Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas from the McPherson’s! While this post has been a long time coming, I’ve assembled a ton of photos to illustrate the merriment that was.
To begin, the picture above is the official Santa picture, and you can see that none of the children were all that thrilled with the experience. It’s actually an improvement on Clare’s previous Santa visits where she wouldn’t even get close enough to him to actually take a picture. I love how Clare and Maddy are giving the camera a very similar look and identical head tilt. Looking at this picture makes me think that I was torturing my child but moments before she and Maddy were happily playing in line together (super cute matching dresses courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa).
Besides visiting Santa, we spent a lot of time relaxing at home, eating, opening presents, and playing with the kiddos. Maddy was eight months old, Clare was almost two and a half, and Sam was seven weeks. It’s crazy to imagine that in six and a half months sleepy, snugly Sam is going to be as active and vivacious as Miss Maddy. Watching the different stages of development was really fun. Even more fun was watching that Maddy and Clare can actually play together a little bit. They really, really like each other and would smile and giggle whenever they saw each other. It was cuteness overload and we all loved it. See pictures below for maximum cuteness!

Besides snuggling with cute kids, we did the usual eating fabulous meals (courtesy of Chef Jeremy), opening presents, and baking/eating cookies.







We finished the whole holiday with a trip to Zoolights – all 9 of us. Yes, there are 9 Dion-McPherson’s now. Sheesh, we’re a basketball team.


Lastly, here is a picture that J took when I dropped some chocolate on little Sam’s face. He doesn’t seem to mind 🙂

Three-Ring Circus

There are those days when it feels like we’re in a three-ring circus around here, and I’m not sure if I’m the ring master or the person who cleans up after the elephants. Sometimes it feels like both in the same day 🙂

Happenings around here include a great visit by Grandma T, where she met Sam for the first time! Little Samster loved to snuggle with Grandma T, that is when Clare wasn’t monopolizing Grandma’s time with crafts, songs and endless readings of “the Moose book!”

Other notable changes around here include Clare’s graduation from a crib to a big girl bed. It happened in dramatic fashion with a bang and a scream while she was supposed to be napping, fortunately without injury, and has been a bumpy transition. Clare loves being able to get out of bed, and we always have at least one if not multiple reminders for her to get back into bed before she actually goes to sleep. On one nap I crept in to find her sleeping like this, having pulled her name train and her little animals into bed with her. On other “naps” and “bed times” we’ve found her reading on her floor a full hour and a half after bed time, jumping around in her grass skirt, or playing in her closet.

Cute quotes from Clare include her telling me “I don’t like toots” after having some gas and tonight at dinner when I asked her to eat another piece of pizza and she said “Actually I already did.”

Sam’s big news is his incredible growth. I’m pretty sure that my prenatal vitamins actually include some type of growth steroids given the way this kid is growing. The outfit above is a 3 month size and it barely fits him. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about putting my two-month old in six-month size clothing, but it looks like I may have to get used to it. He’s awfully cute though – I mean, just look at that little belly! He gets a little muffin top over his diaper.

In other Sam news, he’s a very vocal baby. J calls him loud, because he is constantly grunting, snorting, straining and cooing, even in his sleep. He’s starting to coo at us, which is about the sweetest sound ever. We’re also starting to see more smiles, generally around eating, but they are a sight to behold. More pictures coming soon.
Clare and Sam in matching pajamas! Clare was nice enough to share her blankie with Sam as well, which is a very nice gesture for her.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We’re in the full swing of Christmas preparation around here, and it’s really fun with a two-year-old. The big activity so far was getting our Christmas tree and a few decorations. In general we keep our decorating fairly minimal, just a simple wreath and a few boughs outside and a few things inside, but I plan on adding a few items each year until we’re fully Christmas-ed out. We’ve also had a few visits with Santa and some fun local activities, but more about that later.
First order of business was a visit to a local Christmas tree farm. It was particularly cold that day (even Alaska-tough Grandma T thought so) but the trees looked pretty with the frost on them. This particular farm, the same one we bought our pumpkins at, has nice people (they cut our tree down for us – which J appreciated), and some animals for Clare to wave at.

The trees we chose were particularly large, so we all got a big laugh out of watching J and my dad try to fit them into the back of the truck. We ultimately paid a little extra to have the trees wrapped up so that they fit.

The finished tree! The best part was when Clare woke up from her nap and found the tree set up with lights on she threw her fists into the air and shouted “It’s Christmas!” We then decorated the tree together – and by that I mean Clare pranced around, playing with ornaments and chanting “decorate the tree! decorate the tree!” while I put the other ornaments on.

Stockings Hung by the Chimney with Care!
It’s fun to watch Clare grasp some of Christmas. She’s gone to visit Santa a few times, but hasn’t gone closer than three feet to him. She’s perfectly happy to talk about him, point him out, and give a few “Ho Ho Ho’s” in his direction but when we get close to actually talking to him she clams up and hangs onto Mom or Dad. She wouldn’t even take a candy cane from one Santa we visited, but once J gave it to her after the visit she really enjoyed it. I’ve tried to explain to her that Santa Claus will come to our house, but it will be at night when we’re sleeping, and she looks at me like I’m nuts. Besides that, when we talk about waiting until Christmas to open presents she’s equally confused. I think she assumes that Christmas is the tree and not a day in the future.
Our future plans include some light sight-seeing (which Clare calls “sparklies”), some cookie baking and decorating, and the family excitement once everyone arrives this week. I can’t wait to introduce it all to her and experience that child’s Christmas magic all over again.

Stories from the Clare


Some recent cute stories from the Land of Clare (and some pictures that Adam took in October and November):


An evening last week she comes into the living room wearing shoes and socks (she had bare feet earlier), with her coat on and carrying a purse. She said “Can you open the door for me Mama? I go to the store.” I told her that we were going to stay home and she said, without missing a beat, “OK, I pretend then.” So she got her shopping cart and pretended to go shopping. Adorable!

We were in the car with Sam, who was crying pretty loudly. Clare watched him and then tells J and I, “he doesn’t like his hat. He wants to take his hat off. You help him take his hat off?” Sam had somehow gotten the string of his had in his hands, so I untangled it and took it off of him. Pretty quickly he did stop crying (probably more from the motion of the car than the hat). Other times Sam has cried in the car and Clare has told me “he’s to little for the car” and “Sam needs a binkie.”

Last week G told Clare she was a big boy, and Clare responded “I not a big boy. I a little girl.” She also likes to tell us that “Daddy is big, Mama and Clare are little, and Sam is tiny.”


Another day G was crying and Clare looked at him and said “you need a nap.” I love that she’s a little problem solver already!

Christmas Card Cuties

Multi-talented Adam came over on Thursday to take some pictures of the kids for our Christmas cards this year. Trying to get two kids not crying, in the mood for pictures and behaving semi-decently kind of scared me, but we got a good five minutes of Sam not fussing, Clare sitting still, and some very sweet pictures.


“Squeeze!” (Notice Mom’s hands are close by making sure that the squeeze doesn’t get to tight)

“There’s his mouth.”

Sam at One Month

Sam was one month old yesterday!! Happy Birthday Samster!

The month has been a combination of passing very quickly (as in, where did the time go? It’s 3:00 and all I’ve done is held the baby all day!) and feeling like Sam has always been in our lives. I remember J described it as “not remembering a time when I didn’t love Clare” after she was born. Now it’s the same with Sam. How were we ever a family of three? Obviously we were missing someone.
At one month old, Sam continues to be a sweet, mellow, cuddly baby. He loves almost nothing more than to snuggle close to someone, though he is increasingly showing a preference for me. I think this is because he doesn’t want to be far away from his food source 🙂 I write he loves “almost nothing more” than cuddling because what he loves most of all, and I mean MOST of all, is eating. He’s my little piglet – he snorts when he eats. I think that Clare was calling him “piggy” the other day. I’m not sure if this nickname will stick (or if we really want it to – it might not sound like a nice thing to call a ten-year-old) but for right now Piglet seems to be Sam’s nick name (besides Samster).
Besides eating and snuggling, Sam is growing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby grow this quickly. He’s now very comfortably wearing his 3-month size clothes and even some 3-6 month size outfits. It’s such a difference from his sister, who was my skinny little bird for her first six months. Sam is a bruiser, already.
He’s starting to sleep better at night (hallelujah!), and will settle down for the evening between 10 and 11. This is a little late for me, so generally I feed him and then pass him off to J for the final snuggle down. Sam still wakes up for a feeding at about 1, but it’s becoming shorter and shorter and he goes back to sleep right away. Half the time I’m able to get through this feeding half asleep. I’m hoping that in the next week or so he’ll just skip his feeding all together. The 4 am feeding is still a bit of a gamble – sometimes Sam wants to look around, wide awake for about an hour or so after this feeding (super fun, since Clare usually wakes up within an hour after we put Sam down making for some very short nights). All in all, we are sleeping more if not sleeping well. After Sam’s 4 am feeding he generally will not lay back down in his bassinet and will only sleep snuggled up next to me. With Clare I was very concerned about co-sleeping (dangerous! starts bad habits!) but with Sam I enjoy the extra cuddling. He likes it too, and will often scoot towards me if I try to move away.

One of my goals this week is to get some good pictures of him while he’s awake. He does have some awake, alert times during the day and I haven’t gotten good photographs during these times. He’s focusing on our faces and also on distant objects and tracking our movement. I’m dying to see his first smiles! I’ve seen some “sleep smiles” and he’s soooooo cute when he does that. I can’t wait to see them when he’s awake.