January 13, 2009

Holiday Recap

We had a wonderful time in Texas for Christmas. On Christmas Eve we always get together with Mom’s side of the family. It also happens to be Mom’s birthday. Although the day was a little busy, we had a good time that evening watching the kids play games and eating lots of good food. I was really surprised at how well the younger kids enjoyed playing with Charlie.

On Christmas Day, we opened presents with my parents and brother. Charlie was not really into opening presents. He did enjoy playing with the boxes, though. Later that day, Mama’ came over as well as Dad’s sister and her family, including brand new Baby Ethan just in from Florida.

While in Texas, we also got to see my BFF and the even newer Baby Sarah and Big Sister Ella. It’s always so nice to go home and be around people who know you. I mean really know you. You know, people who experienced first hand your bad 6th grade hair and who have all of the good, bad, and otherwise embarrassing details on you…

We got to spend lots of time playing, eating, and relaxing. It’s always like a mini vacation for me because Mom loves get Charlie up, feed him, dress him, change diapers (ha!), play with him, take him outside, etc., so I have nothing to do except lay around eating chocolates and reading books. I embellish slightly. But it really is heaven.

We had our own Christmas back at our house on New Year’s Day. Santa brought Charlie a CD of children’s music and a bean bag tossing game. We had spent New Year’s Eve eating Chinese food and watching Charlie walk back and forth between his toys.

We had Christmas with Dave’s family the weekend after New Years. That’s one good thing about not having everyone in the same town—you get to have lots of different Christmases! Again, it’s just another excuse to open presents and over eat. Charlie loved getting into everyone’s presents.

Charlie just seems to blossom more and more each day. Looking back, it seems like we left before Christmas with a baby and came back from Texas with a toddler. As his personality develops, the temper is starting to come out. Now that he’s mobile, he gets frustrated when he isn’t allowed to get down and walk around. He also gets frustrated when he doesn’t get his way and will sometimes do the “back arching of parental dismay” accompanied by a temple-piercing whine. Fun times.

He still babbles up a storm and uses a few words. Some of which I have no idea what they mean. For example, there’s “b-wha” (boy?) and “dig dug” (DeeDee?) and “yep-bum” (yep?). He loves playing and making up games. He also loves playing with Dave’s guitars. Dave and Charlie have “music time” in which Dave plays and Charlie bounces up and down like a rhesus monkey. His newest development is practicing his dental fricatives or the “th” sound for you non-linguist types. He walks around saying “thoy oy oy oy” and makes other sounds like a miniature Alpine yodeler. It cracks me up.

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