We are finally settling down after a fun and joyful Christmas celebration. Grandma and GrandDad arrived on Thursday and that is when the party started. We spent Friday enjoying seasonably warm weather and letting Bridger bike around town. We also made a stop at the Highlandtown Train Garden. It was a fan favorite last year and the "B" still loves it. This year they added some more Baltimore scenes...including several of our local liquor storefronts. Bridger is fascinated by it and it always gives us a chuckle this little bit of Baltimore "charm." We forgot to take pictures, yikes! Even if we had not sure they would have turned out as B is not into having his picture done. Larsen on the other hand is still all smiles and loves showing off when she is up to some new tricks, like walking with her push toy.
Christmas Eve was spent making stollen. Don't worry it turned out well again this year. Bridger and GrandDad worked very hard. Bridger even ate a few bites on Christmas morning, which given his pickiness of late was quite surprising. After a yummy dinner of stuffed shells (Larsen's new favorite meal!), we attended Lessons and Carols at our church and the children's choir entertained all of us. There wasn't much singing on their part, but a lot of cuteness nonetheless. Larsen attended the service in her pajamas. She stayed awake the whole time but just chilled in the Ergo. I didn't want to have to put her through getting jammies on when we got home when I knew she would be very ready for bed. Bridger finally got into the Santa thing a bit on Christmas Eve. He put out some cookies, eggnog, and grapes (his idea) for Santa. Santa I am sure appreciated the fruit course amidst all the cookies. He also put out water and carrots for the reindeer(on the front porch, of course!). The water was also his idea. It was pretty adorable. All of the excitement wore him out as he wasn't up until 7am the next morning. Larsen was up at 6:30am so we rolled around in bed with her, which was nice as we used to do that with Bridger a lot but since he is up so early we hardly have a chance.
Christmas morning was a mess of presents, eating, kids sleeping, more presents, and more eating and certainly not enough adult sleeping but very nice family time nonetheless. We got out later in the day to try the scooter and otherwise hung around the house. We put the kids to bed early after some micronaps during the day and the adults enjoyed shortribs, great wine and even better company. Monday we capped the weekend off with a trip to the Walters Art Museum, which incidentally has a lot for kids. They had a special craft, costumes, and these cool cards which kids could use to find things in the gallery. We did a lot of looking for Mary and Baby Jesus and Knights' Armor. We will certainly be going back. Larsen I think just enjoys taking it all in. The house is quieter now as the grandparents have left and we are enjoying some slow-paced kid time before life greets us again full on in the New Year!
It's Christmas time. We have put up our Christmas tree and have been decorating our house. Do you know what?? My favorite part of Christmas so far is eating a piece of chocolate every morning out of the Advent calendar. Every morning I get up right at 6 and ask what the number of the day is so I can open up the door and get a treat when we go downstairs. We have been doing other fun things too! A few weeks ago we saw Santa arrive on a tugboat. I rode my bike there (I am very good at biking). I don't know that it was all that great really, but Santa is supposed to bring presents one day so maybe he is kind of ok. Here is us picking out our Christmas tree. We found one super quick and then I ran around the tree lot with some other kids, which was more fun than tree shopping. I really wanted to go to a Christmas tree farm and cut down a tree. Maybe next year! Grandma Ross came for a quick visit. We had lots of fun playing stickers and one day we made Christmas wreath pizzas. They were really yummy and so cute! Last Saturday Mommy and went on a DATE! Just the two of us. We went to breakfast with Santa at the zoo. I really LOVE the zoo, but I didn't really love Santa. At first I didn't even want to get near him, but finally decided that we could go see him but don't you dare ask me to get on his lap or actually talk to him. I had two favorite parts of breakfast. 1. There was a penguin in a pack n' play. How funny is that! 2. We went into the zoo after breakfast and went to the giraffe house and got to be really, really close to a giraffe. Here are some pictures of us decorating the tree. Just like last year my favorite part was helping out with the lights and the garland. Larsen didn't help at all but she did like to watch us, until she got tired of that then she kept eating everything, the tissue paper, the ornaments, the tree needles, oh my! Mommy finally decided to give her a snack and put her in her high chair to watch us so she would stop eating everything and drooling on it and making it yucky!
It's official I have a tooth coming in. Yesterday when I was cheesing for Mommy while I was in the Ergo she spied a break in my gumline and you can feel the tippy top of a tooth. How about that! Mommy looked back and this is almost the exact time that Bridger got a tooth as he was just eight months old and a little bit.
I am eight months old you know and since Mommy was investigating Bridger's accomplishments at this age, I have to tell you I was pulling up first! He started right at 8 months and got good at it pretty quickly, but I have been doing so since just after 7 months. I am also a super speedy crawler and Bridger didn't get as speedy as me right away since he did a lot of army crawling but I hardly did that at all.
Now that I have told you all about how I am doing all these great things a little bit ahead of Bridger, I should mention that I am doing so because I think he is the greatest and I want to keep up with him. I love to see him every morning and I laugh and laugh at whatever he is doing. No one but Bridger can get great belly laughs out of me. Other than that it has been so busy around here I don't have too much to report. I am still growing but a little more slowly now. No new weights or anything since I haven't needed to go to the doctor. I have a few 18 months things and no doubt I will need more in the next month or two as most of my 12 month jammies are getting a little short. I still love to be loud, but I am imitating sounds when I am loud now. Bridger and I have conversations sometimes where I mimic what he is saying. Tonight at dinner I was loud because I wanted exactly what Mommy was eating so I got some cilantro lime cabbage slaw. I kind of liked, but not as much as the black beans and sweet potatoes. (I eat most anything as long as it is not a choking hazard and you don't feed it to me on a spoon!) I am also finally sitting still for a book and love feeling fuzzy, soft things on the pages. Next month I am sure I will be off to the races with some cruising but for now I am going to get back to sneaking some Christmas presents.
will you still eat way too much? Umm...of course! We spent Thanksgiving in Deep Creek, Maryland which only loosely qualifies as the woods as we rented a beautiful condo and spent most of our time there with a little bit of nature time sprinkled in. Both sets of grandparents met us there and even with the sprint to the finish to get dinner on the table a good time was had by all. It was especially exciting that the Ladies (Grandma 1 and Grandma 2 and I) handily beat the men at Trivial Pursuit the 90s edition. Matt begs to differ that answers relating to 90210 and RuPaul should count as winning at a trivia game but we'll take what we can get. Bridger had a great time bossing all of his grandparents around. Two funny anecdotes from all of his chatter. 1. When we were going around saying what we were thankful for Bridger would call on each person. When it was my mom's turn he said in a coy little voice "Grandma Sneaky Ross". We have no idea where that came from but the Sneaky nickname might be here to stay. 2. On our last morning I wanted to get him outside before the drive and he said: "No I am going to annoy you and stay inside!" I think I told him once that we were going outside because he was annoying me a few weeks ago, but apparently that was one time too many and he figured out how to use it. Don't worry...Mom still wins and we went outside! On our way out we had to make a pit stop for the B and found a little slice of homemade heaven. If you are ever on route 68 in Maryland, exit 56 has all the homemade goodness you could ever want. We bought fruitcake for GrandDad and Grandpa as pre-Christmas treat (yes they are crazy as the love that stuff), delicious dinner rolls for Thanksgiving, and whoopie pies that were to die for. There were so many other things we would have loved to have sampled though. And as a bonus their bathroom was sparkling clean! The first night we were there we headed over to Mountain State Brewery for delicious pizza using a wood-burning oven and fun beers. Bridger entertained himself by building domino towers! We got our nature time in at Deep Creek Lake State Park. Bridger got to build a bird feeder that he couldn't put up at the condo due to bears but sadly it will likely only feed pigeons if we put it up here. Hence the bird feeders are still in the bag given to us at the Nature Center, which I really should address or the mice that have taken up residence at our house might enjoy their own feast. Just to show you how much we were "roughing it" here is some of our downtime in the condo. Guitar hero, toys galore, a beautiful deck, and great weather made for a very relaxing time. What a blessing it was to have some great family time. We are thankful for our families, the good health that we have, the means to make a trip like this, and a moment to press pause on our busy life. (And now I have to get moving as I need to get to work on making Christmas holiday memories...Bridger is already worried that we won't be having a Christmas tree since it isn't up yet and his friends all of have trees...who are these friends and can they decorate for me??)
There wasn't much singing on their part, but a lot of cuteness nonetheless. Larsen attended the service in her pajamas. She stayed awake the whole time but just chilled in the Ergo. I didn't want to have to put her through getting jammies on when we got home when I knew she would be very ready for bed. Bridger finally got into the Santa thing a bit on Christmas Eve. He put out some cookies, eggnog, and grapes (his idea) for Santa. Santa I am sure appreciated the fruit course amidst all the cookies. He also put out water and carrots for the reindeer(on the front porch, of course!). The water was also his idea. It was pretty adorable. All of the excitement wore him out as he wasn't up until 7am the next morning. Larsen was up at 6:30am so we rolled around in bed with her, which was nice as we used to do that with Bridger a lot but since he is up so early we hardly have a chance.
