Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! To all of our family and friends, we hope that your Christmas was as wonderful as ours.  Since Quin is almost 2 1/2, this proved to be the best Christmas yet.  He got the idea of opening presents and thought that everything was very magical.  The hardest thing has been the idea that Christmas only lasts for one day.  He really wanted to open presents again this morning, not quite understanding that he now has to wait another year.  Tim and I were so happy to see the sheer joy on Quin's face, first as he walked down the stairs exclaiming "Oh my gosh" when he saw all of his gifts, then each time he opened something new.

Santa seems to have brought Quin everything that his little heart desired, including lots of Thomas The Train stuff.  His other favorites are Hot Wheels, a fireman raincoat, dinosaurs, a tool bench, and a kaleidoscope.  

We spent the afternoon over at Matt and Becky's, so it was nice to spend Christmas with family. Quin did a great job pushing his cousin Drake around the house in a new toy car that Matt and Becky got for their boys.

Decorating the Tree

Since we just moved into our new house, it has been a little hard to figure out where all of our boxes of Christmas stuff are. As a result, I have yet to find our good stockings or all of our ornaments. Fortunately, we decided to go toddler safe this year and bought a box of shatter proof ornaments. Our plan is to use these for the next few years to avoid running the risk of breaking sentimental ornaments.

We finally got our tree decorated on Sunday afternoon and it looks great! Quin had a lot of fun helping and did a great job. He quickly figured out how to get the ornaments to stay on the tree, although he also discovered that they are fun to pull off. The only downside to a tiny (3 feet tall) human decorating the tree is that things tend to get clustered in the small radius he can reach. I helped him out a bit and lifted him up to reach taller branches. Seeing as this was the first time that we could decorate as a family, it was something that I will always remember.

Singing

Quin seems to be mildly obsessed with Christmas, but more specifically Christmas songs. Every time we get in the car he asks for Christmas music and more often than not, he wakes up singing Christmas songs; he is currently in his crib singing Santa Clause is Coming to Town! Amazingly, he knows most of the words and pronounces them all with great clarity. I am hoping to get a great video of him singing, but for now I only have the following one. He looks a bit disheveled (he had just gotten up) and his words are a little jumbled, but it is still wonderful (in my biased opinion).



We are planning to go see Santa this weekend, and although this will be his first visit, I don't think he will be afraid since he really seems to like the idea of him. He loves to tell anyone that will listen that Santa is coming and he is going to bring presents if he is good. I can't wait until Christmas morning!!

Away From My Guys

Even though Quin is already 2 years old, until last week I had only been away from him overnight once (this past September when I had my surgery!), but knew the day would come when I would not be by his bedside reciting Goodnight Moon. Well, the time came. Stacy got married on December 12th, and I wouldn't have missed her wedding for anything. We considered bringing Quin to the wedding, but since it was in Vegas, we thought better of it. Consequently, Tim and Quin stayed behind and had daddy/son time. This was the first time that I had to recite Goodnight Moon over the phone, but it went great! I was only gone two nights, and even though the time went by really fast, I still missed my guys more than I could have imagined.

In the new house

Sorry for the lack of posts and pictures, but moving is tough! For the past five days, we have actually been living in our new house! We still don't have all of our stuff here, but at least we are sleeping here. Good thing too, because we got a good amount of snow last week that is still hanging around. If we were still up in the canyon, I wouldn't be leaving the house! Even though there is a lot to do around the house, it feels great to be back in our own house.

Quin really seems to like the new house and has been sleeping great in his new room. He loves the fact that he is able to open our new refrigerator. What fun. Teaching him to stay out of it is going to be interesting. He has a tendency to open the freezer, take a bite of a frozen waffle, and then put it back (sometimes he actually puts it back into the refrigerator). He also likes to open both the freezer and refrigerator doors, stand in front of them, and stare. Great for the energy bill! He'll learn, but for now this is simply something new that he has never been able to do before.