Tent

The boys love their new tent. Ben got a camping play set from Uncle Kevin and Auntie Dre for Christmas. It came with a working lantern, camp stove, skillet and shovel, along with this tent. The boys love playing in it. In and out, in and out. Ben stored all of his toys in it one night. Nick drank a bottle in it. Even daddy got in and checked it out.

Spaghetti

Nick's first experience with spaghetti. Overall, I thought he was pretty clean, though I didn't give him a ton of sauce, either.

He still managed to get some in his eye, though...

Ta Da!

Now and it is time to reveal my most awesomest Christmas present...My Canon T3i camera!!! With some very generous Christmas gift donations, winning money from a Pioneer Woman give-away and saving my lunch money, I was able to purchase my camera this weekend! I was going to order it from Amazon and just get the camera body and a 50mm lens, but Best Buy had a good sale with a bunch of bonus things, like a telephoto lens, memory card, UV filter and bag, so I went with the lens kit at Best Buy (and I have it on good authority that Santa will be bringing my nifty fifty lens that I really really want :)  But this camera is totally awesome. Say goodbye to flash photography! These pictures below were taken in the kitchen with the lights on, which isn't super challenging light, but OMG - the pictures in the living room with just the reading light on - AWESOME! It's like daylight. I do get a lot of blurry pictures with the 18mm-55mm kit lens because the aperture isn't real low/high on the lens so the shutter speed is low, but I think the nifty fifty will fix that :) And the shutter response time is amazing! Yeah, I'm either going to have to learn how to delete pictures or I'm going to need another external hard drive pretty soon. Good thing I have a 16 hour car ride tomorrow to read the manual a few times over. These dslr cameras are complex pieces of equipment! But, ugh! I love it!

*Disclaimer: Before I could go to Best Buy, I was told I needed to make note of the fact that I have a super awesome husband that let me get my camera before Christmas and didn't make me wait to open it until Christmas*

A Wolny Christmas (Pt 1)

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas with the Wolny's. We had a traditional Polish Christmas Eve Dinner complete with beet soup, perogies and meat free. Conveniently, before dinner we saw a huge herd of deer in the field out back. We asked Ben if he thought they were Santa's reindeer. After dinner, Ben and the boys went outside to see if they could find Santa (while the rest of us frantically filled the living room with presents). Just as Ben was coming back inside, we heard Santa's sleigh bells - Ben had just missed Santa! This is a video of Ben as he came back inside after hearing Santa's sleigh bells.

A Wolny Christmas (Pt. 2)

Pictures from the Wolny Christmas. We are going to need a bigger room next year with the addition of little baby Lewalk! The boys both got a TON of wonderful presents! They loved all of them, and played with a lot of them today when we got home. The camping tent is a big hit with both boys and is currently the home of all the wooden blocks, ball pit balls (still in their bag), bulldozer and Mater. But hey, it's not in the middle of the floor for me to trip over in the morning, so I'm happy. Nick loves playing with all of Ben's toys and Ben loves playing with all of Nick's presents. Yet, neither one seems to be able to share with the other. No major issues today, but Ben did get corrected for stealing toys from Nick. There are more pictures to come of the boys playing with there gifts, including mommy's new gift...which is totally awesome and anyone who reads this blog will fully appreciate my most awesomest Christmas gift. But that will have to wait until tomorrow. :)

Nick LOVES his Eeyore buddy!

Ben was actually giving Nick a kiss. It just always looks like he's biting him when I take a picture

A Traditional Polish Christmas Eve

Nick's first traditional Polish Christmas Eve, complete with fish, perogies and beet soup. Nick missed the beet soup course, but he definitely gobbled up the fish and potato perogie. And I guess he's not allergic to shell fish - woops, wasn't thinking and gave him the cod with the crab meat stuffing!  

Painting

Now that Ben is coming up on 3 and his maturity level is increasing, I have decided to start venturing into other creative media besides colored pencils, crayons and Color Wonder. He painted pumpkins at Halloween, but now he is starting to paint with water colors. He does a very good job for the most part. We have had to have a couple of talks about how we don't mix the paint colors, but overall, he does well. It took a few minutes to figure out how it worked - add water to the paint in order for them to 'work'. We haven't really started focusing on coloring inside the lines or anything, but sometimes he does try to paint/color just one object. I guess that's the first step toward controlled coloring...

Sleep Bouncing

In order to keep himself out of trouble, Nick spent some time in the jumpy the other night. Well, apparently he was fussy and getting into trouble because he was tired! He fell asleep on the jumpy (again). But I got a video of him sleep bouncing! Totally cracks me up.

Clap! Clap! Clap!

Tight Squeeze!

Well, long story short, I thought I was going to have to take Nick either outside or in the garage this afternoon while I installed his carseat, so I needed to get him bundled up. I thought I'd break out the ol' Gap coat that was Ben's. It just barely fit. Sitting was a bit challenging. Well, I ended up not taking him outside after all the work of getting him into the darn thing, but I thought I'd at least get some pictures of it. He was hamming it up a bit, silly little boy.

9 Months and the Victim of SCPS

Nick is half way through his ninth month now. And it took me that long to take these pictures. And that is why Nick is a victim of SCPS - Second Child Picture Syndrome. Poor Nick. He doesn't have nearly as many pictures of his first 9 months as Ben did, nor has he had as many devoted photo ops, nor do I take as many pictures at each month as I did with Ben (though, 240 pictures in 20 minutes might have been a bit of overkill with Ben).

But, Nick is still a'grow'n. He had is 9 month check up last week and is almost 18lbs and I forgot how long he is, but he's still in the 25th percentile. Even though he seems way bigger than Ben was at this age, he's still kind of on the peanut side of things. He is definitely cruising around the furniture now, and speed crawls and has a total obsession with food. He pretty much has just gone to eating whatever we are and is not eating much baby food anymore. He has gianormous teeth, so he might as well as put them to use.

Elephant the Elf

I discovered Elf on the Shelf this year. And as we were in the deep throws of the Wolny Potty Training Mind Games, I was willing to try anything to win the potty training war. And it's kind of fun. So I went ahead and picked up an Elf. He came with a book to explain his story which is basically he is an elf that watches over your house for Santa. The elf hangs out around the house all day and keeps track if you are good or bad and make good decisions or bad decisions. He is magical, so he also knows if you are behaving at daycare, in the car, at church, at the library and at the store. He's one awesome elf. And then at night, while you are sleeping, he magically flies back to the North Pole to report back to Santa your behavior for the day. He then returns before you wake up and sits/hides in a different place each day. But you can't touch the elf or he will lose is magically powers and then how will Santa know if you have been bad or good?!

Once the elf appears at your house, you must name him. So I asked Ben what we should name him and he said Elephant (we had just gone to the zoo that day...). Sometimes I think he calls him Batman or something else. But Ben gets very excited when he finds Elephant in the morning or sometimes he forgets and doesn't find him until the evening. And when Ben pooped on the potty, he, all on his own, went straight over to Elephant and told him what he did so he could tell Santa (because Santa does not visit boys who don't poop on the potty). Ben sometimes has to be reminded to use his listening ears because he doesn't want Elephant to take a bad report back to Santa. Ben might be terrified of Santa in person, but he is all about Elephant the Elf! I have been gathering some intel on other elves out there and their crazy shenanigans, so maybe our elf will be a bit more fun and creative next year when Ben will probably be a bit more into it, along with Nick.

St. Nicholas Day

St. Nicholas came to our house two nights ago. He filled the boys' shoes with dinosaurs and books. Ben got a coloring book and Nick got a bath book. He also left Ben some candy. I had kind of forgotten about it and so I hadn't said anything to Ben the night before, so he wasn't quite sure what was going on when he woke up. St. Nicholas was smart enough to leave the shoes at the bottom of the steps so it was the first thing Ben saw when he came downstairs in the morning. They were both pretty excited about St. Nicholas putting presents in their shoes!

The Thoughts of an Almost Three Year Old

Ben has now gotten to the point in life where you just have no clue what's going to come out of his mouth next. I am totally fascinated by how his mind must work. I didn't get a video of this conversation because I was driving, but I do remember it verbatim, so I will share:

The scene: Driving to Nick's 9 month check up
Ben: 'Mommy, I don't need to go to the doctor.'
Me: 'Well you're not going to the doctor. Nick is.'
Ben: 'No mommy. I don't need to go to the doctor. I don't need to be fixed. I poop in the potty now. I don't need fixing.'
Me: 'You don't need fixing?'
Ben: 'No, I poop in the potty like a big boy'

Note: As part of the Wolny Potty Training Mind Games that have recently gone down, I had told Ben he would have to go to the doctor and get yucky medicine if he didn't start pooping. And boy was he scared to go into that doctor's office! He has never been so quiet before. And he has pooped in the potty probably 8 times since Nick's check up. Score 1 for mommy in the Wolny Potty Training Mind Games!

Another Year, Another Fail

Another year, another Santa-fail for Ben. Third year in a row now. We took the boys over to Bass Pro Shop on Friday to see Santa. Ben was all excited about it and was saying that he was going to tell Santa that he poops in the potty now and we had high hopes that he actually would sit with Santa. But, alas, when we got to BPS, he tune quickly changed. By the time we got up to Santa's house, Ben was clinging to Adam for dear life. Adam could actually let go and Ben was still hanging onto his shoulders. But Nick was a trooper! He sat with Santa while his big brother wussed-out. I think Nick wants a rocking horse for Christmas :) Nick was also a great picture taker (while his brother wanted none of it). Well, maybe next year Ben will talk to Santa. For now, he talks to Elephant the Elf that is watching over our house for Santa (aka Elf on the Shelf - I'll post about that later this week).