Candy Cane

 Somehow Richie got his hands on a candy cane.  He was enjoying it so much I didn’t have the heart to take it away from him.

  His stocking did have some treats.  Animal crackers, gingerbread crackers and a teeny chocolate Santa.  This was way better.

  He’s clearly a second child.  I don’t think Anthony discovered any candy before his second birthday.

Christmas Brunch at the Fairmont

 I wanted Christmas to be special, but I really didn’t want to cook.  We went out to Christmas brunch at the Fairmont instead.  It was really nice.  The food was excellent, the desserts were amazing.  Anthony decorated a cookie, as you can see!

  Anthony got a balloon flower and Richard got his face painted.  I asked for “something fast and easy”.  He rocked his little Chrismas tree.

  Afterwards we walked around Christmas in the park in San Jose.  It was a perfect afternoon!

Merry Christmas!

  Santa, Grandparents and Cousins were all very generous to my boys this year.

  Highlights (so far) include Anthony’s Rainbow Loom and Anna doll (from Frozen).  He also really digs his Fort Magic kit.  I think he’ll really enjoy his puppet theater once I get it set up for him.

  Richard’s favorite toys so far are his Plan Toys hammer ball set, his stacking cups and his crawl through tunnel.  Its funny, my boys are five years apart, but Anthony still grabs the baby’s toys to play with himself.

Santa Pictures

 We visited Santa at the mall Thanksgiving weekend.  Anthony was excited to see him, but quite unsure what to ask for.  (That was rectified a few weeks later when he decided on a Rainbow Loom.)  Now, he's very insistent that he wants a Rainbow Loom.  He isn't greedy, though.  He doesn't really ask for anything else.

  Richie evidently just wants socks for Christmas.  (He does own socks and shoes, he generally chooses not to wear them.)

  I love this picture of Richie with Santa.  I've spent a ridiculous amount of time staring at it.

  Anthony has figured out that not ALL the Santas we see are the real Santa.  He didn't have an opinion on this guy, whose beard was clearly real.  He will point out (afterwards) that the clearly fake Santas are indeed fake.  On a related note, he realized that the Ariel who flirted with him at Disneyland was NOT the real Ariel, but rather a woman in a dress.  He had a pretty hard-core crush on her for a long time after that.  I'm really thankful we made that trip while he was still a true believer.

Donahue’s Christmas Party

   Tuesday night was the Donahue’s annual Christmas party.  We’ve been going every year since Anthony and Robert were tiny tikes.  We started off with potluck dinner, then Christmas songs, then a visit by the fat man himself.

  Sarah was surpised/impressed that my boys had matching shirts.  We’ve been friends for six years now, I thought she knew me better than that!  What else would they be wearing???

  Richie was more enamored of the fat man than ever.  When his turn was over, I held out my arms for Richie to come to me.  He completely ignored me because he wasn’t done visiting with that strange guy.

Stylin ‘Do

 Maria at daycare always does the girls’ hair every morning.  Richie was fascinated by the process and always wanted to interfere.  I had a good laugh when he came home with a mohawk.

Kathleen’s Christmas Party

 Saturday was a long awaited day—the Christmas party at daycare.  It is the social event of the year, in addition to her current kids, Kathleen always invites the alumni.  Anthony had a great time playing with his pals.  I barely saw him all evening!

  I loved seeing Richie playing with Nico.  Nico is 2 1/2 and adores Richie.  Nico lent Richie a matchbox car and they crawled around on the floor playing cars together, it was so sweet!  Nico’s mom is pregnant with a girl; Nico was very disappointed to learn that he wasn’t going to have a Richie of his own.

A certain special guest arrived after the singing.  Anthony was a VERY enthusiastic singer, I think he may have been louder than all the others put together.  He was also a very good big brother.  When the singing started I put Richie on his lap and he took care of R until the special guest left.  Everyone commented on what a good big brother he is.

Santa was very good to both boys.  Anthony (and the other bigger boys) received these Planes airplane launchers.  Anthony has barely put his down.  Richie scored TWO presents—the traditional “baby’s first Christmas” ornament that Kathleen gives to all the little ones AND the toddler toy—a shape sorter/crock pot.  Richie hasn’t figured out the shape sorting part, but he certainly enjoys putting things in the pot, take them out of the pot...

School Christmas Program

   Today was Anthony’s Holiday program at school.  Its funny, it was so much lower key than the programs at preschool.  (I think I’d expected the opposite.)  The program was led by Teacher Anton, their music teacher through CSMA.  They sang five songs, but I only recorded one.  All of the kids did a good job singing and I was very pleased with how focused Anthony was.

  After the concert was the holiday party.  As usual, Anthony rejected hot chocolate, but he did enjoy eating the marshmallows off the top and the spoon, which was a peppermint stick.  (He really likes the idea of hot chocolate, just always rejects the real thing.  He feels the same way about soda and bubble gum.)

Cool Mirrors!

 Richie has finally figured out mirrors.  I'm pretty sure he understand that he's looking at himself, rather than some other friendly baby.  (The babies in the mirror always smile back!)

Lately we've been showing him all sorts of neat mirror tricks.  First was the Exploratorium the day after Thanksgiving.  Their parabolic mirror was pretty darn amazing.  Richie just kept reaching out to try and touch his reflection.  (Anthony loved the museum, too.  His favorite part was the shadow room.)

  This kaleidescope picture was taken in line for Santa.  Richie was fascinated.

Playing “Family"

 Anthony spent the morning playing “family” with Richie.  Here he’s letting Richie help him cook breakfast.  Anthony is actually very good at entertaining his brother, I’m quite thankful!

11 Months Old!

 Richie is 11 months old!

  He has a few exciting new tricks.  He claps.  He claps a lot!  He’s realized that when he claps that others do it too.  Bubb School has assemblies on Monday morning, families invited.  They recognize the classes with perfect attendance, the classes with highest participation in “spirit wear”, etc.  Richie will happily clap along.

  He also waves.  We saw the Los Altos Parade of Lights tonight and he happily waved at everyone.

  He still isn’t standing independently for more than a few seconds, but he’s working on it.

  He has FIVE teeth now!

  Unfortunately, he appears to think that napping is optional on weekends.  He’s sleeping better now, I think he’s made it through the night five times!

Boomer comes to visit

 Anthony is special student at school next week.  As part of being special student he gets to host “Boomer” at our house.  We felt that “Eight Silly Monkeys” was perfect reading material for Boomer.

Baby’s First Thanksgiving

 Picture taken before (homemade) applesauce was rubbed into his hair!

  We had a good Thanksgiving.  We started the day with Richie’s first bike ride.  He enjoyed wearing his helmet and was amazingly tolerant of the trailer.  By “tolerant” I mean that he rapidly fell asleep and slept through the ride, the park, and the ride home.  Anthony rode behind Daddy on the one-wheel bike while I towed the trailer.  It was nice being out on bikes as a family!

  Anthony was a super helper for Thanksgiving dinner.  He made the cranberry sauce, helped with both pies and made the whipped cream.  He even ate some dinner this year, the cranberry sauce, the apple sauce and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  (I think he tasted the mashed potatoes.)

  Richie ate a few bites of turkey, rubbed apple sauce in his hair and rejected the mashed potatoes.  When we had leftovers today he rubbed the potatoes in his hair.

Christmas Lights

 Every year Vasona Park puts on an amazing display of Christmas lights.  Normally it is a drive through, with an enormous line.  We went a few years ago with Ciaran and while we enjoyed the lights, driving through a park looking at lights wasn't really my thing.

  This year in celebration of the 15th anniversary of the display, Vasona had a walk-through evening.  It might be before Thanksgiving, but I was excited to take the boys to the amazing lights display. 

  We had a great time.  The excitement started with a school bus ride from a nearby church.  The walk was a little over a mile and Anthony was oohing at the lights the whole way.  He particular enjoyed his walk through the "Dinosaurs Den."  (Not sure why dinos are part of holiday lights, but its a tradition.)  We even got to take our picture with a dinosaur in a Santa hat.  Anthony took his sweatshirt off to show that dinosaur his dinosaur shirt.

  We waited in line for awhile for a visit with Santa.  Anthony "knew" this wasn't the REAL Santa, his beard wasn't real.  Richie was an amazingly good sport about the whole thing!

Tide Pools

 I'd wanted to take Anthony tidepooling for ages, but low tides were always at really inconvenient times.  Today the stars (well, moon) were in alignment and there was a low tide in the middle of the afternoon.

  It was a long walk out to the reef (a good mile), but Anthony was a real trooper.  Richie happily rode on my back in the ergo and took a little nap while we walked.  Anthony LOVED the tide pools.  He particularly liked poking all the sea anemone and looking for hermit crabs.  He also enjoyed playing in the water, in his jeans and tennis shoes.  (Daddy brought the car back as close as he could, so Anthony only had to walk half a mile back.)

  Richie loved playing in the sand.  He thought crawling in it was fun and happily played "chase the seagull".  Yes, he did have to taste the sand, too, even though I told him it wasn't very good.

Gingerbread Man

"The blue bag" is a weekly kindergarten homework assignment.  Every week Anthony chooses a new book from the selection to read and write a book report.  We read the book 2 days in a row, and then on the third day Anthony draws a picture about the story and writes a sentence about it.  (Dictating the sentence and then copying it is okay, too.)  He normally picks books we already have (Madeleine, Olivia, The Mitten) or stories he's quite familiar with. 

This week's book was "The Gingerbread Man" so in honor of the story we made gingerbread cookies.  Anthony enjoyed decorating them with raisins, but was a bit peeved that I wouldn't let him put frosting on them, too.  I was feeling a bit traditional and didn't really need to increase his sugar intake. 

We took several cookies to his favorite vendors at the Farmer's Market on Sunday.  It seemed more than overdue to repay their kindness to Anthony.  "Apple Lady" (aka Donna) was particularly pleased!

Anthony's Theatrical Debut

Saturday I took Anthony to see the CTC's production of "I don't want to go to bed."  As part of it, the "child" imagines how bedtime should be, playing with Mommy and Daddy instead of going to bed.  One of the games they played was "The three little pigs" and they brought children on stage to help be props.  Anthony desperately wanted to go on stage, fortunately he made it in as a brick.  His role wasn't quite as large as the sticks and straw, who got to blow down, but he was thrilled!

10 Months Old!

 Pudgers turned 10 months old on Halloween!

  At his check-up a few weeks ago he weighed in at 18 lb 3 oz and was 27” long.  He’s still holding steady at 25% for weight and 10% for height.

  His latest trick is standing all by himself.  He can’t do it for more than 2-3 seconds, but he keeps practicing.  He will do proper babbling, too.  Nice long chains of ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.  That’s his favorite, but I’ve heard all the other consonants, too.

  He’s also gotten much better about sleeping.  He’s only slept through the night twice, but he’s remembered how to go back to sleep after his bottle.  For the past two months he’s been waking up between 4 and 5.  Then he doesn’t want to go back to sleep by himself, so he ends up in our bed.  (We can’t have him waking up Anthony.)  Thirty minutes of playtime later he’d be back asleep and Bob and I would be done for the night.  Now we feed him, he goes back down, but then fusses for about 2 seconds before he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

His favorite foods are the “toasty carbohydrate” group—toast, graham crackers, and pancakes and the “sweet and squishy” food group—bananas, pears, and melon.  He did chow down on Safeway turkey meatloaf a few nights ago, so his diet is rapidly expanding.      

Lost His First Tooth!

 Anthony lost his first tooth today.  Unfortunately, he lost it in pretty spectacular fashion.  He took a bad fall off the jungle gym and landed face first in the wood chips.  He knocked out his tooth, which was ready to go, and did a real number on his lip, I counted at least five cuts.  Unclear where the tooth went, I assume he swallowed it.

  He wasn’t too concerned with the tooth fairy most of the evening, I think he was too busy being upset with his hurt lip.  Poor little thing.  We did write a letter to her and put that under his pillow.  I’m fairly confident she will find the missing tooth and give Anthony his prize.

  I’m working on getting adjusted to his new smile.  Its stunningly different!

Happy Halloween!

  The boys had a great Halloween.  Anthony had a Halloween party with the other kindergarteners followed by a school-wide parade.  I assume they did Halloween fun at Kids’ Place, too!

  You can't tell from the picture, but Anthony is sporting an awesome vampire costume and Richie is a monkey.

  We went trick-or-treating as a family to a few houses on the block.  Richard was thrilled to receive a box of animal crackers at one house; a treat he could actually enjoy.  After that I went home to hand out treats (books!) and Anthony went out trick-or-treating with his girl-pal Sydney.  Unlike some years where he and his friends ran from house to house, he and Sydney must have set some sort of record for slowest night ever.  Fine with me, he doesn’t need pounds of candy.

  He had fun, and that’s all that matters!

Pumpkin Carving Party

 Yesterday we went to a pumpkin carving party at Collin’s house.  (How is it that a three year old gets to claim possession of an entire house??)

  In the car going over there Anthony read the diagram (correctly) of the six steps to use the pumpkin carving kit.  He was a phenominal helper.  He practically did the whole thing himself, though Bob certainly helped with some of the fine detail.

  Richie was less than helpful.  He certainly was adorable in his tiger sweatsuit and monster shirt.  (Well, he’s adorable in anything.)  He had a lovely time crawling around, got up close and personal with a labradoodle puppy and played with all of Collin’s brother’s toys.