Santa Screamer

He seemed so excited waiting in line, waving his arms and lunging toward Santa.  But, the second I set him in Santa's lap. . .

Mac and Cheese

Cleaning up after dinner with a baby hanging on your legs is the pits.  I usually can't even finish the dishes until after he's gone to bed.  But, last night, I was determined to get the dishes done before bedtime so that I could fold the laundry after (it's been piling up lately). Anyways, in my rush to clean the kitchen, I accidentally left the fridge open just a smidgen.  I left the room for a second to toss, yet another, dirty item into the laundry basket.  And, when I returned, literally moments later, I found this:

That's Gabe grabbing a second handful/mouthful of the previous night's leftover macaroni and cheese, after he had taken the lid off.  He loved this the other night when it was hot and fresh, and he loved it last night when it was freezing and probably a little stale.  I couldn't pull him away - it was too funny and too precious to watch him just getting himself a little snack.

Exercise Group

Some of you know that each morning I take Gabe to the "studio" at the recreation center.  He gets babysat for an hour while I go work out.  Tuesdays, I babysit.  Gabe has a "best friend" at exercise group named Kallen (pronounced Kay-Lin).  As soon as Kallen gets there every morning, Gabe freaks out.  He does this loud, excited squeal and then crawls really fast in circles until Kallen's mom sets him down. 

Kallen just turned 1, and so it's good for chubby Gabe to have a bigger kid to play with.  They grab each others' faces and take each others' toys and they fall over each other, but neither ever cries.  Their form of playing together means sucking on toys while sitting by each other. 

They are together for, literally, the whole hour.  If one crawls into the garbage can (see pictures below), the other follows suit.  If one stands up next to a ride-along car/truck, the other has to do it too.  In fact, at least once every day, Gabe and Kallen stand up to a car (one behind, and one on the side) and they walk with it, super-duper slowly, across the room.  The one on the side has to do the vine side-step to keep up and sometimes the car tips over, which sends the boys rolling onto the floor.  It is the funniest thing, and I've been meaning to take my camera for weeks.  Well, today, I remembered.  The pictures aren't great, but they demonstrate how the two love to be together.

P.S. Kallen has the CURLIEST hair I have ever seen.  It's so cute!

Christmas time in Kirksville

We put up our tree this last week.  We did have ornaments up at one time, but after Gabe broke one in his hand and tried to put the broken, sharp end in his mouth, the ornaments came down.  I thought he would be more interested in the tree, but I guess that once the danger was gone, the tree lost its excitement.

Gabe's friend Austin came over for a little bit last week.  Gabe was amazed that another kid was in our house playing with his stuff, and it was fun to watch them jibber-jabber back and forth.

Other than that, the three of us have been busy with the daily grind.  Phil studies, Gabe plays, and I have been making Christmas presents.  I bought my first glue-gun yesterday. Woohoo!  Gabe slid on it all around the house while it was still in its package. 

I keep trying to upload pictures, but something funny's up.