Gingerbread House!

This year we decorated our first annual gingerbread house. This will definitely be a tradition from now on. It was so much fun!

 

Spreading frosting takes lots of concentration!

 

Tyler's favorite part was sneaking bites of candy and frosting. He loves his sugar!

 

Our gingerbread house might not win any awards for artistic ability, but we had lots of fun. If you could see it closely you would notice that most of the gumdrops are half eaten. It was next to impossible to get Tyler to put one on without taking a bite out of it first. :-)

I love this picture especially much because when we told Tyler to smile, he reached up and put an arm around each of our necks and pulled us in closer. Heart. Melted.

Random

These didn't really fit in any other post, but I was just looking through pictures and thought I'd post a few from the last month.

 



Dinosaurs at the Minneapolis Convention Center

At Chuckee Cheese with Daddy

First snowy day!

He loves wearing our shoes!

Watching bears at the zoo with playgroup friends!

Bedtime Adventures

We decided awhile ago that with a baby coming, we'd like to move Tyler out of his crib soon so we can buy him a big bed instead of another crib. We were planning on looking at new beds right after Christmas. But apparently, Tyler didn't really agree with our plan and started climbing out of his crib a few weeks ago. Thankfully he never really got hurt. He bumped his chin on the way down once, but other than that he's a pretty brilliant little climber. The first time he did it was in the morning when he woke up. He woke up a little early and I still wanted to take a shower, so I gave him some books and left the door open a crack. When I was finished he was still really content so I decided to quick get a couple of things done while I could. But then I started hearing his door. And as I stood looking down the hall and thinking, Can he really reach his door from his bed?, he opened the door and walked out with a very proud little grin on his face. It was hilarious. We had to wait a couple of days to convert the crib to a toddler bed, because Carl had things going on in the evenings and I would have just broken something. It was a little hard to sleep or get anything done knowing he could just climb out! I went in to get him after his nap one day and he was just sitting on top of the railing of his crib with one leg on each side. He is so dangerous!

Finally we had a chance to make it into a big boy bed. He was so excited!

 

Since this wasn't exactly our plan, we didn't have time to find a gaurd rail, but it's pretty low to the ground and we put pillows next to it just in case. He didn't fall out the first night, but we did find him like this when we went to check on him.

 



He was so proud of himself in the morning when he woke up. He didn't even get out of bed on his own. He waited for us to come in and get him!

He has rolled out a couple of times since then, but the pillows padded his fall and he didn't even wake up.

Those first few days were wonderful. Amazing. I couldn't believe how great he was doing! But I had been warned by people that their kids did well at first and then not so much after awhile. So I was really holding my breath, hoping that he would continue to do that well. He did not.

I don't have a picture of his nap on day 3, but it looked very similar to nap #4. And 5, and 6, and 7 and every day since, and possibly what it will look like for the rest of my life?

 

As you can see, by day 19, the only thing that has improved is his ability to get into mischief more quietly!

 



He finds things to stand on and turns on the lights, empties his dresser drawers, pulls apart all of his socks, and pulls every book off his shelf. We put baby locks on his closet, so he can't get in there anymore, and we unhooked his lamp from the wall switch so he can't turn that on either.I have tried everything! I've gone in everytime I've heard him get out of bed, I've completely ignored the noises and sat in the living room stressing out and hoping he runs himself to sleep, and I've tried sitting in there with him until he falls asleep. That is apparently the only way he naps now. At night it took about a week and a half for him to ever get out of bed, but now he also does this at bedtime. Thankfully at night, he usually just shoves books under the door for awhile and then gets in bed and goes to sleep. But naps are ridiculous.

So, our little switch from a crib to a bed has been less than fabulous. He used to sleep from 8-8 and nap from 1-4. Now he doesn't fall asleep until closer to 9, is up around 7, and only naps for 45 minutes to an hour! This was my biggest fear of this transition. Losing my amazing little sleeper. Any advice? I am taking any and all from anyone. :-)

He will still be getting a real bed, (with a gaurd rail) in January. So I don't know if that will help or hurt things. But I feel like it can't get a lot worse. Right?...

I do have to say though, that he is still as adorable as ever. Yesterday he actually fell asleep right away and I went in to see if it was really true. And I could smell right away that he had a poopy diaper. And he had gone into his dresser, pulled out one of his cloth diapers and layed it out to be changed before he went to sleep. So sweet! And so sad that he had to fall asleep that way!

The Best Month of the Year

Again, this post is from November, so we didn't just put our tree up - it's been up for awhile. The blog is just a little behind. :-)

I love decorating for Christmas. I love how cozy our house is with all the lights and I love Christmas music! This year we had a few bumps in the road and we aren't quite put together, but we're close. Carl tried to put the lights up outside a few weeks ago when it was warm, but there was a fuse problem and he spent all his time trying to fix it and they aren't actually up yet. Tomorrow!

Then we we put our tree up, we had another problem. The top third of our prelit tree didn't light up. Carl tried everything. He checked every bulb. He replaced the fuse. He drove himself crazy. And two days later, when we still had our Christmas boxes sitting around he cut out all the lights and restrung some new ones. And then we could decorate the tree. Tyler kind of enjoyed the boxes sitting around. They made great diving boards. There was a box right in front of the couch and he kept standing on it and falling forward onto the cushion. Great times for a one year old. It was very nice to get them back out to the garage though!

It was fun to have Tyler taking part in our Christmas traditions this year! Last year he was too little and we did most of it without him. But this year, he helped put up both of our trees. We have a big tree upstairs with nice, matching ornaments. We decorated that one after bedtime (two days later). But we also have a little one downstairs with all our other ornaments. Tyler LOVED helping to hang the ornaments on that tree and he talks about the "baby" tree all the time. He's also very proud that he knows what the ornaments say. He points to the ones with his name and says, "Me!" and he points out the ones that say our names. He also likes to tell us about the one with penguins and the key and few other favorites.

And then, time for Crepes. Another tradition that Tyler was happy to take part in. And this year, for the first time, I convinced Carl they would be better with a filling and fruit then just plain sugar. He still claims he likes the sugar ones, but he's wrong. They are way better with a delicious filling and strawberries and bananas. Tyler and the baby agree, so it's 3-1. :-)

Decorating the Baby tree!

Little Baker

Ok, so I wrote two posts right after Thanksgiving. Actually the same day as the last post that is up. But our ancient computer decided it didn't want to let me put pictures on it and so until we had a chance to mess with it, I had to wait to put them up. So this post and the next one are old, but they're here now!

Tyler has enjoyed helping me cook for awhile. But usually he's helping with dinnner and nibbling on onions or other random things. Right before Thanksgiving he helped make a pumpkin pie and discovered the true joys of baking.

Is it too early for Christmas Cookies? I say no. If I'm being honest, I've been wanting to make them since before Thanksgiving. But I held off. We put our tree up on Sunday, and on Monday Tyler and I got to work. I made the dough while he was napping, but he did all the rest of the work himself. Actually, it kind of impressed me. I thought he would help for few minutes and move onto the next thing. But he wanted to do it all. He cut out every single cookie by himself. And if I tried to help he told me no with great passion. He rolled the dough (I had to force him to let me help with that part), he chose the cookie cutter he wanted and he found the perfect spot on the dough. I put them on the pan, but he put on the sprinkles and frosting until he had to go to bed.

It was hard work, but this was worth the wait!