Evan's Second Christmas

Evan's second Christmas was slightly more exciting than his first.

We were supposed to go to WV to visit the families but Winter Storm Draco had other plans. Instead, the three of us spent nearly 5 entire days cooped up in the house together. Let's just say Evan was quite excited to go to daycare this morning.

Since we didn't travel, it was business as usual until Monday. On Monday, we got to Skype with Aunt Annie in Afghanistan. Evan's interest lasted about 2 minutes but at least I got to talk to her for a while.

We tried to get some shots of Evan and Laika by the tree on Christmas Eve... but this is all we ended up with:

I'm pretty sure he was just about to climb on top of her. That's definitely his "watch this" face.

On the night before Christmas, I was not in my 'kerchief, nor was David in his cap but I took some pictures that made that poem impossible to get out of my head.

Our stockings were hung by the not-chimney with care. This picture is the story of a growing toddler. Last year the stockings were hung on the shelf. As you can see, they've moved up and out of toddler reach. The bottom cabinets are taped closed (we're classy like that) and the bottom shelves have turned into kid shelves. The top shelves are cluttered full of things that used to be on the bottom and now it's almost not a safe spot anymore! I'm starting to think we should just bite the bullet and turn our entire house into a playroom. It's starting to feel that way, at least.

Evan didn't know Christmas morning from any other morning except that it was Tuesday and why was he not going to daycare...again?! We facetimed with Grandma Janet and Papaw Mike while he opened a few gifts, then we facetimed with Grandma Barbi and Grandpa Ed while he opened a few more.

He opened some books and the gift opening was over. All he wanted to do was read the books. So, he was left with two presents under the tree for after his nap.

One tiny piece of paper at a time.

And he insisted on taking each one to the garbage.

He likes the cars. 

The unwrapping was going well until the books...

Then it was just reading time.

I was able to convince him to take Lars' gift to him since he was too lazy
to join us in the living room. 

We played with farm animals and a
train track while David made breakfast-lunch
(not to be confused with brunch).

My Boys

Me and E

We had our traditional Christmas Breakfast as lunch because Evan needs to eat pretty quickly after he gets up and Christmas Breakfast takes a while. Biscuits and gravy for lunch is never a bad thing.

We weren't about to have a big Christmas dinner for just the three of us but it seemed depressing and lonely to not do something so we had a small version of Christmas dinner.

As an extra bonus, we got a white day-after-Christmas. Evan semi-enjoyed his first snow adventure. As long as he was standing, it was all good. He did not want to sit down in the snow though.

As a bonus, Evan will get to celebrate Christmas two more times. Once, when Grandma Barbi and Grandpa Ed visit next weekend and again when we celebrate during Annie's Welcome-Back-Michaela's-Birthday-Labor-Day-Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-New-Years party in February. Best Christmas gift ever = Aunt Annie back home safe and sound! :)

He's Smart

I know these videos aren't so pretty. My video editing software apparently doesn't like the iPhone 5 videos. Brilliant new phone, not-so-brilliant editing app. So... more technical difficulties around here.

You get the point though...

LJS

We were supposed to be in WV this weekend but Winter Storm Draco had other plans. Since we hadn't planned on being home, we didn't have much around the house for lunch. David had a hankering for Long John Silvers (i.e. he was craving grease) so I obliged and we went to LJS for lunch. I got to tell Evan a great story about LJS...

I used to drive my Grandma Lil around to the grocery store and for errands. Sometimes we'd stop for lunch while we were out and about. Since she was paying, I always said I didn't care and it was up to her. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into by having no opinion. She'd think and think and then say, "How about Long John's?" like it was some crazy and exciting place that she'd never suggested before or a new place in town that we'd never tried or an extravagant restaurant so expensive that we'd never tell anyone that we'd spent so much money on lunch. 

So, she'd eat her Fish N More and I'd eat my Chicken N More and we'd talk about life while getting our daily grease intake. Then I'd feel like the favorite grandchild when she'd splurge and spend $0.99 so I could have a triangle of refrigerated pie. 

I miss her and I wish she could've known Evan but at least the Long John's Love seems to have skipped a couple generations and reemerged in Evan. He was more excited than I'd like to admit about his fish kids meal, aka box of grease.

A New Word

I just got a new laptop. My old one was acting really weird and I don't want to get to the point of total meltdown. Plus, my hard drive has been full for a very long time. I was constantly deleting stuff just so I could make room for new pictures. Now I have a luxuriously large hard drive for my bajillion pictures and a computer that doesn't spaz out after 10 minutes of use. Perfect! However, it's going to take me a bit to get my old camera-computer-edit-blog process down on the new computer. Until then, you get videos!

Too Smart for His Own Good

This may be the most impressive thing I've seen Evan do yet...

He has a box of animal flash cards. He loves to look through them and make the animal noises. He was looking at them the other day. I have to admit, David and I weren't paying any attention to him because we were checking out our newly installed AT&T U-verse. Evan walks over and hands me some things. I said "Thank you, Buddy" without even looking at the things and he goes back to his flash cards. A minute or so later, I look at what he had handed me:

He had come across the owl card and dug the stuffed owl out of his toy basket. He saw the flash card and purposefully searched out the matching toy! Mind blown.

Also, just today I learned that I can lay all the flash cards out on the floor and say, "Give me the horse", and he'll give me the horse. He's at about 90% with that game and that's only because he doesn't know some things, like antelope. (Are there many 16 months olds out there who know an antelope by sight? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know if the word wasn't printed below it.) That's a very exciting game to play-- watching his gears turn as he scans the cards for the right animal is so fun.

I taught Evan a cool new trick. Well, it's cool until it backfires. Then it's a super unfortunate trick. He will "put this in the garbage for me." It's great when we're actually cleaning. What's not so great is when his brain wires get twisted (which they do a lot and it's kinda funny) and he puts his socks in the garbage instead of in his bedroom. Or when I tell him to put his toys away, and "away" ends up being the garbage. Or when he's just bored and decides to start putting things in there... like remotes or cell phones. We haven't lost anything of value yet... that we know of.

We had a sick day today (pukey Evan). Once he was done puking, all he wanted to do was sit on the kitchen floor and eat Crispix. I have no idea why, but he sat there forever. And he's missing a sock because it was something he decided to throw in the garbage-- right into some yucky food. You like his outfit? That's what you get when you puke on your clothes at daycare. Totally random.

I finally got a good picture and made our Christmas cards. I might get them in time to get them labeled and mailed by Christmas. I should be more on top of things. Here are some outtakes. Both are versions of his reaction to the question, "What does a butterfly do?" Apparently a butter fly puts its arms and legs up and balances on its butt? It's hilarious to watch him try.

"I ate Santa's cookies..."

"... and the evidence is on my face... and I have bed head..."

Yeah, yeah... he had cookies before breakfast this morning. 

Just practicing for some Christmas pictures. It's so much more difficult than last year. I prefer immobile Evan when it comes to pictures! The cookies didn't even work to keep him still for a minute.  

Quite a Day

We left work early on Tuesday to take Evan to get his flu booster shot. As we learned at his 15 month appointment, he's figured out the doctor's office. He's perfectly fine until his but hits that paper covered table. Then he becomes a total spaz. The shot was quick and as soon as he was off the paper table, he was back to normal. Such a drama king.

Since it was still quite early, we decided to press our luck and see how the Santa line was. It was totally empty. From start to finish, we were the only ones in the Santa room. We entered cautiously and Evan was a little suspicious. After some high fives with Santa, David put Evan down so he could walk to Santa on his own. He walked right up to him and hugged him. We got some good pictures-- even though the dippy camera lady insisted on loudly jingling the jingle bells and yelling "EVAN!" at him. (All I had to do was ask him what the horse says which made him smile big and say "neh" and she missed that shot, of course.) While I was paying, Evan walked around looking at the toys and kept going back to hug Santa. It was so adorable!

They gave us gift certificates for free ice cream so we grabbed some while we were there. My crazy weird kid spit out the ice cream like it was asparagus flavored but noshed on some raisins once we got back in the car. Weird, yes, but I also love that he doesn't like sweets and is crazy about fruit.