Mr. and Mrs. Claus

It's that time of year for another great photo op of our kids with santa.  It's Ashley's first year to meet Santa and the Mrs. and in good sibling fashion, she was not a fan.  Not quite the scream fest Ben had from last year (see pic), but she was working up to it.

I was not able to make it with the kids to see santa this year since I was sick, but Brian was feeling better from whatever bug we both caught and took them.  The story is that Ben wanted nothing to do with Santa and was running off until Ashley sat down on Santa's lap at which time Ben ran over to sit down as well since Ash was doing it.  Once Ash realized she was not with one of us she started to cry though so no good pic of the kiddos this year.  Hopefully one day we will get two smiling kids with the Mr. and Mrs.

We definitely play this tactic to our advantage at home with Ben and it seems to have worked for Santa this time, although I'm pretty sure he will catch on soon and not give into the 'peer pressure' we use to persuade him.  For example, after he is done playing with a toy here is our dialogue:

Me: Please pick up your toys so we can play with something else.
Ben: NO!
Me: Ok, I'll just pick them all up by myself then.
Ben: No, I want to do it.

And then he does it all himself with allowing me to help.  Don't ask me how this works, but so far it does.  It also works with meals.  Ashley is going to get applesauce cause she ate all her food.  He typically then proceeds to eat his food to get applesauce as well.  I'm sure the peer pressure I'm enforcing now to get him to eat and clean up toys will later on come back to haunt me in the teenage years, but for now I'm ok with that.

Ash is fully mobile and pulling herself up onto things now.  She loves to stand and in fact that's all she ever wants to do.  We've tried to get her to use the walker and not much luck yet, however she has much better balance than Ben ever did and can manage to stand with the walker without falling over or making it move.  Quite impressive actually.  She's even able to safely fall on her bottom when she wants to get down and crawl somewhere else.  Although she does tumble at times and her cries lead you to believe someone is poking her with a needle and not that she barely bumped her arm on the way down.  Brian calls her his little tomato cause he says she bruises like one when she falls.  I don't think it's quite that bad, but I'm sure he'd disagree.

Pics from Ash's 9 month and stats from her checkup coming soon.