A Very Merry Christmas

It's been a lovely few days. On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), Tyler and Matt joined us for a ham dinner. We had a lot of great time together to visit and play Jeopardy! I am no match for either of those guys!

Christmas morning, Ed made french toast and moose sausage. We enjoyed a nice breakfast before being joined by Alexander Strong, who enjoyed hearing all the deer and moose stories from the season.

Matt and Elijah kick back with a "cold one"- sippy cup, that is!

Tyler and Matt brought me a beautiful ceramic bowl from Phogg Pottery in Newport. They showered Elijah with gifts- wool socks and mittens, as well as an absolutely adorable turtle fur hat. All items he so desperately needed!

The boys left around noon to head to their Mom's house. We really enjoyed being able to share part of the holiday with them; it was so quiet after they'd gone.

"One of these things is not like the others..."

(Notice how Ed, Tyler and Matt all have the same dreamy blue eyes- and then there's the Ermine, with his beady browns)

Ed, Elijah and I relaxed for a good portion of the day. We opened our gifts to each other, and from Santa Claus.

Elijah, who had no concept of Christmas, was tuckered out and fell asleep:

The next day, Friday, Ed stayed home with Elijah while I ran a few errands and had lunch with my friend Sarah.

Saturday was the Alexander Christmas party at Wesley and Darlene's in Glover. Elijah wasn't feeling well, he was running a slight fever and was showing signs of having a cold. He was a pretty good trooper for a couple of hours, after which we had to make a hasty departure. He was deteriorating fast!

Dan Rothman couldn't believe how good-natured Elijah had been earlier in the day. Then he got a peek at the "Dark Side"...

Here are the few photos I did shoot:

Sarah, Katie, Cole, Mary and Jesse:

Elijah with Uncle Paul and "Elmo":

Opening the Monkey Doll that Grammie made:

I think this is a very flattering picture of Grammie, she looks so pretty:

Here's one group photo of the cousins who were available. As you can see, Matt had his hands full with Elijah. The meltdown had certainly begun. We left shortly thereafter :-)One of the highlights for me was finally getting to meet Tyler's girlfriend Aimee, who lives in Atlanta. She is very pretty and sweet, and seemed to manage quite well at meeting our whole family in one shot.

Sunday afternoon we attended a party for Bob Slayton, MMU's long-time baseball coach (and Latin teacher) who has decided to retire from coaching. It was a very nice party, we saw a lot of folks we haven't seen in a while (including Pat and Roy Keith, who got a big kick out of Elijah), but our child was out of control! He didn't want to be held or restrained in any way, and he just doesn't understand "No" yet. Or maybe he pretends to not understand it! We decided it was time to go when he nearly succeeded in pulling down a tablecloth (including all the plates, flatware and glasses that were on it)- he's QUICK, too! I fondly remember the days when he would hang contentedly from the Baby Bjorn carrier...

We had hoped to take advantage of childcare and do some XC skiing today, but the snow has not cooperated. Today was pretty low-key, I'm feeling a little under the weather and Ed has started feeling a sore throat coming on.

Wednesday night we'll go to Heather and Jason's, like we always do to celebrate the New Year (although I don't think we've ever actually made it until midnight)

Friday we leave for Rhode Island, to spend some time with my family. I hear we're expecting a storm, and hope our travel plans are not impacted!

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas!

Wow, is it snowing here!

I thought it would be a good day to make Christmas cookies for Elijah to bring to daycare tomorrow. I made the dough this morning and began gathering my supplies. After searching high and low, I found only 4 cookie cutters-- a Christmas tree, a heart, a bat (of the rodent variety) and this one:

Your guess is as good as mine!

I can't for the life of me figure out where the rest of the cookie cutters have gone to!

So I asked Ed to help me make some cutouts using cardboard, so I could trace around them. Never ask a geometry teacher to help you make a Star of David...

I call this one The Planning Stage

Anyway, as you can imagine, the cutouts came out perfectly!

Elijah helped, by trying to eat the raw dough and scattering the flour all over. Actually, he was pretty engaged for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Later on, he actually DID help by cleaning off the chair, while Zoe cleaned the floor.

Then Elijah cleaned Zoe.

The finished product.

And the best part. Zoe had to come back and clean this area again.
Later on, Eli played with a box of granola bars. He likes the shiny wrappers and to put them into the box and then take them back out again. You should see our house by the end of a weekend!

We are warm and comfy, with a pot of Grammie's recipe of corn chowder simmering on the stove. This is about as good as it gets!

Merry Christmas!

The Haircut

Well, we finally went ahead and had Elijah's hair cut for the first time. We took him to Tamra, our local hairdresser here in Fairfax. It's great- the first haircut is free, plus you get this very cute certificate to mark the occasion.

Needless to say, he really needed a haircut! To illustrate that point, here's a "before" picture:

To be fair to Eli, he HAD just woken up...

"During":

And "After":

He was really good, sat nicely for Tamra and didn't seem to mind his first haircut at all!

We had a snowday on Friday, which made for a lovely long weekend. Nothing like the ice and wind damage down in NH. It was very cold on Saturday, which was the day we had planned to cut down our tree. So we postponed that task until Sunday. It was considerably warmer, but quite windy, which made it feel brisk! Much to Ed's pleasure, I picked out a tree in record time, since we were carrying Elijah through the tree farm (he has not yet mastered the task of walking in snow boots, and after a couple of near-dumps out of the toboggan, he'd decided he'd had enough of THAT ride).

6 more school days until Christmas vacation!

The Toddler

I remember a post of Julie's from about a year or so ago, when she came to the sudden realization that Estelle was no longer a baby, but a toddler! Today, I would say Elijah is officially a toddler. He has gone from taking just a few wobbly steps at a time to suddenly walking. Pretty proficiently. It's been coming on slowly for the past couple of days, but today (at 12 months and 7 days) he has adopted walking as his new official mode of transportation. To go along with this milestone, Elijah got his first "broke-the-skin" wound today when he face-planted into the fireplace mantle. Oops!

Have a great weekend!