Dinner with Chester

Dinner is fun here - Boy Friday would like to sit (he's not using that bouncy seat properly...), and Chester would like to eat my food. Unfortunately, Chester cannot be deterred.

Baby's First Christmas

I don't think Baby Friday is *quite* ready for opening gifts yet. I had to help, and it appears that he was a wee bit startled by the noise of the paper (it was tissue paper - who knows what happened to our wrapping paper in the move? did we bring it? maybe?). 

The little guy got lots of clothes, and a few toys. He would've gotten more if we'd remembered the stuff that his grandmother sent that wasn't wrapped! Oops. I just remembered today that he had a sock monkey, and where was it? Oh, still in the mailing box! It was like Christmas all over again. Well, I finally got around to taking the Leapfrog Musical Table out of the box today - and I think Santa did well. Looks like I'll enjoy it, even if Friday doesn't!  

I guess opening presents was a little too tiring for the little guy!

He kept falling asleep in my arms the next day, too. I guess Christmas dinner in a strange house was rather exciting and exhausting! Boy Friday did really well (much better than on Thanksgiving) - he slept through dinner (!) and didn't even cry when he woke up. Despite the presence of tall, loud strangers.

In weather news - we are all happy that most of the snow has melted. The streets were an absolute MESS a few days ago. When we got back on Christmas night we had to park down the street and around the corner, then walk the baby home on icy sidewalks. Would you believe it was in the 60's today? Just the other day there was a high of 4 degrees!

And some more photos..

Winter and Christmas Preparations...

We've been getting ready for Christmas, winter, and babies being more mobile. So, let's see... we got a tree, a tree stand, a tree skirt, and some more lights...and even hung some fancy ornaments we'd collected and never used. I'm not even sure where we got all of them! Boy Friday decided he wanted to stay up and see the tree all put together before going to bed (after midnight). I think it wore him out, though, because he's been in bed before 9 every night after that!  Christmas-in-a-box arrived the other day, as well (from Arizona - although there was no warm weather included).

Winter came early this year. Although the solstice was today (ok, yesterday), we've been having snow for nearly a month already. Today - ridiculously low temperatures. It was five below when I woke up this morning, but the wind chill was -31 degrees F! No, I did NOT take the baby out in it. We stayed in and watched people try to get their cars out of snow-piled spots on the street (really not sure why they didn't just get out and shovel a bit. probably would've been faster).

Baby Friday is continuing to practice his moves. He's not super mobile yet, but he's working on it. As you can see below... (the toys in his hands impede his progress a bit here, but he refuses to let go of them):

I should probably work on keeping the floors cleaner...

I know, I know - it's lots of video. And most of the second one is Boy Friday trying to figure out what he's just done, and really what he should do about it. The first video is a lot of squirming and kicking about - I was hoping he'd tire himself out as it was getting close to 10 pm.

We had a rather rough day here - lots of complaining on Boy Friday's part, which led to some complaining from me. But, we did get out to run a couple of errands in the rather chilly 19 degrees F. You know it's cold if your fingers are frozen before you get to the car. The other evening when we went to get the stroller out of the trunk, we discovered the trunk was frozen shut. I'm not sure yet whether this is better than living in an oven for half of the year. Oven or freezer? Hmmm...

Have a good weekend! Hopefully we'll get some decorations up before too long.

Watching Lots of TV here.

Yes, we're watching lots of TV. Specifically - Baby Einstein videos. So mom can shower. Or check email. Or just not have to carry the little guy around the house.  He seems to really enjoy the videos (he always smiles when he sees the caterpillar in the beginning). 

Ok, I haven't actually seen any of the videos start-to-finish yet. When I get a chance, I've been watching Ugly Betty. It's nice to find another tv series to watch finally - I've tried out quite a few only to find that I'm just not that into them (Burn Notice, Weeds, Lost, the Office - I know, I'm crazy, huh? SO wish I found that one funny). Anyway...

Boy Friday has begun taking notice of the cats (and they seem more interested in him all of a sudden, too). I'll have to see if I can get them checking each other out on video - the little guy was laughing today because his hand was being rubbed by the Tyger. I need to be careful, though, because Friday really likes to grab anything that gets close to his hand (hair, fur, icky stuff on the ground).

In other notes... Anya just ate some ribbon off a present. I didn't realize until today, actually. Just what I need - a repeat of the Easter grass incident.

Freezing Weather Today!

Here we are taking a stroll through Jefferson Park. There were even a few flurries! The walk did not, however, result in a sleeping baby when I got home. Oh well. He did rest a bit while I roamed through the library looking for something interesting to read (no, I didn't find anything worth checking out - do I really have time to read a book in two weeks?).

It's COLD here.

The guy on TV tells me our normal temperature at this time is about 39 degrees F. So, apparently, we're looking at temperatures nearly 20 degrees less than normal for this time of year. Thank goodness, because I think this is quite chilly.  My weather page is telling me that it's 14 degrees outside right now. I don't think I'll be going out to see for myself. 

Scraping off the car was an adventure a couple of days ago. Although we only had about 2 inches of snow, there were more than six inches on my windshield. My fingers were all red and frozen by the time I'd gotten most of the snow and ice off the car.

Well... today we mostly stayed inside and played:

Boy Friday slept pretty well last night - although he was rather shrieky yesterday. My ears have been aching a bit from all the shrieks. 

December Snow...

That was the view this morning when I got up. A few inches of snow (and quite a bit of wind)! The snow didn't continue all day, luckily, since I'm not quite ready for more than a couple inches. 

And yesterday morning, this is how I found Boy Friday:

He'd worked his way out of the swaddling AND his sock AND a leg of his outfit! I always thought those snaps were too far apart. He was quite proud of himself. Sneaky little guy.