working on Saturday, the kids and I were off to the park. Zoe recently had her picture taken at preschool, so when I said I wanted to take her picture on the play structure, she yelled, "Wait, Mom!" and struck a pose.

While Zoe played on the swings, structure and old-school merry-go-round, the babies looked on happily. The brisk fall air forced me to break out the bundlers and winter hats. Cute!

Daddy was home Sunday, so we thought we'd head to the pumpkin patch to partake in some cider and donuts and pick out this year's pumpkins for Halloween. Zoe thought this shirt would be appropriate for the outing. Notice her standard preschool picture pose again.

Mitchell and Alyse had a good time waiting for the main event.

Before we left, I managed to get a close-up of Mitchell's first teeth. It's not too hard since he's always prepared to gnaw on something. I offered a finger and he opened his mouth.

There's a large corn maze at Alber's Orchard, but the half hour or so that it takes to go through it didn't seem appealing when you factor in pushing a clunky double stroller through dirt. Instead, Rich and Zoe tackled a slightly smaller version.

A pretty gazebo on the grounds offered a nice backdrop for a picture of Zoe and I.

Once again, Mitchell and Alyse were more than happy to be observers from their cozy stroller.

I didn't get any pictures of Zoe picking out the pumpkins, but once we got home Rich and Zoe had a great time decorating them. Notice our community cat looking on while they discuss their plans.

It was a great fall weekend for our clan. Hope you enjoyed yours, too.

Take care,
ZMA's mama

A Few Firsts

Not to preempt Daddy's return to the blogging world (below), but I've been meaning to add an update for a while.

We've had some exciting 'firsts' take place since my last post. Alyse's first taste of food (Mitchell's was about a month ago...more on that later), Mitchell's first tooth and both babies first taste of veggies (sweet potatoes, Zoe's favorite first food).

First, a couple photos of the babies having a tug-o-war over a toy. We've had a bit of toy stealing for a while now. Oddly enough, it's often our mild-mannered Alyse stealing from 'big' brother Mitchell.

As you can see, she's rather proud of herself and he's quite distraught. He can be so dramatic!

This past weekend, Rich's cousin Chris and his family stayed over after the Michigan game. Zoe had a blast with cousin Rebecca. Here they are ready for bed in their princess pj's. Don't let the pj's fool you - sleep was the furthest thing from their minds.

I was also fortunate enough to have my mom with me over the weekend (though I'm not sure she feels the same) to help with some sleepless nights. Since I knew Rich was going to be very busy, I figured it would be a good time for her to visit. With both babies getting over being sick and teething on top of that, sleep was the furthest thing from their minds too! Hopefully, Mom can forgive me for her lack of sleep. I am forever indebted to her for all the help! As tired as we were, I didn't think to take many pictures. Here's one of the few I did take: Mitchell sporting his star sleeper. Sure, he's happy now. But talk to him at 2 a.m.

As I mentioned, we've had a lot of firsts around here. We introduced Mitchell to baby cereal about a month ago, but he really didn't take to it. We decided to give it a rest when he got sick and abandoned solids for a while. Now with teething and refusing bottles when the pain is bad, we're getting serious about solids again. Alyse had her first taste of cereal October 3rd. This morning, we moved onto sweet potatoes with the kids. At Busia's request, here's the 'messy' face photos. Admittedly, Alyse isn't all that messy. She's a surprisingly neat eater for a novice.

Mitchell on the other hand...

That's all for now.

Take care,
ZMA's mama

Sickness All Around

I took the morning off to take Zoe to her third day of preschool, so I thought I'd take a minute for an update.

Thursday brought us our first trip to the ER with one of the twins. Alyse developed a strange rash on her lower leg that we later found out was called Petechiae (Pinpoint, unraised, round red spots under the skin caused by bleeding) and should never be taken lightly. After a trip to her doctor, a blood draw at St. Joe's and the subsequent spread of the rash, we were off to U of M Motts. Many, many hours later, Alyse pretty much stumped the docs. They said that the rash usually accompanies some major illnesses, but Alyse was asymptomatic. She received some intravenous antibiotics and was released. They're guessing it was a virus. Earlier in the week, she was a little fussy one night, but never had a fever or any other symptoms that would have told us she was really ill. The rash is now pretty much gone, but she sure gave us a good scare.

If it was just a virus, it may be the culprit of some pretty cranky, tired siblings. Zoe and Mitchell are being kicked in the butt by a nasty cold. Zoe is on the tail end, but she's still pretty tired. After putting Mitchell to bed on Saturday night, I walked down to find this...


Zoe had zonked out eating dinner.

With everyone on the mend, I had some happy babies greet me this morning. Here's a couple shots from our morning play time.



That's all for now.

Take care,
ZMA's mama

Labor Day Weekend

I'm going to keep this short and sweet since all three kids are sleeping, so should I!

The kids and I spent six days (two of those spent mostly, it seemed, on the road) around Labor Day at my parents in Newaygo.


Zoe on her maiden voyage down the same slide I slid down every summer of my childhood. If I can get time, I will load the video. She was so, so proud. As you can see, it really does take a village!

Ms. Alyse during tummy time. It's not her favorite thing. "Hey, can someone help me out here?"

Alyse, crashed out on Honey after a hard day of entertaining.

Mr. Mitchell, flirting as usual. "What'd you say? Oh yeah, I know I'm cute!"

Cuddling our friend, Lori.

The September Birthday Crew. Papa, Uncle Bill, Cousin Sam and Sis Shane (holding Alyse).

Zoe enjoying some birthday cake on Uncle Tommy's lap. She has him sooooo wrapped!

It was a great visit! Thanks all.

Take care,
ZMA's mama