I guess it is high time that I update this blog...no worries, we survived the transition into 2009 and are still alive and well! The Christmas season was very busy for us, with lots of family visiting, traveling, packing up, unpacking. Now that we are back home again, unpacked and settled back into a routine of home life, I'm pretty sure we didn't forget anything anywhere. Unfortunately, although the camera did travel with us all over the place, I never really knew where it was, and if I knew it was in my purse, I had no idea where that was. Hence, I took absolutely no pictures from over the break.
Things are going well over here. Peter started taking some steps at the beginning of December between Mike and me, and over the holidays he was doing really well. He can walk across a room if he wants to but it seems that he rarely wants to, so he just doesn't. He's taken a few good tumbles and I wonder if the memory of smacking his head on the floor has discouraged him from trying walking on his own for a while. He's really starting to climb on things, most favorite being any kind of rocking chair. He sits himself up on the chair and rocks it wildly... he has a child's rocking chair and loves to stand on it backwards and rock it until it tips over, causing his parents some degree of stress. Needless to say, if we're not around to watch him like a hawk, the rocking chair is definitely not accessible! He has started to say a few things but not with any great regularity and I don't think he has any idea of what they mean. A few times I think he's said "All Done" or "Amen" but he won't do it again so I wouldn't really say he's talking yet. One Sunday in Strathroy over Christmas, I was holding Peter after church and Andrea came up with his cousin Robert. I told Peter, "Say Hi, Robert" and he replied, "Hi Robert", clear as a bell. We think he's just quietly learning all he can about speaking and proper vocabulary, and once he's sure he's got it down, he'll just start talking in complete sentences, haha. The last week or so he's started calling everything "Daddy", which of course Mike is thrilled with even though the lights are "Daddy", the refrigerator is "Daddy", the laundry tubs are "Daddy" and so on. He's become very curious as to what things are, excitedly pointing to anything and saying in a half-whisper, "Wassa, wassa!". Yesterday I was looking through some of the videos we've taken of him over the past year and just marveling at how much he's changed, and knowing that he'll be so much different again in another year. It will be interesting in another three months to have another little newborn in the family, so tiny and helpless. We are so much looking forward to meeting this little one. He/she likes to be very active right around the time Mommy wants to go to sleep, which has made it a little bit difficult for sleeping, but I suppose that's just early preparation for all those sleepless nights later on.
Anyways, I have a few pictures to post so I'll get on to those.
Hmmm, mid-December we had Danielle, Lauren and Tom over for an "interesting" dinner of Thai food. It was a bit of an experiment, and I won't post the directly after dinner pictures, haha, but we had a lot of fun playing games in the evening. Here is one sequence of a type of "telephone" game with alternating descriptive sentences and pictures. I think all of our stomachs were sore at the end of the night from laughing so hard!
I had been trying to get a picture of Peter to show him walking, but it's really hard when it's just him and me at home. Most of the pictures end up being blurry shots of him lunging toward me. The next two are the best so far....
We left for Hamilton on a Friday at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, during a terrible winter storm. It took us two hours to get there, usually a 45 minute trip. Thankfully we had much better weather for our other driving trips during the holidays... one night in Hamilton, two nights in Strathroy, three nights in Hamilton, four nights in Strathroy, and finally home again for one night then back to Hamilton for one night.
This is Peter enjoying watching the snow from our bedroom Friday morning before we left.
It seems that winter can be pretty hard on kids... Peter's had some sort of cough or cold since the middle of October...it's hard to tell when one sickness ends and the next begins, or what is due to molars coming in. If he doesn't pick it up in the church nursery, Mike brings it home from school. For the most part, he hasn't been really sick, but the coughing often flares up in the middle of the night, keeping us all awake. Poor kid!
Here he is enjoying the rocking chair that his Mom got from Uncle Dave for Christmas...lots of fun!
As if he doesn't spend enough time strapped into his car seat, whenever it ends up in the house for whatever travel plans we have, he LOVES sitting in it. He'll sit in it and play for a loooong time, kind of boggling but it's nice to know where he is all the time :)
And last but not least, here is a picture of Baby Vander Deen #2 at 25 weeks (Jan 10). Growing well, kicking lots, and we are looking forward to meeting our newest little bundle in April!!
This is Mike and Simon during their "Cooking with Gary" skit at the
This is Mike and Simon during their "Cooking with Gary" skit at the
Simon and Jodi, our wonderful hosts for the weekend. 
Mike and I
The happy new couple
The next few photos are from the professional photographer
