Eli knows his "M"... even upside-down!

A while ago, Eli and I were playing his Reader Rabbit computer game together (a collection of mini-games for preschoolers). We were playing the "Alphabet Train" mini-game, where a train appears on the screen with 3 cars, with an alphabet letter printed on each car.

When a train car appeared with the letter "W" on it, and the game's narrator said "W", Eli spoke up, telling the game, "No, M!" Eli doesn't know the letter "W" yet, but he recognized it as an upside-down "M"! I thought that was pretty cute.

In general, Eli is really good at matching things that look the same. Another thing he did recently was pull the "Michigan Santa" and "Michigan Snowman" ornaments off the Christmas tree, and show them to me, saying, "Look Daddy, both have letter M!"

At least Eli has that letter "M" down cold! Now we just need to keep working on some of the other ones that he doesn't quite know yet, like that "W"!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree . . .

Putting up the Christmas tree was a little different this year since, 1) It wasn’t our tree, and 2) It wasn’t our house. Still, we made it a family affair, with Jeff and Lori and the kids helping put up the tree on Sunday afternoon, and then Jon and I and Eli and my Mom and Dad decorating it on Sunday night. We did half of our ornaments and half Mom and Dad’s ornaments, so the tree is quite eclectic this year.

Lexi and Tori carried all the branches upstairs!Grandpa puts the top of the tree on!

During the ornament hanging process Elijah was really excited to open up all the boxes and try and take everything out as fast as he could - which, as you can imagine since a lot of the boxes had glass ornaments in them, didn’t go over too well with Mommy and Grandma.

Mommy holds her breath and supervises
the unwrapping of an ornamentElijah with his tree-decorating-beverage-of-choice. Hot chocolate!

We did end up with a nice selection of ornaments for the “Eli section” of the tree though, and Grandma discovered that she had quite a few ornaments which were a big hit with Eli – most notably a little mouse driving a choo choo train. Just about every morning now Eli takes his ornaments off the tree and lines them up under the tree and then carries them around all day. They ride his trains, take naps with him, and even come to eat with us occasionally. Then before bed at night we get to put all the ornaments back on the tree.

Hey, my froggy truck moved to Grand Rapids with me! Yay!

This takes extreme concentration
and superior hand-eye coordination.I did it all by myself, Mom!

Elijah really likes these cats in a basket ornaments that I have, the Michigan Football Santa (Santa with a football in a Michigan jersey and helmet) and the Michigan Football Snowman (ditto Santa’s get-up). We were playing with his ornaments the other day and I was asking him what the cats say – “Meow” – what the train says – “Choo choo” – and then what the Football Snowman says. Elijah looked at the snowman for a bit then got a big grin and said, “Go Blue! Just like Daddy!” We’re training him young, yes we are. Daddy was so proud.

Anyway, back to the tree decorating. After we were done Eli kept running back and forth around the tree and looking at all the ornaments, and we couldn’t really convince him that a family picture was necessary. Most of the pictures turned out with grumpy Eli or grumpy Mommy and Daddy faces. Finally we let him sit on his Retro Rocket and hold ornaments, which seemed to appease him. And despite the grumpy pictures we had a good time decorating the tree this year!

Pity the fool who thinks I'm going to smile for this picture!

Do you know why I'm smiling now?

You'd be smiling too if you had a sweet Retro Rocket like mine.At last, a picture where none of us looks too goofy.
Merry Christmas!

Company Christmas Party!

Well, a few weekends ago it was time for our first visit to Jon's new employer's annual holiday party. And what a party it was! It was held in the DeVos Center in downtown Grand Rapids, and was a sit-down dinner for 4,500 (yes, 4,500!) catered by the Amway Grand - which meant the food was delicious! All of this was followed by an evening of entertainment and desserts and treats. To sum the evening up in one word: awesome.

Jon and I had such a good time, and the whole evening was just incredible. We had six different rooms of entertainment choices that we could wander in and out of during the evening, with multiple acts in certain rooms too. By the end of the night we had seen a juggling act (that had been on the tv show America's Got Talent), a hilarious comedian, Tim Hawkins, and ended the night with a concert by the band 33 Miles, which Jon and I just happen to love! We had a huge dessert bar to choose from throughout the night, and carts with snacks, smoothies and iced mocha drinks were scattered throughout the center too. Then at 9 o'clock the pizza arrived! You could win iPods competing in the Wii games too, which we didn't even get a chance to do since we were so busy the whole evening! Add the gift card for free company merchandise that we were given as well, and it all added up to one pretty generous night for the employees.

One of the other perks was that they had about 8 or 10 photograph stations where people took your picture in front of a unique back-drop and then printed you out a copy. I couldn't convince Jon to hit every station, but we did a pretty good job of hitting a lot of them. It was free, and we looked pretty good all dressed up, so I figured why not! I took pictures of a few of the pictures so you could see us, but the originals are much nicer. We had an unbelievable evening and I'm already looking forward to next year!

Funny, Sick, and Tired.

I could say that nothing much has been happening lately, but that’s not exactly the truth. We’ve been busy with BSF stuff, Christmas shopping, decorating, baking cookies, etc., and the usual holiday activities (and I even had a weekend in Chicago in there too!). Elijah has been funny crazy as usual, but the key difference in the blog documentation has been that Elijah’s mother has been either dead tired or feeling yucky and hasn’t had the least desire to write down anything we’ve been doing, let alone pick up a camera.

On the baby-incubating front, I’ve been feeling very tired and much sicker than I was with Elijah. My stomach has been feeling unsettled pretty much 24-7, though I feel good for about 10 minutes after I eat. Then I go back to feeling yucky. And at 10:30 every night (Jon noticed it was the same time) I feel quite sick. The good news is that I’m now 13 weeks along and the last few days my stomach has been feeling pretty good, with only slight ickiness in the morning. Good timing for the food-makes-me-nauseous-I-feel-icky-phase to pass – right in time for holiday treats!

I’m already not able to button my pants though, so it looks like I’ll be headed for maternity pants land MUCH sooner than I did with Elijah (I think I was like 24 or 25 weeks along when I transitioned to maternity pants before). Oh, and Jon says my tummy looks bigger and different. Good thing he already knocked me up or with a comment like that he wouldn’t have a chance. So, in summary, Elijah is still funny, Missy is sick and tired, and Jon is making wisecracks about his pregnant wife's tummy. :)

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Also over Thanksgiving we went for a snowy walk in the woods near Mom’s condo, and even went sledding down a little hill there on a tray Mom found. There were so many cute pictures that I thought I’d do a separate post about our snow adventure.

I'm all bundled up and ready to "go crunching snow!"

A walk in the woods doesn't get much prettier than this.

Elijah really liked walking on the snow, or “crunching snow” as he called it. He wasn’t so sure about the sledding at first, but thought it was really fun to watch Daddy sled down the hill (Mommy thought that was fun too).

I'm not so sure about this, Dad . . .

Hey, this is kind of fun (though I wish I'd stop getting turned around!)

It's much more fun to watch Daddy though!

Eli really got in to walking in the woods, and Jon and I couldn’t walk fast enough for him, he was so eager to explore the trail. At one point he got it in his head that the leaves needed to have the snow brushed off of them. In a woods there are lots of leaves on the ground, so it took quite a while to convince him that they didn’t ALL need to be cleaned off.

Getting these leaves cleaned off is going to be a big job.

Eli also found a piece of snow covered ice off in the woods and decided to have a taste. It wasn’t quite what he was expecting! I remember eating snow when I was a kid and loving it (the good clean, just fallen snow), so we’ll see if Elijah likes to eat snow too. He didn’t think the ice was that great though.

Hmm, is this ice cream, right on the side of the trail?Ick, that's not ice cream. It's cccccold though.

After about an hour outside Mommy was cold so we took a little rest on a handy bench, then headed back home.

Taking a rest with Dad.

Hey, where did Elijah go?

I found him!

After a little more sledding fun (this time going down with Daddy), we headed back inside for lunch and hot chocolate. I’m glad that Eli liked sledding because I think going with all the kids over Christmas will be a blast!

I like sledding when I get to ride with Daddy!

Thanksgiving Relaxation

For Thanksgiving we headed over to Jon’s Mom’s house for a long visit. Jon’s Mom is still healing from a ruptured appendix at the end of October, and Jon’s brother had a tonsillectomy the week before Thanksgiving, so they were still on the mend. So it ended up being a nice low-key Thanksgiving actually (kind of a nice change of pace from the usual hustle and business!). Jon and I even got a chance to go decorate our house for Christmas (or minimalist Christmas as Jon put it) on Friday, while Jon’s Mom and Terry watched Elijah. On Saturday we went to Jon’s Grandma and Grandpa’s for dinner, which was a nice treat since we don’t get to see them very often.

Mom is making me pose in my Thanksgiving sweater.

Jon and Elijah and I got to play together a lot over Thanksgiving. Jon especially built all kinds of block cities and tunnels with Elijah (Mom’s just not as good at it). One time Jon had built Eli a road with some bridges (or tunnels as Eli called them). Elijah had two tunnels and told Daddy that he needed three tunnels. Than when Jon got three tunnels up, Elijah scrunched up his nose, thought a bit and said, “Need . . . four tunnels, Daddy.” This continued until Elijah had six tunnels, at which point it was time to eat, and I don’t think Elijah could remember (without counting out loud) which number came next.

The 6 tunnels built by Daddy to Eli's specifications.

I don't want to come eat, I want to play blocks.

After Thanksgiving dinner Grandpa Terry was getting a movie ready on the tv, so Elijah climbed up on the armrest to watch. I didn’t know where he went at first though, he was being so quiet!

I think this is a good perch to watch the movie from.

Eli, Jon, and I also had a rousing game of hide and seek (Elijah’s favorite activity!). “Come find me, Mommy!” over and over . . . and over and over. I didn’t think he’d ever get sick of it, but he did eventually.

Come find me, Mommy!

Hey, you found me!

At Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa’s house, Elijah found some wooden fruit in a bowl on the coffee table. He spotted the Christmas tree as well, and decided that the fruit would look great on the tree. I think taking the fruit on and off the tree amused him most of the night! It certainly amused us, and since no other ornaments were on the tree yet, it didn’t hurt anything for him to play with the tree.

This isn't a Christmas tree, it's an apple tree!

A very relaxing Thanksgiving weekend, but on Sunday we had to head back to reality. It’s always nice to be able to spend a longer amount of time together though, so I can’t wait for Christmas time and more relaxing days together.

Thanksgiving was so fun, I can't wait until Christmas!

Birthday Season Recap

Well, the mega-birthday season has come and gone for us, with 9 of our family having birthdays near the end of October and beginning of November. We celebrated with all of our families over a few weekends, and, now that we’re in town, had the privilege of actually being able to celebrate (for the first time ever!) the twins’ birthdays with them on their actual birthday. During the whole birthday season I was sick with a nasty cough and then found out I was also pregnant, so not much picture-taking or jotting down of things that happened occurred. I do remember a few things though, so I’ll try and recap some of the funny things that Elijah said or did during the birthday celebrations.

• When we celebrated with Jon’s Mom and Terry Elijah wanted cake. We told him he had to kiss up to Grandpa to get cake, so he ran over to Grandpa Terry, put his arms up in the arm and started making the kissing face to Grandpa. He took “kissing up” literally!

• At Lexi and Tori’s house on their birthday they got little princess dress up dolls (Snow White and Cinderella I believe). Snow White came with a little dwarf doll too. The girls were playing and Eli wanted to join in, so they handed him the dwarf. He promptly threw the dwarf on the floor, and said, “I don’t want be dwarf. I want be princess!”

• On the way home from Lexi and Tori’s birthday dinner, Grandma started singing songs to Eli. She sang Frosty the Snowman and Elijah made a little, “huh,” sound. Mom kept singing, then Elijah said, “What’s that? What’s that about?” in a voice that conveyed that he thought what Mom was singing was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. We all cracked up laughing, it was so cute.

• Before we went down to Ohio to celebrate with my brother Scott and his family, all the toys were on the table waiting to be wrapped. Elijah was studying them all while Mom and I wrapped and was particularly fascinated with a giant dinosaur that Mom was giving Andrew. He asked to play with it, and who it was for, and then said, “That’s nice. That’s so nice.” Guess he thought it was a good gift!

• At Scott and Jill’s house the basement is set up with a tv, an air hockey table, and tons of toys, so naturally it was the place the kids wanted to hang out. After we got home though all I kept hearing was, “Want go back Andrew’s house. Andrew’s house fun.” Even as we got in the car to leave for Thanksgiving Elijah said he wanted to go to Andrew’s house. I think he’s going to be disappointed that we’re not heading down there for Christmas, but that Scott and Jill and the boys are coming here!

What a nice dinosaur you have, Elijah.