Owen's Monkey Business

The Christmas season was full of traditions new and old, and lots of fun activities. It seems like we didn't take too many pictures on Christmas itself, will try to remedy that next year. But the flipside is we were all present in the room and not stuck behind a camera so we could enjoy it all. The main thing for O. this year was that he learned lots of Christmas words, like Santa "hanta", tree, stockings, and reindeer, and that he enjoyed unwrapping things. He really wanted to enjoy and play with each gift as he opened it, so gifts took about four days to get through. We had saved all the packages mailed from out of town friends and relatives, and next year I think we will open them as they arrive, so he can enjoy them as much as he wants right away. We picked out our tree before daddy left for a week in Chicago. Owen went to a special four session holiday/winter music class with Miss Moira. When daddy went to Chicago, Grandpa came along and pulled him in the "...

A couple of Sundays ago we got Owen dressed up to go see Santa and thought we were smart getting there at 10:30 to line up when Santa starts at 11:00. Let's just say several people were smarter, and got there by oh, say 10! So we decided we didn't want to wait an hour and then have O. not want to do it anyway so we walked down to Picture People at the other end of the studios. Luckily they were able to get us in right away with no appointment which kind of amazed me because later when we were leaving other people (with appts.) were being told they'd have to wait. Waiting with dressed up kids? ewww! Those having problems had different photographers than we had so at least I know we didn't cause their delay! Anyway, O. did much better at this photo shoot than at the 9 month old one and we left with these (and a few more) great pix. Owen turned 18 months last Sunday, Dec. 12, 2010. He is so fun! I will come back and add more to this post about what 18 months is like fo...

This month we started a tradition that we thought of last year. Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) a traditional Advent calendar, we decided that each year we would wrap our collection of holiday board books and picture books and put them in a basket near the tree. Each night Owen gets to choose one to unwrap, and then we read or reread the unwrapped books each night as often as he likes. He got the idea by the second night. All we had to say was, "It's time to choose a book from the basket," and he got this gleeful look in his eye and hightailed it down to his little couch. He has picked all board books so far, and cute ones! He mostly likes the unwrapping part, and takes all his garbage pieces to the trash can as soon as he rips them off. The only trouble is, he is more interested in the unwrapping than in the reading, but with a little encouragement (and putting the basket away in a closet right away), he sits and enjoys the book with us too. We are excited f...