Christmas 2011

In a word...WONDERFUL...and absolutely memorable! We had an awesome holiday with family! Hunter was in his glory, playing Santa's Helper and handing out gifts, then helping everyone to open them. He had a blast!

Mason loved it, too, squealing and laughing all day. He enjoyed the attention and seemed to enjoy playing with the wrapping paper, as much as his gifts.

Foxy

We have a little buddy sniffing around our yard daily. In fact, most days, one fox is playing and chasing another fox around the yard.

Gimpy Crawler

Mason has been doing a gimpy military crawl for a couple of weeks now and is getting faster and faster. Here's a clip of him going after the choo-choo train under the Christmas Tree.

Now we're talkin'!!

Mason just started saying "Ma-Ma" and I couldn't be more thrilled. Of course, he started saying it when I was away on a business trip this week, which breaks my heart a little. But Ryan says it is because he missed me so much that he was asking for me!

An early Christmas gift to us!

Hunter went poo-poo in the potty Sunday night and again on Monday morning, and again on Monday evening...and every day since! YAHOO!! We are so very proud of our big boy!!

Christmas is underway!

We picked out our tree and started putting up the holiday decorations this weekend last weekend, while listening to Christmas music, of course! One of my very favorite things to do! Hunter was a big helper this year. He put a few ornaments on the tree himself, but then seemed to prefer to unwrap each ornament from the packaging and hand them over to mom and dad to hang (after the appropriate amount of "ooohing and aaahing" over each one, of course). Mason slept through most of the tree decorating, but he was awake earlier in the day when Hunter was down and "helped" me to unpack some of the other house decorations. We waited to turn on the Christmas tree lights until just before dinner when it was getting dark outside and they both seemed a little awed by the sight! We really had a wonderful time and I know it will be a memory I cherish for a lifetime!

This weekend we took the boys to Christopher's Train Garden at Broom's Bloom Diary Farm which is now our third year in a row. Both boys sat on Santa's lap and Hunter told him he would like Bobba Fett for Christmas. SO CUTE! Both boys got a kick out of watching and playing with the trains, but Mason was especially intrigued by it all. This inspired us to come home and create a train track around our Christmas tree, which Mason has been thoroughly enjoying ever since. Hunter also helped me wrap gifts and bake Christmas cookies. We kept it simple and made only our usual Monster Cookies, which has everything you could possibly want wrapped into 1 cookie. Then we also tried a new recipe for Reindeer Cookies, which turned out both cute and delicious! They will definitely need to be added to our growing list of annual Christmas traditions in our house.

Baby Deer!

We have 5 to 10 deer in our yard on any given day and Hunter never seems to tire of them!

All I Want for Christmas...

is my two front teeth!

Mason just cut his two top teeth! YEA!

Finally back to sleeping through the night again!

7 Months Old!!

Mason is getting big!! He has gone through some visible growth spurts this past month and is starting to look less like an infant and more like a little boy! He is still quite the mover! If he's on the floor and there is something he is interested in getting to he makes it happen. In addition to his usual repertoire of rolls, he has also started a one armed gimpy crawl. It is pretty cute...he basically tucks his left arm under him and uses it for leverage while reaching forward with his right arm and pushing with both legs. It isn't the most efficient move we've ever witnessed, but it gets the job done. He still likes getting up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth, and recently has started lifting himself up to his hands and toes.

Mason is also progressing on to bigger better things at meal times. It became apparent that he was not happy with just getting his pureed assortment of fruits and veggies, when he would turn away from it and then stare openly at the food on our plates and grunt or squeal for it. So, while he still eats mostly pureed items, we aren't mashing them up quite as fine and have started giving him tiny pieces of soft table food too. He has even had some of alphabet pasta with sauce and just gobbles it up - think that has been one of his favorites! It is super cute to see him chew things up and the look of surprise on his face as he encounters these new foods and textures. He still hasn't figured out the pincer grasp or how to really get the tiny pieces of food into his mouth on his own yet, but he likes to try, so we imagine it won't be long until he is shoveling it in solo. He certainly can get his toys in his mouth, and by "toys", I mean any reasonably large item that he can get his fist around.

While he's had a few episodes of runny nose and congestion, he's been a healthy boy. In fact, some of the "colds" he's had may have just been teething symptoms. So we are feeling pretty lucky and hope it continues through the upcoming holidays!

Here are some of our favorite pics of our little man!

Drama

Hunter was very upset when Daddy left to go play soccer tonight. Lucky for Mommy he is easily distracted...