Some yuletide highlights

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. It was so fun to experience all the sights and sounds of the season through Charlie's eyes and ears. Here are some of my favorites...

This year, Charlie really got into selecting and sawing down our tree. When dad got down on the ground, he got down, when dad sawed, he sawed, when dad groaned, Charlie groaned too. Mom and Amelia just stood by and laughed!



Ah...this (below) is life as a family of four should live it during the holidays! Amelia and Charlie were totally chilled out or, more accurately warmed up, in front of a cozy fire while we watched the Grinch. This was Charlie's first traditional night of "movies and popcorn" and he took to it pretty quickly--all except for the keeping popcorn in the bowl or in the mouth concept. There was popcorn everywhere, but luckily Charlie knows just where we keep the dustbuster and is happy to get it upon request. [I hope the fact that 'dustbuster' was one of his first colloquialisms doesn't reflect badly on me as a homemaker...]

The boys had to do some hearty shoveling after that big storm. I loved sneaking peeks out the window at 'my boys'--Charlie shuffling along in his hugely padded snowsuit and scraping his neon plastic shovel in the path of his Dad's. And yes (ha ha) that is a sippy cup hanging from his mitten! Speaking of sippy cups...when Charlie and Bob came inside after being out in the cold, I made up some hot chocolate. I let it cool a bit and put it in Charlie's cup. He took a big gulp (assuming it was milk) and got a shocked look on his face. Then he spit it all right out in shock! Once he regained his composure, he proceeded to gulp down the rest with gusto.

Charlie got a cute Little People nativity from his grandparents. When cousin Aaron was over, I tried to be the pious parent/Aunt and give my little boys a crash course on the creche. The boys sat listening for about a minute as I explained that Mary and Joseph rode a donkey to the manger to have the baby. Just as I pointed to Baby Jesus, my darling boy picked up the baby's figurine and flung it across the dining room. So much for the true meaning of Christmas...

We went out to the Strong Museum for their night of caroling and visit with Santa, the jolly good fellow as they call him. As we might have predicted, Charlie wasn't so keen at sitting on Santa's lap, but he enjoy the Christmas cookies. I brought a few cookies over for the three of us to share and Charlie grabbed the biggest cookie (a fist-sized gingerbread man that I was thinking we could all split). Before I knew it, he had chomped off the head and part of the body and was chewing away, his teeth green with icing.

Charlie helped us decorate and was fairly good about leaving the ornaments alone. Fairly good..a small pile of injured ornaments still lies on our kitchen counter waiting to be repaired. His two favorites were a mini replica Dunkin Donuts cup I had gotten for Bob (a dunkaholic) one Christmas and a small plastic stepladder ornament that had a tiny can of paint and roller lying on it. It was funny, when I pulled the Dunkin cup ornament out of the box, Charlie grabbed it, ran over and put it up to Bob's mouth. He's pretty familiar with how that works!