Christmas Pictures

Happy Christmas!

You are welcome to look at all our Christmas pictures and movies at http://picasaweb.google.com/davis.family3/ChristmasCelebration?authkey=SBSZYzqVSiQ&feat=directlink

Christmas morning

At 7:00, our oldest came in and asked, "Can we open presents now?" (When he went to bed after helping put the presents under the tree, we told him that he couldn't open presents until Christmas morning.) We told him that we didn't open presents until after breakfast, but he could play with what Santa had brought him. And play he did. Santa brought the boys a Tonka dumptruck to share. The oldest loaded all of the presents from under the tree (except the car seat) and drove it around.

When the youngest woke up, he helped drive.

Eventually, they started driving each other around.

After breakfast (orange rolls, Swedish tea ring, and sausages from the Farmer's Market). We started on the presents. The youngest liked opening presents, but needed some encouragement to keep going. The oldest was content with what he was given until the youngest opened his present, then the oldest wanted what the youngest had. The oldest's favorite was probably the My Little Yellow Taxi book from Utah grandparents and the dinosaur pillowcase from the Arizona grandparents. The youngest was just content with everything.

(We're experiencing technical difficulties with video, so please stay tuned for that.)

Thank you to all our wonderful family who helped our Christmas be so wonderful!

Merry Christmas

We wish(ed) you a merry Christmas!

(Do you see the excitement?)

Christmas Eve with friends

On Christmas Eve, we joined friends for a kid-friendly spaghetti dinner and a nativity reenactment. (You can see the spaghetti sauce stain on our oldest's face.) The oldest boys (ages almost 6, 3 and 2) decided to be the wise men, I dressed up as a shepherd, the youngest was the angel, and our friend was Mary (appropriate because she is pregnant). The husbands filled in as narrator, inn keeper, Joseph, and camera operator.

The wise men were all interested until we actually got started, then frankencense started getting thrown around and scraped along the wall, gold hit the door, and the wise men were wandering without any interest in a star. The angel didn't much like announcing the birth to the shepherd holding him up. He liked cuddling with the shepherd much better (though he did like petting baby Jesus).

Afterwards we celebrated with ice cream sundaes. When we got home, we pulled all the presents out from their "hiding" place in my closet and let the boys put them under the tree. The youngest was all prepared to start unwrapping, but only one present was torn.

My Misters Fix-it

We bought a used double jogging stroller so that we could continue going on walks with two boys. But there have been some problems with the tires. On Saturday, my husband decided to fix it. He pulled out his tools and dismantled the rear axle. He checked the tubing--one had a significant hole and he thinks one tube is too big for the tire it is fitted into--patched the hole, and reassembled the whole thing.

The whole time he had help fixing from two little Mr. Fix-its. The oldest kept asking for his tools and would poke his screwdriver into various pieces parts. He carried the wheel around the house so that his dad didn't fix it. The youngest just climbed over everything.

If only I could have let myself enjoy this while it was going on.

Decorating the tree

Thanks to the generosity of a friend (who wanted to get rid of her small artificial tree so that she could get a fresh tree), we have a Christmas tree. We got it the first Tuesday of December and decorated it the following Saturday. It was a pretty crazy day. My oldest stopped napping a while ago, but he is TIRED by the late afternoon.

On this particular day, we had been having a problem with the pair of pants he had chosen: they were too big and with his underwear on backwards they didn't stay up very well. All day long, he'd come up to me and ask for help pulling his pants back up. At about 3:30 in the afternoon, however, just pulling up his pants wasn't enough. He had a meltdown. He started crying and wouldn't stop.

"My pants," he cried.

"Let's pull them up," I said.

"No! I don't want these pants!"

We went in his room to get a new pair of pants. I pulled out his favorite jeans and

"I don't want to wear those pants! I need new underwear!"

Since I know better than to argue with an over-tired boy, I pulled out a pair of Thomas underwear and tried those.

"No!"

Finally I told him, "You are out of control. Why don't you cuddle on your bed with your puppies."

"I need pants." So he put the Thomas underwear and a pair of old sweats on himself, cuddled up with his puppies and was asleep before I was out of his room.

Meanwhile, the friend with the tree came by with her daughter. We chatted for a few minutes, and then the youngest and I started putting up the tree, and once the tree was up I needed to be sure that we had enough lights. It was pretty, the tree with the lights. The youngest kept going up to the lights (he loves electric plugs) and toughing them amazed.

After one hour, I tried to walk up the oldest. I told him about the tree; I told him about the lights; I told him that it was time to get up; I shook him; I pulled off his covers. His younger brother kept crawling back and forth between the lit tree and his brother's bed making an excited sound. Nothing worked. Finally we gave up. We left his door open and turned on the Christmas music.

At 6:00 the oldest finally woke up and started crying. (He was still tired, so I had hope that he wouldn't be up until 10:45 pm.) I told him to come out because we had put lights on the Christmas tree. He came out, still crying, and said, "The lights are so pretty."

We waited until the whole family could be together, Saturday night, and pulled out our hodge-podge of decorations. The boys thought that it was great fun to decorate the tree.

Since then the tree has fallen once (but it missed the youngest who was trying to get an ornament that was a little high for him), and the ornaments on the bottom third are constantly in flux. The oldest points out Christmas trees everywhere we go: "There is a Christmas tree like mine." It really does make us feel a little festive.

Catching up

Although the oldest of the group, my youngest has regularly met certain growing markposts after his girl friends who were born after him (one 3 days and one 1 month and 3 days after). Eating solids, growth charts, you name it. He's been a little slower. (He is still a negative on the growth chart.) Well, two weeks ago he really started catching up. He decided to really try walking. And he did pretty well. Since then he has kept up with the walking and tried other things: climbing stairs, climbing the bathroom stool to open the bathroom door, climbing on everything.

I tried catching his first steps on video, but it has been a little hard. My husband has been busy with end of the semester and job market stuff. So here is the best I could do.