More Christmas

Here are some Christmas related things from before Christmas.

A couple weeks before Christmas we went with our playgroup to see Santa.

Making Sugar Cookies!  We tried a new recipe but it didn't work out.  We'll have to try again soon cause we're hoping he has fun decorating them too.

Our little guy's gift to his dad. We gave one to his Uncle too so the last picture is the front of his Uncle's shirt.
I printed the template from this site and switched out some of the buildings.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve Entertainment

Two of my siblings live with their spouses in Provo.  And lucky for us all four of them came for Christmas!  It was fun to be with my other sister who is still in high school too; and my parents :)  Evidently I don't really have pictures of them from Christmas Day, but here are a couple from Christmas Eve.  We had our traditional Christmas Eve evening of celebrating the birth of Christ.

I'm so glad they're staying through new years cause I definitely haven't had enough.  And my big sis will come too and it'll be the whole family :)

Christmas Day

I was pretty excited for Christmas this year. Our little boy didn't know to be excited so I think I was making up for that.

Our boy is great with bedtime and naptime and staying a night and day at Grandma and Grandpa's was a reminder of that. He happily went to bed in his little pack and play on Christmas Eve without any complaint at all. And he slept in the next morning. Just by about 30-45 minutes but that's very unusual. And when naptime came on Christmas day he went down great again and slept for a couple of hours. I have a great kid.

Christmas morning he found that Santa had left some fun things for him including this train set. He was quite a happy boy.


Here he's enjoying Grandma's traditional Swedish Tea Ring. (As are we all!) And Hot Cup made homemade eggnog which everyone loved! (And he made delicious Apple Cider for dinner.)


A little while after breakfast we exchanged gifts and our little guy was spoiled by his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and us.  It was kinda difficult to keep him unwrapping gifts cause there was so much fun stuff he'd already unwrapped.  But we got there eventually.

He's ugga mugga-ing the bear from his new bear backpack.


When we saw this owl at Kohls we knew we had to get it for him so we're pleased that he likes it so much. In the first picture he's making an owl sound. And the second he's giving it a good hug.


In the afternoon we visited his other grandparents and another aunt and uncle.  He had fun there too :)

And we had fun with my cousin and his family when they came for Christmas Dinner.

This picture is from the day after Christmas. We took him downstairs to his new playroom to see his train table :) And I decided to take a picture of him with all his new stuff.


I was pretty sick over Christmas which was a bummer, but it was fun to be with family.  Especially my little family who makes it so I enjoy every minute anyway.

20 Months

Most of his personal collection.

It's been another big month!

He decided to start crawling up & down the stairs.

He recognizes most letters and can say at least 8 of them. He's sometimes confused about ones that look the same, like N & Z, n & u, and M & W.

He knows at least 11 shapes.

Cuddling ♥

He loves to play with empty containers and their lids.

He loves pomegranates.

If I ask who am I?, what's my name?, or say say mommy he points to himself and says "DA!" I wonder where he learned that ;)

He's so loving. He'll hug, kiss, ugga mugga, and cuddle with us. If I'm working in the kitchen he will come up and hug my legs. If I'm changing his diaper he'll grab my arm and give it a good hug. What a sweet boy I have.

He often seems to think that no, stop, and don't mean it's funny when I .... But other times he makes a sad face and then I feel bad.

This is how daddy was playing with it:


Christmastime :)

He loves wearing his hat all the time.

Our visit to the Temple

Railroad Museum

Looking at model trains :)


He's not sure about frosty but he loves slides!


We went on a little train ride. He was excited when we started moving, but pretty soon he found it soothing. And he didn't particularly like it when Santa sat next to him.


He was tired and hungry by the time we got to the train tables.  But he loved them and would have stayed there forever anyway; and was quite upset about leaving when we finally decided we had to go.  So we stopped by the letters to Santa station to make sure Santa knew how much he liked it.


In the engine with daddy! And look, I was there too :)

Jello

I wasn't sure how I was going to get my little guy interested in this activity.  He was sort of playing with it but acting bored and after a little while asked me to wipe off his hands cause they'd gotten sticky.


Pretty soon he had another idea for how to get out of there.  He decided he'd push the jello onto the floor.  Throwing food from his high chair is one of the few things I get after him for and I could tell he was hoping I would want to be done.


But I just laughed.  Which made him laugh.  We laughed for a while why he continued pushing and flinging jello.


So he discovered it wasn't so bad after all.  And proceeded to enjoy getting sticky and messy.


(He ate a couple of sprinkles but couldn't figure out why I'd want to taste the gooey green stuff, haha.)

Stairs

For a long time our little guy didn't much care for any of our attempts to encourage climbing the stairs.  But last Friday (it's been a week already!) when I put a toy a few steps up he went for it!  So I moved it to the top and he went all the way up!  We have a stair climber now!



His excitement in this video is because of the pacifier.

Let me know if you need the password.

19 Months

How is it that he can do so much growing and learning every single month?  What an amazing little kid I have.

He is a fun and happy kid and loves to play and learn and read.  He loves playing with things that he gets to figure out.  Like putting shapes in their holes, playing with Hot Cup's Tricky Triangle, putting things away, and playing with lids and their containers- especially those that screw on.  (In the second pic he's having fun putting the pegs away!)


More playing
> Playing with daddy
> Trying on Mr Potato Head's hat
> Lining up his cars


I've mentioned that he points at things or holds them up when he wants us to tell him what they are.  He knows what so many things are and this month he's been pointing to letters too.  He knows S and O and the just the other day we realized he also knows lowercase r.  I think he probably knows at least a couple more but it can be hard to determine which ones for sure. (Today we discovered he knows E and e.  But we're not in his 19th month anymore so I can't tell you that here.)

If we're not looking where he wants us to he'll move our face so that we are.  So funny.

He loves to hide things and then put his palms up so we'll ask him where it is.  This can go on forever.  It's pretty cute and I don't even mind when he hides his strawberries by sitting on them.  (At least that only happens in the highchair :)

> In the last picture he's hid the firetruck and is doing the palms up thing.


He continues to try out different noises.  If he's had a first word than it was nyum-nyum.  At the end of October he started saying the letter O.  His puts his lips out and his pronunciation is somewhere between ooh and ooo.  He can also make monkey noises.  There are occasions where he says other things but won't repeat them.  Like st-beh- (strawberries), ba (bath), bah (ball), buh (bye), and he said 'timber' for Hot Cup but I didn't hear it. (It's a game they play - see the third video in this post.)  In the picture below he's holding up a letter O and telling me what it is.


He is doing a little more signing, he'd probably do more if I did but I'm not very good at doing it a lot.

A few weeks ago he walked home from the park while I pulled an empty stroller.  We haven't taken the stroller to the park since and he loves walking there himself.  It's nice that I can let him lead and he just takes the route I always did.  The park is a half mile away and he often agrees to let me carry him when we're about half way home.  He very much loves going on a walk every day and I hope the weather this winter permits us to keep it up most of the time.  (In the second picture he's pointing out all the screws.)


He has started shaking his head no at more things.  Like naptime and bedtime and diaper changes.  Thankfully he is pretty easily persuaded, for now.

Someone I visit teach gave him a tricycle.  He loves it and enjoys pushing it around and having us push him around in it.  We're working on steering.

He's been going to nursery and I think he enjoys it.  I stay with him the first hour and Joesph has usually been in there the second hour.  The first hour is books, singing, lesson, coloring, and snacks.  The first couple of weeks he was more of an observer but he's getting so he knows the routine and is more comfortable there.  The second hour is toys.  I suppose that sometime soon I should go to Sunday School and leave him there with the three amazing teachers.  Then we'll see if me leaving is harder for him or for me, haha.

Getting comfortable in front of the TV.


Eating pictures this month (seems I always have some, doesn't it?)
> He loves the hot dog cutter from Grandma & Grandpa!
> And he loves daddy's chocolate chip pancakes!
> He came to me with the box of Cheerios and was pulling on my leg. I was taking too long (handling raw meat) so he got them for himself.


Playing with playdough. He'd watch me play with it but didn't really want to handle it.  Except the ball I made him, he had fun with that.  When I presented it to him still in the tupperware he agreed to make impressions in it. And played peek-a-boo using the lid.


He loves watching videos and seeing pictures of himself. I think he realizes that's what I'm getting when I have the camera and has kinda thought it's fun when I take his picture sometimes.