Merry Christmas!

This year Ishish, Dada, and I enjoyed a Christmas at home. While we weren't with our extended family in person, we did get to visit with them via our webcam! Ishish got in the mood a few weeks ago by singing Jingle Bells (yes, it's another video of the door, with some meowing for entertainment).



He helped me decorate cutout cookies. He was as careful as I could have hoped from a two year old! I told him he could try them after his nap. During his naptime I heard him say "I eat cookies!"



We went to our church's Christmas Eve service. Ishish is not used to sitting with us but behaved well... mostly. At one point the lights were dimmed while we prayed. A few seconds later Ishish asked, very loudly of course, "Where'd lights go? Where'd lights go?"

We also enjoyed our traditional Christmas brunch of waffles with lots of yummy toppings.



He really enjoyed getting presents. I told him that in the morning he would get to open presents. I didn't expect him to remember, but when I got him up the next day he said "open presents!". He wanted to play with his new toys right away before opening more.

Reading

Ishish gets to pick out one book to read before naptime and bedtime. Usually they're not surprising, but lately he's been on a string of wanting to read a "Mama book". One of his favorites is "101 Cat Care Essentials". We have also gone through three weather books. Those are up high so I pick ones out that are relatively short and have interesting pictures. I felt bad because the last one I picked was only in black and white and had almost no pictures. I guess I remembered it wrong! Fortunately he was just as interested in learning about bar graphs and global temperature patterns.

Fun With Cars

Ishish found a good use for the tree skirt!

Snow

Yesterday Ishish had his first memorable snow experience. Yes, it was just a dusting but we still managed to do some of the basics. His favorite part was making a tiny snowman (at the very bottom of the picture). All day long he kept looking out the window to see it.



He also had fun walking around with the snowballs we made for him.



Can you tell which tracks are his and which are Dada's?

O Tannenbaum

We decided it was time to put up the Christmas tree. Ishish was very excited and helped us as much as he could. Since then he has spent time driving his race cars along the branches, trying to blow out the lights like he does candles, and going from one light to the next saying "orange one, blue one, ...". He turns on the lights whenever he's home (hooray for LED lights!).

He also likes to look at Christmas lights. When we drive he regularly says "more Christmas lights" and when we pull into the garage "bye Christmas lights".