Babysoroos

Timothy’s at our friend’s house, where he goes when I work at Ben’s preschool, even though there’s no preschool today. He’s totally happy to hang out there now, just wanders off into the playroom without looking back. And yes, he wanders. As in, walks. He’s walking everywhere now, it’s definitely his preferred mode of getting anywhere.

So Ben and I have been baking mince pies this morning.

We’ve been busy getting ready for the whole holiday season. Shopping, making, baking, decorating. Grandma and Grandpa arrive on Friday, aunts arrive on Sunday morning, we’re having a Christmas party on Sunday with lots of our friends (and lots of kids — it’s going to be chaos, but in a really good way!) And then, of course, Christmas Day here. For the first time, Ben “gets” Santa, and is quite excited about him. But puzzled about the whole chimney thing, given our 6″ diameter woodstove chimney pipe. 🙂

Will try to post pictures later.

Eric’s family joined us for Christmas again this year, since we obviously weren’t traveling anywhere at this stage of pregnancy. We had a wonderful, relaxed holiday. Ben greatly enjoyed having grandparents and aunts here to read to him and build train tracks for him. He received some wonderful gifts, but not enough stuff to overwhelm him, for which we are grateful. He had lots of fun opening presents, though — whether they were his or not. 🙂

View album.

The day after Thanksgiving, instead of going shopping like many people do, we like to honor Buy Nothing Day. Over the years, that evolved into Make Something Day, and last year, we decided to start our own new family tradition of making Christmas ornaments on that day. That means we get new and meaningful Christmas ornaments to add to our collection every year, we get to explore whatever craft idea seems age-appropriate for the kids, and we sort of kick off our holiday season with a day spent together being creative and goofy.

This year, we decided to bake inedible cookies and decorate them with glue and glitter and paint. Ben was involved at every stage of the process, and was way more focused than I expected him to be. He sat and happily played with glue and glitter for probably over an hour. He created his own little works of art which will hang with pride on our tree this year.

View the album.