Christmas - Post 3

Christmas Dinner

Christmas - Post 2

Thomas can't wait until the whole ball of yarn turns into his Christmas scarf!

Opening his awesome name/puzzle stool

Webcam-ing with the family

Trying out the mom-and-tot yoga book Carter and I received

Mr. Potato Head!

Christmas - Post 1

Just a quick post on Christmas before we head out for a few hours. I promise more pictures later this afternoon/tonight.

What Santa brought.
Santa had a little hand-me-down help this year. Two of his three Santa presents were simply shined-up for their debut at our house. Note the 20+ year old keyboard and the much newer my-first-Schwinn. His Lightening McQueen is a first-edition, though. Santa appreciated the help!

Carter and Thomas playing on the keyboard. Carter enjoyed playing this one with his hand, and then with his feet, and then with his whole body. Then he branched out to even bigger and better keyboards. I'll post on that later.

Carter tries out several of his presents at once. New bike, new choo-choo train underwear (outerwear?), a new sweater, and he dressed the bike in a new shirt for good measure.

A Christmas toast with our traditional pom-pagne!

Christmas PJs

Growing up, we had a tradition in my family where we got to open one present on Christmas Eve, and it was always pajamas. That tradition continues with the three of us. Since the presents started showing up under the tree, Carter has asked pretty much every day if he could open them, but he has, surprisingly, not just started ripping them open. But he was VERY excited to get to open one tonight. Thankfully, we aren't yet at the stage of Christmas awareness where he can't fall asleep on Christmas Eve. We opened PJs, put them on, read a story, and he went right to sleep. Hooray!

Thomas realizes that he and Carter have received matching pajamas (oh. great.... thanks, honey)

Carter realizes that he and Dada have received matching pajamas (this is the best thing ever)

The boys

The three of us!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve started out as a normal day, with work and school, but we knocked off early to get the holiday started. We went to Atlantic Station (our local outdoor mall) where we looked at the decorations, rode a train and took Carter to his first movie! We saw Bolt. The previews were really long (and scary) and the beginning of the movie was kind of scary, too, but Carter warmed up by the end and wanted "More! More! More!"

Then we went over to Park & Ashley's house for delicious dinner. Carter had a great time playing with Anna (and some Tupperware).

Santa

A couple of weekend ago, shortly after I stopped blogging due to the onslaught of work I needed to do, we took Carter to see the fancy-appointment-only Santa. Carter was terrified. He clung to me and would NOT let Santa touch him. Thankfully, Carter wasn't the first child to ever be scared of Santa, so instead of a chair, he has a divan, so there was room for me to sit and hold him. Once Carter was securely in my lap, he was happy to say "Yeah!" anytime Santa mentioned something he might like to have.

Here we are (as I try to pretend I'm not in the picture)

Carter warmed up a lot when Santa time was over. He loved the candy cane they gave him and he had fun crawling around the mall after Anna and riding the escalators.

Later that day, Carter helped make gingerbread cookies.

As for whether or not making an appointment for Santa in OCTOBER was really necessary, I'd say that Carter could care less, because he didn't like Santa to begin with. But it was really nice to not have to stand in line, so that gets my vote. And Santa was very good with Carter.

Calm down...

This isn't a real blog post, but here are some iphone pictures for all you starving people out there:

Pizza at Cart Cart and Nonna's with Anna et al:

Dada and Carter winter trip to the zoo. Pandas are still a big hit.

As is the carousel (he was actually riding the panda, but it is hard to get a picture while also holding him on).

More posts to come eventually...if you are nice to us.

Apologies

Sorry about the lack of blogging lately. I am busy with a project that has me working morning, noon, night and late night. We have lots of good stuff waiting to be blogged, but my main focus at the moment is getting work wrapped up so that I can enjoy the holidays. Hope to be back in touch soon.

Here are a few posts you'll have to look forward to:

• Carter's Santa Meltdown
• Terrible Twos (seriously, terrible)
• Carter's Fashion Choices
• Fancy New DVR

Christmas Decorating

This weekend, we got the house decorated for Christmas. Here are the fruits of our labors. I love this season!

Now THAT'S Service

I love good customer service. I really think it matters. I'll be loyal for it; I'll pay more for it.

I've written before about how much I love the hotel where I'm staying in Seattle. I love the robes, the bathtub, the desk chair, the countertops, the tv, the beds, the turndown chocolates, and -- most of all -- I love the alarm clocks. Seriously, they have the most pleasant alarm clock I've ever used.

Tonight, the hotel is running a big fashion show with a project runway alum, so the lobby was slammed with beautiful people when I arrived. Unfortunately, they all needed same elevator that I did (the only one that is currently in service). They also kept bumping the wrong buttons, so the elevator kept going up and down, skipping my floor a couple of times. Finally, they all got out, a hotel employee got in and the elevator headed to my floor. I made small talk with the employee during which I casually, offhandedly, with no ulterior motive, mentioned that I'd been taken for a few rides on the elevator. Now, I'm guessing that my travel-weary face (especially as seen in contrast to aforementioned beautiful people) made her think I was more than slightly annoyed by this. I hadn't told her my name or my room number. But, lo and behold, a bottle of wine and a written apology just turned up at my door.

I love this hotel.

Thanksgiving

We made it safely home from Arkansas last night with a full day to recover before what will be a very busy week. Here's a little video from our weekend. Hope you all had happy thanksgivings!

Hello Mr. Turkey

Yesterday they had the Thanksgiving program at Carter's school. Here is the 2 year old contribution. Ours is the tall one in the yellow shirt waving throughout most of the video. Carter watched this video about 300 times last night. Everytime it ended he would say, "More me!"


We're headed to Arkansas early in the morning and will be without internet till Sunday. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Propagating Pothos

Like everyone, we're looking for ways to save money these days. So when I decided that our kitchen needed some house plants, I decided to grow them rather than buy them. It takes longer, but it's free - and easy!

First, I took cuttings from the ends of my existing pothos plants.

I placed the cuttings in jars of water in a window and waited several weeks for roots to sprout.

Once the new roots were a couple inches long...

I planted them in a new pot!

It was so easy and successful that I have another batch going now. Plus, I think the cuttings look nice lined up on the window sill. I hope to never have to buy another pothos plant again!

Kanuga

We spent the weekend in North Carolina at a church retreat. It was cold and beautiful. Unfortunately, the first 24 hours were pretty rough.

Carter's illness, being in a strange place, staying up too late and sneaking a few handfuls of m&m's in the lodge were probably all contributing factors. Regardless, it took us until midnight to get Carter to "sleep" Friday night.

I say "sleep" because it was a fitful, cough-up-a-lung, nearly-fall-off-the-bed, keep-mom-and-dad-awake sort of "sleep" until 2:30am, when he did actually fall off the bed, which began the first crying portion of the night, followed by the I-just-want-to-be-awake-playing-loudly portion, followed shortly by the second crying (why-did-they-take-my-toys-away?) portion of the night.

By 3:30am, we were at the ends of our ropes, so Thomas and I threw on our clothes and spent an hour driving Carter through the mountains to get him to sleep. After a shockingly successful car-to-bed transfer at 4:30am, Thomas and I got a restless 4 hours of sleep until Carter woke up at 8:30am.

Nap time on Saturday didn't go any better (with only 4-6 hours of sleep the night before, he was in desperate need of a nap), so Saturday late afternoon found us driving through the mountains once again.

In any case, we are glad that we went. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera, so here are two not-so-good camera phone shots.

Playing on the climbing wall

At the sock-hop Saturday night. Carter had perked up by then and was the life of the party, dancing with everyone and hitting on the girls!

Nap

Sunday afternoon, we all has a very, very nice nap.

Dogs

Carter is in a very big hot dog/corn dog phase right now. We were grocery shopping the other day when he spied corn dogs in the freezer section and he HAD to have them. I had to use all my tricks to keep him from opening them up right there (frozen) in the store.

In the picture below, Carter has parked his stroller (which he retrieved from the garage by himself) so that he could sit and watch his corn dogs cook.

We were mid-way through getting dressed at this point. With 8 minutes left to cook, I told him that he could have his corn dogs as soon as he got dressed (that usually takes at least 10 minutes). He was dressed in two minutes flat, so we had to stall him. Once he got his hands on the "dogs" he ate 2 and a half of them--and only stopped then because we'd run out!

Pool Ensemble

On Sunday morning, Carter dressed himself--and this is what he came up with. He was subsequently adamant that he wanted to go to the pool. So I let him take a (second) bath.

Two Spoons

Carter discovered the joy of eating with two spoons at pretty much his first meal. But now he's taken it to a whole new level.

This is what I arrived home to Friday evening. He was so proud. We are so proud.