Catching Up

It has taken me several days to recuperate from Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful day. The food was delicious and the company was delightful. Chris, Tiffany, and their sons Tristan and Michael came over to share Thanksgiving with us. The boys played well with Joey and Nick even though they are a few years older. Tiffany is a lot of fun and I enjoyed her company.

Here is a picture of the boys anticipating the feast to come. You can see that Nick has already swiped a carrot off the veggie tray. I rarely get a picture of him with his eyes open anymore...he is always giving his squinty-eyed, cheese-ball grin that results in closed eyes when the flash flashes.
Nick is talking so much more; attempting most words that he hears us say. He will use two or three words together; "up mommom please" or "mine bite please". He is a long way from being understood by everybody, but I am getting pretty good at translating.
Ethan is also growing so fast. He is starting to reach out and grasp things. You can see from this picture that he has grabbed his burp cloth, but he still doesn't have enough control to keep it where he wants it to be. One flail of his arms and the cloth is covering his face! Unfortunately, the cloth doesn't cooperate and land back in his lap with the next flail...it stays firmly in place on his face.

With the temperatures as cold as they are, the boys are bundled up just to get out to the car. Ethan is usually tightly swaddled in a couple blankets. Not tight enough, though; he is still able to wiggle his arms around trying to get the blanket in his mouth. It took forever to get this picture; he kept covering up his face with the blanket. I just thought he looked cute being in a tight bundle with just a chubby little face showing under a hat.

Here is a picture of the boys getting ready to play out in the snow. Nick reminds me of the kid in "A Christmas Story" who can't move his arms or legs from being bundled up so much. They have a lot of fun when they got out in the snow with Daddy. It almost seems more trouble than its worth; it takes 30 minutes to get the boys dressed for outside, and they don't stay out much longer than that since it is so cold. Then it is another 15 minutes to get them stripped out of their snowy clothes making puddles of cold snow-water all over my floor.
Nick is trying to display some independence. He has done a very good job at putting his hat on by himself. He was so proud of himself!