Miscellaneous

Here are some pictures we took this morning before taking Grant to school. The boys want to be outside so badly, and the front yard is the least messy place to play right now. Here's Grant with his "racket" or "fishing pole," depending on what he wants it to be at the time:

A very rare overalls day for Drew (I think overalls are cute on little boys, but they're bulky and I hardly ever grab them when I'm looking for something for him to wear). His poor little eyes are red.....Grant had the same thing last week but apparently it's just a cold symptom and not pink eye (according to our doctor):

Drew has learned from Grant that when you start walking down the sidewalk away from our house, you have to wave and say "bye."


Drew has been asleep for over an hour and a half, so I know I'm pressing my luck by trying to do a blog post! Any time I decide to hurry and quickly post something before he wakes up, it never quite works out.

I haven't even logged on to our blog in the past week....this Christmas season just seems so busy! We managed to finally put up our tree about five days ago, but we still haven't decorated it. Just on Saturday night, we put the majority of our outside decorations up (although we still aren't quite finished). It's been incredibly cold and rainy....one of the coldest Decembers on record so far. So we're kind of having the opposite problem we had this summer....now it's difficult to be outside because it's too cold! And we haven't been outside in our backyard to play in probably over a week.....we've had so much rain and everything is just yucky. I guess if I were a good mom, I'd let my boys play in the mud and standing water. But most days, I just don't feel like doing that!

But it has been fascinating to watch Grant this Christmas season. It's so much different than even last year.....he doesn't understand the real meaning of Christmas yet, but he can appreciate the magic of the lights and all of the festivities. Quickly, some of the highlights from this Christmas season so far:

- He loves Mickey's Christmas Carol.....thanks, Mom, for the DVD!!! He wants to watch it over and over when we're in the car. It was one of my favorite cartoons growing up too, so it's fun for me to see him enjoy it so much.

- He is just amazed by Christmas villages at the craft stores. He could stand there and look at the little houses, churches, and toy shops for hours. It's fun seeing which details he thinks are especially cool. He likes to point out the dads, moms, brothers and sisters. And he loves the carnival rides too.

- So far I've only wrapped a few gifts. But the other day when Grant saw the wrapped presents, he quickly learned which ones were his and which were Drew's. The next morning, the boys loaded some of the gifts into their shopping cart and took them into the den. Before I knew it, Grant was saying, "markers!" I ran in as Drew was walking towards me, showing me his new puzzle that he had just unwrapped. Little stinkers! At least Grant's opened gift was just markers, and not some other toy that he'd immediately want to play with (and would have led to a huge fit when I told him he had to wait until Christmas).

- At Target last week Grant found a car that he'd never seen before, and his heart was set on buying it. I told him we couldn't buy it that day, but he could ask Santa for it. So he starts pulling me down the aisle, saying, "I want to go ask Santa" (as if he just needed to go ask for Santa's approval really quick, then come back to get it). He just doesn't quite understand! And he still doesn't get the concept of days, weeks, minutes.....the other day he said, "Christmas is coming in a few minutes." To him, I guess "Christmas" is just an indefinite time in the future, and hopefully it will come sooner rather than later!