Home of Douglas Loots

Last night after we finished “trick or treating” I stuck around a little while longer while the kids ate some of their treats. About 7:15 I took off to catch the last half of class, right about the same time the sugar was putting the devil into my two children.

I can imagine them now, little Tasmanian devils spinning around the house while Colette was trying to get pajamas on. Running around like a crazed drug addicts looking for their next fix, except my children were probably looking for any treats that mommy and daddy had inadvertantly left out.

A few minutes after I left, Lauren was running around and tripped and fell, hitting her head on the post at the bottom of the steps. She didn’t just hit it on the post, but the corner of the post. The worst place possible. Well, as you can see by the picture she cut her little forehead open. Colette took her into the living room and was trying to clean up the wound and put some steri strips on her head. Lauren was not exactly cooperating though. I imagine any 18 month old would react the same way.

While Colette was trying bandage up Lauren’s head, Brayton was running around the house too and fell down and hit his mouth causing a bloody lip. So poor Colette had two kids bleeding, trying to bandage one and the other trying his hardest to get her attention, screaming “MOMMY I’M BBLLEEDINGGGG TOOOOOO”

Finally after everyting settled down, she got the kids into bed and it took over two hours for them to come down from their sugar highs and fall asleep. What a great Halloween!!!

Here is a good clip of Colette and Lauren playing when Lauren was about 9 months old. I had a difficult time finding any clips of Lauren and her belly laugh. She had it too, but we had to work a good deal harder to get her to use it. She was so dainty and happy all the time, what a good baby she was, except for the fact she didn’t sleep through the night until she was about 8 months old. Now she’s such a big girl walking and talking all the time, hard to believe this clip was taken only 6 months ago.

Brayton had the best belly laugh when he was a baby. This weekend the kids are in Mallard at Grandma & Pappa’s. Colette and I were missing them a little bit so we decided to watch some of the older clips we’ve taken of the kids over the years. Here’s Brayton and his belly laugh, taken in June 2006.

Lauren Claire is turning into quite the little lady. Back in August, we put a nice cute polka dot dress on her that we got as a gift and she just loved it. She would stand up stick her chest out and prance around. She really loved that dress.

Just earlier this week, Colette bought her the nice white frilly dress she has on in the video. Unfortunately I’m usually tardy with getting out the camera, but again when we put her in this new dress she stuck her little chest out and was so proud of how pretty her new dress was. Her little face just lights up.

We had some old Mardi Gras beads sitting around the house, Lauren loves to put these beads around her neck. She’ll walk around all day with the beads on. She is starting to like her chap stick too. If we could get her to sit still, I’d tell Colette to paint her little fingernails. I bet she’d love that.

Lauren has really been talking alot lately. She has started putting sentences together rather than just the one word type of communication you get when they start to talk.

Yesterday, when the kids took their naps, Colette took the van to get it washed and the inside vacuumed out. While she was gone, Lauren woke up from her nap and I went and got her. We sat in my chair and watched a little football while eating a few goldfish crackers.

At one point, Lauren looked up at me and said “Where’s Mommy?” I said “Mommy will be home soon.” She looked at me and said, “I want Mommy.” She actually said this three different times, “Where’s Mommy?” and then after my explanation, she’d say “I want Mommy.”

The other phrase she’s been saying alot lately is “Hi Baby!” I always say that to her when I come home from work or get her up from a nap. She only recently has started saying it, to me, to other children. I’m not certain that she understands that she is the baby, but it’s very cute when she does say it.

So we were just sitting around doing puzzels tonight, when Colette started to teach Lauren how to do sommersalts. She had taught Brayton some time ago, matter of fact he can do them all on his own without my help. Anyway, Lauren just loves doing them. We land her on the pillow, she pops up and comes back to do another. I bet we did 10 sommersalts between Colette and I before we got the bright idea to record it.

Well, as soon as we started recording it, Brayton (he is very aware we put these movies on the computer) immediately wanted to do it to get his 15 seconds of fame. What really makes this little movie so speacial is the look on Laurens face at the beginning of the film. She was having so much fun!