The Phillips Family

We're bad parents. Let's just get that out of the way now. Remember when Aiden learned to climb out of his crib? Well, we never fully resolved that. After nights of absolutely no sleep, we resorted to putting a baby proof door knob on the inside of his room so he couldn't get out. That worked great for a long time. It kind of had the "Cricket Effect." ( To those unfamiliar with this cliche story, if you put a bunch of crickets in a jar, they'll jump out. If you put a lid on it, though, the crickets will try to jump out for a while, but then give up when they learn that there's no way out. After a while, if you remove the lid, the crickets will stay put and won't jump out. I'm not sure if this actually works... I've never tried it.) As long as Aiden could just SEE the door knob baby-proofed, he didn't try to escape. Well, he got smarter... and stronger. Somehow or another, he has learned how to take them off. Rex and I even had a ...

Howdy everyone, it's your friendly neighborhood Rex filling in for Edda who has been so overwhelmed by everything that ought to go into this post that she keeps putting it off. I can't blame her. So shortly after informing everyone of how cute our fuzzball is, we took a road trip to spend Christmas with Edda's parents. The trip was wonderful. The kids behaved, the roads were clear, it was perfect. We felt it would be an omen of good things to come for the holiday season. The first of our many character building experiences happened when I received my rejection letter from MIT. That letter represented the last of my hopes for getting into business school this year and marked the sixth rejection for the year. However, I hardly had any time to mope at all (which was the only plan I had left at the time), because Aiden went from having a bad cold to not being able to breath. We took him to urgent care, which then sent us to the ER. Aiden was then transferred to a childr...

Those honest words spoken by my mother-in-law have never rung truer than this year to me. We'll start off with the good stuff first, though. But stay tuned to our crazy adventure this season. Getting all four grandkids to stay still for the picture was a bit tricky. And when we finally did get a somewhat decent pic, Aiden's nose decided to leak the most humongous booger on the face of the planet down into his mouth. You can see it if you look real closely or zoom in. Here is Aiden and Sam's first experience with Santa. Neither really knew what was up or why their mother was taking a bazillion pictures. Sam only cried for a brief second, then got distracted by the lights. I love short attention spans. Behold! The excitement of Aiden on Christmas morning.... (he's sitting in front of a TV for this pic.) Notice the bulging stockings and loaded Christmas tree in the background... yeah, we need to work on this kid's excitement level. Once the fun started, my kidd...