Mary Christmas

Emma: "Who is baby Jesus' father?"
Grayson: "Joseph!"
Emma: "Yes! And who is his mommy?"
Grayson: "Mary. Mary Christmas."

three nights of joy

Grayson received a very cool Christmas gift this week from his Uncle Jim & Aunt Summer:

 

A workbench! Complete with tools.

 

"Look what I got Matia!!!!"

 

 

Studying the box.

The idea was to let him open this fantastic thing first and then the adults could have peace to do our thing for the next however many hours.  We didn't anticipate two things: 1) Assembly.  2) The volume of exciting accessories such as the lathe and NAIL GUN.  :)  Happily, Aunt Summer thought to eventually move the finally-put-together bench and all affiliated parts to an adjoining room.  We later noticed we forgot to turn on a light in that room, but Gray was SO HAPPY playing with his new workbench, he didn't seem to care.  Plus, the nail gun flashes when operated so he did have that light every two seconds...

 The next night, we ventured out to visit Santa Clause.

"I see SANTA!"

Hard to say who's more excited here.

After a short pause:
"May I please have a remote controlled tractor."

These two cuties waited in the warmth.
 

 We also saw our dear friends Megan ("Me-me") and Rob and Kristen ("Kiki").  We have excellent pictures from this (from a REAL camera and not my phone), but I have to figure out how to convert them from super huge raw data files.  Kiki was a little psychic because a half hour before she gave him a garbage/recycling truck, Gray informed everyone he wants to be a "trash guy." 

And then the NEXT night (whew), Sarah and Mike came to visit from Seattle.  And Aunt Sarah brought us some amazing books that we just had to have read to us right away. :)

Mittens nap

All the fun of celebrating Christmas with dear friends, pajamas & a fancy breakfast means you might exhaustedly fall asleep with your mittens on.

christmas with oma

these two are pretty tight :)

merry christmas!



Jack's *First* Christmas gift!

and he loves it!

i'm no detective...

but I *think* G. has been messing with the nativity:

Didn't you read the part about the wise man
 coming from afar on the gator?
Which was driven by a sheep?  No?? :)

six months / jack

happy six months to our sweet jack!

 

Jack dreaming away, looking smaller than his 18+lb.

 

(If any grandparents are reading this who might be shopping for Christmas, we're offically out of the 6mo. size now, into 9mo. and up.

Also, it's a 12mo. dose of medicine if he happens to get a high fever in your care!  And,  completely related in that he is his own adorable, funny sweet person, his hair - which settled down for Thanksgiving - is back up. :))

 

*Grayson, who we can celebrate being 2 years and 6mo, is also dreaming in his bed.  I know this because I heard him cry out "say hello to the dog and the squirrel" when I walked by in the hallway.

other november happenings



Can't remember what we were doing
here, but it involved a frog puppet
sent to us by "meme" :)



We smiled for our losing team.

We wore our rain boots to the 
grand opening of Trader Joe's...

...where we purchased ginger cat
cookies - aka a tub of new best friends.



Still talking to his cookie.



And while our cat cookie slept
 we wore multiple John Deere
hats and danced wildly.



We giggled abundantly.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at school.

We had a very fun visit from Uncle Mr. Bojangles.

We celebrated Thanksgiving
with our family.

We were mustached.



We were held.



We got to meet new relatives, pictured here
giving us handy hair styling tips.

We ate too much turkey.

 

We sang and sang and sang.

We practiced new reading techniques.

We got rocked.

We wore our mustaches some more.

We had family sleepovers.

We let our teacher give us a funny
hairdo, which made Mommy realize it
was  probably  time for a haircut.

And then we got to start
decorating for Christmas!!

 

grandparents in leather recliners, all over the state

great-grandmother (nannie dot) in pulaski

grandfather (papa tim) in charlottesville

first high chair experience for jackaroo

Suddenly we realized Jack was old enough/big enough to sit in high chairs. 

(This kind of thing has happened more than once - realizing that he can do something "new" and that he probably could have done it weeks ago.  I suspect this happens for two reasons: 1) His big brother distracts us a little bit... "Mommy, is this hot?"  "I am going to plug this in."  "Something's broken."  2) We've had a taste of how quickly a baby transitions from one phase to the next and just want time to slow down a tiny bit. It's not working! :) )

hi everyone! i'm here!

big bro showed him the ropes

yuupp. i'm in a high chair.

"no more shots!" or "the bubble"

i always wanted to be a princess

Some Graysonisms from the weekend:

 

Sauntered over to me sitting on the couch reading a magazine and said,
"Mommy. You are my princess." 

 

I found a CD of "Hit Songs from The Broadway and The London Stage" and was genuinely excited to share the music of Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, etc. 
Halfway through the first song (from Cabaret):
"Mama. This music startles me."

 

We made mashed potatoes together.  I had a lot of potatoes to chop up. Mostly yukon golds, but also some purple ones leftover from our garden. The job I came up with for Grayson was to dump the chunks I'd cut so far from a small bowl into the big pot.   I saw him taste the raw potato but only knew he had also tried the raw garlic when he ran over and started vigorously wiping his tongue on my jeans.

 

He had a new imaginary friend for about five minutes.  Named Grayson.  I accidentally sat on Grayson (the invisible one) and got a scolding from the real Grayson.   (: 

And speaking of scoldings, Brandon got reminded to cover his mouth with the "right" way when he coughs ("Like THIS, Daddy") and I was reprimanded (in front of dinner company, no less) not to talk with food in my mouth - "You chew it first and then swallow, Mommy. And then you can talk."
Oh boy.

 

Some weekend snapshots:

 

Really playing together for the first time!

 

Will she ever stop kissing me?

...I guess that's a "no".

 

Dad's protective eye gear makes great reading glasses.

New tractor for keeping his undies dry alllll day.