Christmas

A little behind.  I know.  Better late than never, right?  There's so much to tell and so many pictures, I know this is going to take me a while...so bear with me.

Christmas!  It was wonderful.  One of my favorites, by far.  It was Max's first Christmas, but let's face it, he didn't really have any idea what was going on.  In reality, it was Jack's first real Christmas.  The first one he could anticipate and get excited about.  And what a huge difference that made.  Seeing Christmas through his eyes really brought it to life for me again.  It was truly magical.

Christmas Eve we started the day with a trip to Grams and Gramps' house to make Santa some cookies and the reindeer some food to help them keep their energy up through the night.  Jack loves baking and had a great time but probably enjoyed eating the m&m's the best!

 

 

Or maybe he loved goofing off with Uncle Aaron the best...tough call!

 

 Max sat patiently with Granny and took it all in.  His noggin is too big for the baby Santa hat...we thought he looked more like the Pope than Santa!

And just before naptime, Gramps and Jack read "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

After nap it was time to head to Uncle Harold's wonderful Christmas Eve dinner. But not before a few pictures of the boys in their Christmas finest in front of the tree...

 

And here's the whole crew (minus Max, Uncle Harold and Judy)...in their  Christmas finest...and Rudolph noses!

 

Max snoozed a while...

and then spent a while on Granny's lap...

 

 While Jack and Gramps spent a lot of time checking out this very cool train UH bought to go around the tree...

 

and Max checked out Gramps' boots!

 

After a lovely evening there, it was time to go home and get ready for Santa's big visit.Jack put out the reindeer food...

 and some cookies and orange juice for Santa...

and put on his special Christmas jammies that Grandma bought him and got into bed...

 

The next morning Jack didn't really wake up any earlier than normal, but wasn't feeling very good.  His cold had gotten worse which made him a bit groggy, but he was still excited to see if Santa had come and even more excited when he realized that he had come and he even brought him the T. Rex he'd asked for!

 Max slept in a bit but liked all that Santa left him as well...

 

We spent the rest of the morning playing with our new toys, before it was time to head over to Grams and Gramps' to see what Santa left there...

 

 

And boy did Santa ever come over there...he clearly thought we'd all been VERY good!

 

 Everyone loved all of their gifts....it really was quite a Christmas!  Max took it all in....

and then modeled his new monster shoes.

I love this picture of Jack.  At some point when it all got to be too much, Jack took one of his toys and went and sat in the hall all alone to play.

After a long morning of opening gifts, and a good nap, it was time for Christmas dinner!  Look at these lovely cooks...

And check out this handsome clean shaven fella...

who celebrated turning 29 (again) a little later in the night...

It really was a wonderful day and I can't recall a nicer Christmas, though all of mine have been wonderful.  It was a white Christmas too...which was really nice until it interfered with our plans to go see the Lion family the day after Christmas.  We made the trip later in January and there's another post about that coming soon...

 

We rounded out the holiday season with a visit from the Weavers to meet Max!  It was so wonderful to see them and ring in the new year with them.  It was Max's first sleep over and he did great!

 The last day of 2010 didn't end so well for them with the news of some water damage at the house we all love so much in Hilton Head, but we sure hope 2011 will be great for them...and all of you!

What Jack's up to

So there's been a whole lot of talk about Max and how he's changing but Jack has made some huge leaps and bounds in the past few months as well.  He's really turned into a such a big kid in so many ways, on top of turning into a fantastic big brother.  He hates the camera (or perhaps stopping what he's doing to smile at the camera), so it's hard to get good pictures of him, which is part of the reason for fewer posts about him.  Max can't protest just yet, so I get a lot more good pictures of him.

His speech has gotten so much clearer and he almost always speaks in complete sentences now.  They aren't perfect, but they are really cute.  My favorite is "What you sayed Momma?"  He has also started to ask "why?" about a lot of things.  I also love that he calls football helmets football hats!  Makes perfect sense to me.

He loves to draw and his pictures are starting to look like something! His coloring has much improved too.  He doesn't stay completely in the lines, but he does very well and will spend a long time with a coloring book and box of crayons.

He's much more comfortable around new people and doesn't cling to our legs quite so long now.  He loves meeting new people and seeing new places much more than ever before. 

He comes home singing a new song every day and after hearing Momma's new favorite song (Dynamite) in the car a few times, he can now sing along to it too, which really makes my day!

He can definitely be reasoned with and is learning to make his own decisions.  At dinner we are learning to try new things and he can have a treat if he tries enough of the new thing, or not.  It's up to him.  He fusses for a bit usually, about how he just wants the treat, but in the end, will decide what's more important to him and go on his way.  It's a nice change to the tantrums over things that were completely within his control but he felt the need to scream about anyway.

He usually wants to try to do things "ALL BY MY SELF" before he'll accept help.

He gets really upset if he thinks he's hurt us or Max and says he's sorry all on his own.  He also almost always says please and thank you without prompting now, at least to us.  We still have to remind him to do it to others many times.

He's perfected the bigger puzzles he got for Christmas. Already.

He can build all sorts of different train tracks now.  When he first got the train tracks we always had to build the track for him and then he'd play.  Now he's always trying to find a new way to put it together and is always telling us that he needs new pieces to build with.

 

He's getting really big and is often so busy playing that he doesn't always have time to grant my requests for a hug or a kiss, but he still always asks for a kiss on his boo boos!

He's finally in need of 2T clothes but only for the length.  His waist is still way too small for them.  

He's still not potty trained but did confess to being scared of the big potty, so he and Daddy went on a trip to Babies R Us and picked out the coolest little potty they had.  It's a Cars potty and it's even got a little lever that makes a vroom sound when you "flush."  That's definitely his favorite part.  He's been a little more interested since this purchase was made, but still seems happy in his diaper.  It'll come, I'm sure.

He can identify about 15 different dinosaurs and is often correcting me when I misname them.  In fact, after a recent boys trip to the Children's Museum, Kenny told me that they found a fossil footprint with 3 toes.  Jack said it was a T-Rex and Kenny said it was too small to be a T-Rex, perhaps it was a Velociraptor.  Jack said "yeah, maybe" and they went on their way.  When they got home, Jack found his Velociraptor toy, studied it a bit and brought it to Kenny and told him that the footprint couldn't have belonged to a Velociraptor because they really only have 2 "toes" that make their footprint as the 3rd one is raised and doesn't hit the ground. Pretty perceptive I thought.
 

He's also into pretending and is really developing quite an imagination. He'll often offer you an imaginary cupcake or bring me his baby monkey (interestingly named Max Oliver) and ask me to help the monkey feel better because he's crying.  He and Kenny have even constructed a few baby cribs from Legos and such lately for baby monkey. And just this morning, as I was changing Max and has my back to Jack, I heard him tell me he was being a turtle.  When I turned around, he had Max's Bumbo on his back and was crawling around!

He had his second checkup at the dentist this week and it went really well. He even let them clean his teeth! Much better than the first time. Some of that's age and some of that is that Jack handles things much better when he knows what to expect.  

At night, when Kenny is leaving his room after reading books and snuggling with him for a few minutes, I often overhear Jack say "Daddy?"  "I love you and Momma and Max."  It makes me tear up every time as I am sitting in the next room nursing Max to sleep.  I'm one lucky Momma and very proud of the person Jack is turning into.

I love you Doodlebug.