It's Christmas Time!

Ah yes, it's that time of year again. It's also that time of year when families often have to juggle and balance their time between "his parents" and "her parents" so as not to offend anybody. And it's also that time of year when you spend too much, sleep too little, eat WAY more than you intended to, and just generally feel wiped out. But the kids are happy, so there you go.

Yes, one of my favorite times of the year. *smirk*

We make a point to spend Christmas morning at home, now that we have kids of our own. So far that's worked out fine, and now that Zeke is old enough to actually worry about whether he was naughty or nice all year, we do get a little kick out of the Christmas morning under the tree thing.

This year I happened to have nodded off in the recliner next to the tree, since Gabe had wanted a bottle at about 4 a.m. (which is unusual for him, but maybe he wanted to see what Santa brought him, too?) Somewhere around 5:15 a.m. I could hear a high-pitched squeal near my feet and woke up enough to realize it was Zeke. He'd found the superhero-battle-crashing-something mobile he'd been wanting (a fancy-looking truck of some kind for Wolverine and his fellow superheros) and he was then doing the happy dance and trying to decide which direction he wanted to take off running and who he wanted to break the happy news to first.

I closed my eyes and groaned. Gabe didn't seem too interested, stretched a little, then went back to sleep in my arms.

"Mom! Can I open it now? Can I? Huh? Can I??"

"Not until Daddy wakes up."

[Heavy foot falls as 4-year-old boy runs to the bedroom.]

(Muffled adult male voice) "It's too early. Get up here in bed and go back to sleep."

[Several minutes later, heavy foot falls back into the living room.]

"Now can I open it, Mom? Can I? PLEEEEEEEEASE??"

"You have to wait on Daddy. Go back in there and see if he'll get up."

"I can't go back in there. He'll make me lie down again."

So it would seem he did climb into bed with Hubby and waited juuuust long enough for him to go back to sleep, then came back into the living room to hound me about his new toy from Santa. Slick, very slick.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of dinners with family and the opening of gifts galore, not to mention mountains of wrapping paper and gift bags. My living room floor still looks like a bomb was detonated in there, but we all had a wonderful time. Here are some pictures from the happy occasion...

A blurry snapshot of me and Zeke.

Gabe and Mammie.



Gabe and me.

Pop Pop takes a picture of Zeke giving his new camera a whirl. Nana officiates.

Jeremy helping Nana with the turkey.

Gabe and his new teddy bear blanket.

Gabe smiles for the camera!

A special ornament for Gabe's first Christmas.

Lots and lots of wrapping paper...

Zeke models his new Spiderman hat (to go with his Spiderman shirt).

Tearing through paper has to be the best part!

A new set of tools for the budding handyman!

Learning To Read

I have to say I'm extremely proud of Zeke. He's taking the initiative and learning to read already! I know I was 6 before I was able to read, and he's definitely well on his way.

One of the most useful reading tools we've found is the Tag Reading System by Leapfrog. Zeke started looking at the books about a year ago and has thoroughly enjoyed them! (Here's a picture of him with one of the books he got for his birthday back in September.)

The pen holds information about the books you download onto it, and while your child "reads" and touches the pen to the page, it stores up information about your child's reading abilities, how much time they spend on each book, how well they do on the quizzes, what their reading level is now, and much more insightful information I had no idea about! Plug the pen back up to your computer from time to time, and you can view all of this information and even print off rewards your child earns along the way. It's an awesome system!

Zeke's always loved books though. We read 2-3 books at bedtime every night, and I'm forever taking him to the library to pick out new material. We borrowed a book from the local library with only pictures of road signs, and Zeke is able to sound them out and figure out what they say. What a champ! *big proud-parent grin*

I guess Hubby and I will have to rethink our strategy of spelling out words we don't want him to hear us say. He's picking up on them, and that can be a problem! LOL

Side note about Gabe: We have 4 teeth now!! Woo hoo! Stage 2 solid foods, here we come!

The Second Tooth!!

He's really getting into this teething thing, my son Gabe. On November 28, we were visiting with Hubby's family in east TN, and Gabe's gum right next to his first tooth looked so white and ready to rupture, you'd think that tooth would pop out if you looked at it hard enough.

I massaged his gums, and it didn't take long for tooth #2 to finally make its entrance! WOO HOO!!

Admittedly, the preceeding night was a virtual nightmare. In a span of about 4-1/2 hours, Gabe got me out of bed 5 times, one of which was to give him a bottle. I was so tired I was BEYOND being tired. (Yeah, nod your heads, people. You've been there!)

But we did manage to have a good Thanksgiving with the family and ate way too much food, which is some kind of rule for the holiday, I believe. Gabe was given spoonfuls of food (some of which I was unaware of), which included gravy from Uncle Shorty's biscuit, chicken and dumplings from Aunt Anna's plate (minus the actual chicken and most of the dumplings), and fluffy, non-dairy (I hope!) key lime pie from Daddy's plate. Hmmm!

I suppose green Jello and Cool Whip can't do too much harm at this age. He seemed to really like it, too!

We'll see which tooth pops out next. This is going way too fast for me, but I've said that already in a previous post. *sigh!*

I think Gabe's going to join us for Christmas dinner in wholehearted fashion this year. My baby's growing up!!

The First Tooth!!

On Sunday evening, I noticed Gabe was fussier than usual, and he kept reaching into his mouth and crying. So I decided to check it out, and there it was...a tooth on the front, bottom right! He'd cut it after my mother-in-law checked him the day before! ALRIGHT! WAY TO GO, SON!! *proud parent grin*

I knew he was getting ready to cut those teeth because of the buckets of drool we've been dealing with lately. I just didn't think he was going to do it just yet. Technically he's only 4 months old because he was born a month early.

But this seems to follow the general theme. This kid wants to do everything early. The same evening, he was lying on his back in the crib and managed to flip about 75% of the way over onto his stomach.

You know, crawling isn't far off from that moment either. :-\

And then the walking starts shortly after that.

But I'm not ready! He needs to stay little a good while longer! This is happening WAY too fast for me. I'm proud, yet I'm sad at the same time. It's like when Zeke started cutting his teeth. It was cute and all, but I knew I was going to miss that gummy grin of his. And now Gabe's on his way. What's a girl to do? Keep on having babies??

Someone actually said something along those lines the other day. What they actually told me is they'd heard when a baby develops quickly, they're making room for the next one. I honestly can say I'm not quite ready for that yet, but we'll see. I just want my little man to stay little. He's so cuddley and snuggly right now. Then he's going to grow up like his brother. *sigh!*

I guess I'm freaking out just a teeny bit here. Next thing he'll be cruising around the living room, and then a minute later, he'll be cruising around town with his learner's permit. WOAH!

Guess we could always try the "keep making babies" thing. LOL

Halloween

This year we took the kids to Cool Springs Galleria for trick-or-treat. Zeke wanted to be Wolverine off the X-Men cartoon, and we dressed Gabe up as a red hot chili pepper that said "Hot Stuff" on it. They both looked so cute!! We joined the swarms of kids and parents that flocked for candy at the store fronts, seeing everything from Transformers to pumpkins to princesses with tiaras. It was quite a sight!

The candy frenzy only lasted an hour or so, which is a good thing really. We don't have quite as much candy left over as we have in years past. And we were very good about not stocking up on leftover candy when we went to Walmart the next day...

...Well, maybe a bag of Dum Dum lollies, but THAT'S IT!!


At least the kids had a good time, although Gabe took a nap through the bulk of the event. I'm sure he'll be more into it next year. (Oh joy! Twice the candy! All that sugar!) :-\

If I knew what the kids wanted to wear next year, now's the time to buy costumes because everything is 50% off.

Hmmm...