Here are some pictures of the boys wearing the sweaters they got for Christmas. They looked very cute at church. 
although occasionally you can coax him into this (after great exertion and funniness): (also note how he has enough hair to sort of stick up in the back. See?)
But then if you set him down and try to leave the room he does this:
Poor baby guy. We hope he is better soon. 
Malachi has (finally) learned to climb up the stairs by himself. He inevitably has an audience of admiring brothers following behind and yelling, "He's going up, Mommy! He's still going up! He's almost all the way up now! He's up! Come look, he went all the way up!!"
Abe started learning to play the piano after Christmas this year. So far he is a pretty diligent worker (although he sometimes seems surprised how many times I make him repeat things until they are perfect. When I told him, "Sometimes I practice something 50 times in a row and it still needs work," I think he looked a little pale. Poor guy. So many hours of work ahead of him . . . but it will be worth it :) ) and he is trying hard to keep his fingers curved, sit up straight, etc. There is a lot to concentrate on!
Malachi is learning to walk. He will do 6 or 7 steps at a time now, but he doesn't seem to want to buckle down and do it for real. He perks up his ears every time we say the work "walk," though, and seems quite proud of himself when he manages a few steps. Maybe it's just as hard as playing the piano, in its way. I don't remember. :)
And Sebby. He has been learning to wedge himself into tight places which he occasionally can't get out of. He also writes letters on pieces of paper all day long. He is great at making most letters, and he can write "Sebby" really well, but he always writes these huge strings of letters and asks me, "What does it say?" When I try to pronounce his creation ("Um . . . it says, 'sbkleddeff'") then he says, "No, Mommy, what WORD does it make?".JPG)
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This is what our house, our baby, and our boys looked like one year ago. They are all bigger now (except the house).
Ky has decided in the last couple of weeks that he wants to start talking about everything. He points at things and talks all day long, and most of it is pretty unintelligible (though cute). But he actually knows a lot of words, as we realized when we made a list yesterday. These are all words we're sure about because he's said them repeatedly and in context. There are probably others we haven't deciphered yet. :)
(You can see the ruler--I think it was 24 inches--is sticking all the way into the snow here)
We had several big snowstorms last week, the biggest on Christmas Day. We heard that we got about 14 inches of snow in that one storm, and the wind was blowing a lot, so there were also huge drifts up to 2 or 3 feet high. There were piles of snow blown up against our garage and our fence that were taller than Sebby. We also got several inches the next couple days, and we still have huge mountains of snow lining all our roads and sidewalks. Our backyard is just a big mass of lumps and bumps and rounded hills and upended buns (that last phrase is from a poem, I think, but I'm not sure who to attribute it to).
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It's that time of year again when Baby Santa appears.
(And this one.)
(And this one.)
Ky wants to try it too!
During our bike ride on Thanksgiving, one of Abe's training wheels fell off, so we took the other one off too. (It was high time he learned to ride without them.) He practiced riding around on two wheels for an hour or so that day, and got the hang of it really fast. And he really must have been ready to learn, because today (just his second time practicing) he looks like a pro---he can even turn, put on his brakes, and ride in circles. He is VERY proud of himself (and I'm proud of him too!).
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