Better late than never???

This post was originally written on December 13; I was waiting to download the pics and then forgot all about it! Sorry in advance about the formatting on the pictures; my highschool yearbook advisor would be sorely disappointed! I'll post our more recent happenings in the next day or so, but in the meantime, enjoy some somewhat dated pictures and news!

We've had our first "big boy bed" nighttime injury (there have been a couple of bruises from monkeying around during the day and falling off). As far as we can tell, Ethan fell off the bed sometime Sunday night and hit his chin on the way down. He apparently crawled back in bed and went to sleep, and we found him with a bloody mess on his face the next morning. When we asked him what happened he tells us that he fell off the mattress and hit his chin, cried, and then got back in bed. The only thing we heard was one little cry around midnight that ended by the time I walked across the hall from Ella's room to his door (Ella likes to burn the midnight oil on occasion....and by occasion I of course mean days that end in "Y".) Note the injury and extreme bedhead Ethan's sporting in this picture!

Some of our sweetest moments these days are right before the kids' afternoon naps and when Ethan wakes up from his naps or in the morning. Ella has decided that when we're all in Ethan's bed it's time to pounce on him and giggle. It's hard to read books with two kids giggling like crazy! When I ask if we're done reading since they are distracted, Ethan always says "no, both sit up!" which lasts for exactly ten seconds until Ella divebombs him and the giggling starts again. She gets SO excited to see him when we go to get him after his nap that I have to hold her back a bit so he can wake up before being tackled. He can be really slow to wake up, but it really seems to start him off in a better mood these days. It's hard to stay cranky in the face of this much cuteness!

Last night at dinner Ella was fussing about something, and Ethan looked at us both and said with a tone I'm sure he's heard around here before, "What's Ella crying about?" It had an implied 'now' at the end of that question! For some reason it really cracked me up.

Ethan has become very infatuated with a line in one of the songs on the Raffi Christmas CD from the library. In the song it talks about Santa Claus having a cherry nose. Ethan asked me earlier this week about the cherry nose, then laughed and said "Ethan has cherry nose!" When I told him it meant a red nose, and asked if he had a red nose, he got very serious for a minute, thought, and then told me "I have red tongue..." Now he randomly starts laughing and tells us that he or somebody else in the family has a cherry nose.

This week Ethan is learning "Away in a Manger". Learning means I get to sing the same songs over and over and over again! Sometimes you don't realize until you're singing with a two year old how many of the traditional Christmas carols are difficult to sing because of their range or their vocabulary. He also likes us to sing Rudolph, although he calls it the "red nose reindeer song" when he's requesting it.

Both of our kids are very much in a "I do it myself" mode. With Ella it's food; she'd consistently rather eat finger foods or grab the spoon to do it herself when you're feeding her. She takes a two-handed approach to things she really likes, especially grated cheese. She's also a big fan of pears, carrots, broccoli, and crackers these days.

With Ethan it's anything you can imagine. He wants to do every aspect of his day by himself. He's getting better at climbing up and down from his booster seat and carseat (which means an extra few minutes added on to each errand we run), and he's able to do some of his dressing and undressing. He's been really proud lately that he can put on his socks. The other day he took one off and put it on his hand so he could take some "hot pots" out of his play kitchen's oven.

He is so busy watching and modeling after us these days! He likes to put on his dad's chef hat and "use grilling tools". He also comes running to help anytime I'm doing laundry or working in the kitchen. It's an interesting adventure trying to keep food hygienic and still involving a little helper as much as possible.

Ethan has already gotten quite a bit of play out of his first Christmas toys (the first of approximately 5 Christmas gift exchanges was over Thanksgiving with Brent's family in Ohio). As you can see, this flashlight is a helpful tool that's become his almost constant companion!

Getting a posed picture of the two of them can be quite a challenge these days. Ethan likes to make silly faces, and Ella loves to mess with her brother or investigate the tree! Despite Ethan's dazed look, this is one of my favorites...
In this one they both look a bit like they just got busted doing something they weren't supposed to be doing (touching the tree, perhaps?)

We are thoroughly enjoying (and thoroughly exhausted by) the adventure of the holidays with two little ones. As you can see, it's a wonderful life. A messy, sleep-deprived, mischief ridden, giggle-filled wonderful life.

The sounds of Christmas are louder this year....

So it's time to stop procrastinating until Brent gives in and makes a post....

I always intend to keep up with this so it's less intimidating when I sit down to do it, but I think sometimes my free time is spent recuperating from the little ones in our house rather than reminiscing about them! My sweet hubby is taking us out to eat tonight so I'm using meal prep time to catch up on computer tasks.

Our days are filled with funny sweet little moments, the occasional laughing out loud moments, the pull your hair out as you try to summon up your last bit of patience moments, and the occasional so yucky I'll spare those of you with weaker stomach moments as you clean up something that surely could not have come out of such a little person. We had one of those this morning, which allowed Ella one of her favorite pastttimes---waiting until Mommy is distracted with Ethan, maneuvering to the wipes box, and gleefully plucking them out one by one until she's discovered. This maneuvering is no small task, as she's not crawling yet. She likes to sit on her bottom and scoot around, or rotate around on her stomach around the room. She LOVED the wood floors at her grandparents' house, and pushed herself backwards all over the floor. Ethan has decided that he will help teach her how to crawl. A while back he was crawling in front of her across the playroom shouting "I'm signing crawl....I'm signing crawl!" Ethan has this sign language thing figured out, even if the signs are not official ASL!

We are also pretty sure she's saying her first consistent word (other than dada and mama); it's pretty funny that it's her variation of "pat". This is in response to her absolute love of pulling her brother's hair....she's heard "pat, Ella!" many, many, many times! Now she will lean over to him, start patting his head, and say "pah, pah" over and over.

Ethan is enthralled by the lights, trees, and music of Christmas this year. He asks frequently for the "christmas tree music". I'm pretty sure we must be one of the only families that does a countdown not only each time we light our tree, but also when we unplug it (as this is the main way we've found to avoid whining and/or meltdowns when turning off the "pwetty lights".) As Brent mentioned, he's become a big fan of singing, and will break into music throughout the day. Current favorites include row row row your boat, the ABC's (which he tells me makes Ella happy and offers to sing when she's crying), and halleluh halleluh (which he gets stuck on singing over and over until you help him end it).

I realized this week once again that I should be prepared to hear what I say mirrored back as I repeatedly heard Ethan respond to Ella crying by saying "I'm right here Ella...don't cry." I wish I could say that the sweet tone in his voice on this one was the tone heard most often around our house!

In one of the most recently posted pics in the web album you can see Ethan holding a cord up to his belly. This was in response to him asking me about his belly button and "what's in there?" After he wasn't satisfied with the easiest answer of "nothing" and "your belly is under there", I decided to explain that he used to have a cord when he was a baby in mommy's belly, and that the cord was how he got food. He immediately walked over to the power cord for Brent's laptop and stuck it in his belly button. He still brings that up every once in a while (with one of his most frequent expressions these days---"that's silly!"). Brent has thanked me for not explaining who cut that cord!

It's an amazing (and busy) time of the year, and it's so much fun with both kids being increasingly aware of the world around them. We're just at the very beginning of the journey of making decisions about how to enjoy all the fun traditions and family times and still keep central the birth of Christ. Currently his biggest fascination with the Christmas story is that Jesus slept in the hay around the animals. I get the impression that no room in the inn would have been a wonderfully exciting adventure rather than hardship in his little mind.

Ethan ends most phone calls to family these days with a big hug to the phone (complete with a little "ugh" to let you know it's a "big hug"), so if he was writing this post I'm pretty sure that's how he would sign off. You can all be glad that even though you miss out online on the great hugs, you also get to miss out on the unfortunate sliminess that comes with both our kids' kisses this week as they get over this cold. Hugs and wet, wet kisses go out to all of you.