How to Wake Up While Shopping

I've been dragging the poor boy all over the county the past few weeks with Christmas shopping, hitting every Walmart and Target in the area. And usually this would happen at about his afternoon nap. So I would cover his little car seat and let him sleep. But when I see those first little wiggles under the cover I lift it up to see this...

And isn't it just wonderful?

He's finally learning how to put his paci in the proper way. But for the past couple of months he would just hold it and shove it in his mouth any which way.

And a bonus picture of him eating.

I'm going to miss this. Seriously, he's growing up too fast. Every night before we put him to bed I whisper to him and tell him that he's not allowed to grow during the night. But he never listens and every time he wakes up he gets a little bit bigger and another day older.

First flurries

December 6th we had our first official flurries of the seasons. We have still yet to have an amazing snow fall though. The weather man said we already had like 5 inches by this time last year. I don't think we're getting our white Christmas this year. We got spoiled the last two years.

But flurries!

So I wrapped up my baby and went on our balcony to stare at the falling snow. He just stared and stared at it. Look, he's not even staring at the freeway in this one! It takes quite a bit for him to focus on anything but those magical head and tail lights zooming down the highway. They used to calm him down when he was a wee baby.

Not quite sure what to think of it.

He's so excited. And it looks like his eyes are officially blue. And that's pretty much all the genes he got from his father. Those cheeks, little nose and crooked mouth are all mine.

And look, you can almost see it on the roof of the garages! Real snow please, I want an excuse to sit and watch movies and drink copious amounts of hot chocolate with eggnog in it all day long.

Oh Mr. Toad, Oh Mr. Toad

A little taste of what Christmas is shaping up to be in our household.

Here is my tree, in all it's glorious whiteness. A white tree I tell you! For some people this would not seem like such a to-do, but for those of us who always grew up with a green tree, the same fake green tree in fact (until I hit college and it was decided a new tree was needed) their entire life, it was kind of big deal for me.

The first two years we were married we had live trees. And that was a whole new experience after growing up in our house. They were lovely trees and filled our apartment with pine goodness. The first year though, we left the tree up WAY too long. And dragging it through our sliding glass door and too the dumpster ended in a massive falling off of needles. And we tried to vacuum up, but which mostly just ended up clogging and breaking our vacuum. So after Christmas two year ago, we hit the after Christmas clearance and bought us a big ol' fake green tree. So last year we put up are tree and it was super awesome of course.

But this year. Oh this year. What a year.

This year needed a crazy wonderful tree for the crazy wonderful year we've had. College degrees earned, babies born, new jobs got, new aparments moved into and all the waiting finished.

We moved into this new apartment which is better in almost every way, except one. The living room is like half the size of our old apartment! Crazy annoying and inconvenient. Point is, our tree was way too large for this place. And since I still wanted a tree, but didn't want a duplicate, I went AWESOME. I've always kind of wanted one of those white trees. And I got one this year! Only next year, I'm going with a pink/green/red theme (too bad Jameson! I do what I want!). And isn't it amazing?

And each year I buy us all a new ornament to add to the tree. So in a few years we will have an amazingly tacky tree full of ornaments and memories and traditions and everything wonderful.

And here is the first present we put under our tree. Isn't it the best?

He always makes that face at the camera. Smiles off, concern and interest turned on.

And just because he's cute and I couldn't resist, here's a picture of my boy eating his first Banana. Amazing!