Second Christmas

Christmas number two was woefully undocumented by me. We enjoyed having my family, uncle and grandma up for some present opening in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. Then off to the Christmas Eve service and back home for Mom's delicious traditional beef brisket and jello! Afterward, my family cleaned my kitchen and played with Elijah while Dustin and I rapidly packed to leave for Fresno that night.

First Christmas

On Christmas Eve morning, we enjoyed celebrating Christmas together as a threesome. Trains were the big hit this year!

Merry Christmas!

(Decorating the Christmas tree, followed by cleaning up the pine needles. Since we got Elijah a "baby Christmas tree," he calls our big one "Daddy's Christmas tree.")

Cookie Decorating

On Friday, Elijah and Teddy each got a cookie and little bowls of frosting and sprinkles. It kept them occupied for about an hour!

Licking the frosting off the knife was the best part!

By the end, Teddy was passing his knife and spoon to Elijah and then immediately demanding them back. It worked out nicely for Teddy as Elijah started filling the spoon with sprinkles each time before returning it.

Rainy Day

The relatives are here! It was too rainy today to head out to the beach, so we headed out to find puddles instead.

My Little Drummer Boy

Elijah loves drums right now. Earlier this month, one of my student's dads brought his drum set to school and Elijah was thrilled.

Tonight we pulled out Ezra Jack Keats' "The Little Drummer Boy" and sang it many, many times. Elijah liked keeping the beat with his drum. We also discovered that none of our CD versions of the song actually use drums.



As he looked at the album cover for one of our CDs, Elijah noticed the "boat" on the cover. I corrected him and told him it was a sled. So he asked me, "Kind of boat?" Snow and winter things are such a foreign concept to him!

Gobble, Gobble!

We had our favorite 2 year old friend over today, so we made brown play dough and then stuck feathers in it to make turkeys.

Butterfly Q & A

I'm sure I read in some child development book that every one year old needs to know the life cycle of a butterfly...

Me: Who came out of the egg?

E: Caterpillar come out.

[Showing how the caterpillar comes out of the egg]

Me: What does the caterpillar like to do?

E: Eat food!

(Feeding the caterpillar a raisin to demonstrate his point)

Me: What does the caterpillar go into?

E: Chrysalis!
Me: Who comes out of the chrysalis?

E: Butter.

"Caterpillar want out of chrysalis."

Me: What do they eat?

E: Butterflies eat sugar water.

Me: Where did we take the butterflies?

E: Outside. Fly outside.

Butterflies!

Our last school science projects was watching caterpillars develop into butterflies--such fun!



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Busy Boy

Elijah went downstairs to play while I finished up some things upstairs; I came down to find him moving my pantry into his kitchen. He apparently has not internalized my desire for clean surfaces, but at least he set baby up nicely to play in the sink!

Pumpkin Drummer

Huntington Gardens

(from the drafts folder)

Dustin's brother came down in October to visit for the weekend. We spent the afternoon at the Huntington.

After walking the grounds, Elijah and I headed to the Children's garden while Dustin and Jason toured some galleries in peace.

Surfer Toddlers

And since the other cousins August visit was neglected on the blog (and they're adorable!), here are some pictures from our day with them at Corona del Mar: