Zebra, Green and Africa

I guess I have to give credit to those Leapfrog DVDs that I hate so much (but that Noah is obsessed with) because last night he started trying to sound out words. I was changing him before bedtime, cleaning a poopy diaper, and he was looking up at the map painting he has hanging over the changing table. It's a drawing of a world map with animals all over the various continents and the names of the animals, and the continents and oceans are painted onto the map. I've always really loved it and Noah does too. Anyway, he points up at the picture of the zebra and says "that's a zebra." and then he started to sound out the word letter by letter, saying it faster until he said the word zebra (which he pronounced with a short e sound). He then tried to sound out the word green because there is a green mamba right above the zebra. Of course, this sounded like gah rah eh eh nnn. Then (diaper is now on) he stood up and traced with his fingers where Africa is written on that continent, sounding out each letter. Because Africa is such a phonetic word, he was really able to sound it out correctly. I almost fell over.

Winter Break from Work and Daycare

We've had a wonderful winter break. Thanks to a snowstorm the weekend before Christmas, I've been off work (with the exception of 1 day) for 2 full weeks. Sadly, I don't have a lot of pictures from our time off from work/daycare, but some of the highlights of our 2 weeks are: Christmas with Grandmoo, Papa and Aunt Sue; the Natural History Museum, especially the butterfly pavilion; lunch at Grandmoo and Papa's house; playing with Sophia and Mia; New Years Eve with Greydon, Sienna and Mia; and lunch with baby Abigail. Noah was running a fever yesterday, and was generally unhappy and uncomfortable. Fortunately, he seems fine today. I'm sad to be heading back to work on Monday... this has been such a nice, relaxing vacation.

Christmas Time

We all had a wonderful Christmas yesterday. My parents and my Aunt Sue, who is visiting from Connecticut, all came to our house for the festivities, and a lovely, food- and present-filled time was had by all.

Our "tradition" (tradition, meaning we've now done this for the second year in a row. Remember, this is Christmas with the Jews after all. We don't know what we're doing.) is to open stockings on Christmas eve. Here is Noah opening up presents from his stocking. This particular gift was some big boy underpants, assuming he ever fains interest in the potty. I'm beginning to think the kid will be in diapers as a teenager.

Notice Audrey eyeing the wrapping paper. She loves to eat plastic and/or paper products (strange cat). This means that we are unable to put presents under the tree until Christmas morning because she will eat through the wrapping paper if given the chance.

And, here is our tree Christmas morning pre-present unwrapping.

The first present Noah opened was this Good Night Moon matching game. Seriously, he had to show it to everyone, he was so excited. I think we could have stopped there.

But we didn't. Noah really enjoyed opening up the presents, so we let him unwrap every one, including the gifts for the adults.

Here is another big hit. Noah loved this big truck that Aunt Sue got him.

By far my favorite present of Noah's are these Automoblox cars. Santa got him one and Aunt Sue got him a second one. They are wooden cars with rubber wheels, but they are so cool. You can take them apart and reassemble them with mixed up pieces once you have multiple cars.

Noah was enjoying playing the Good Night Moon matching game with Grandmoo, but then he decided it was even more fun to just play with Grandmoo.

And, far more fun to ride Grandmoo.

Another Christmas highlight for Noah was getting to eat homemade whipped cream and strawberries. The rest of us had homemade strawberry pie, but Noah's a purist, and would rather have the berries themselves.

Watching the Snow Together

Snowed In

We are in the middle of an enormous snow storm. We could get as much as 24 inches, and supposedly this is the most December accumulation that the DC area has gotten in 70 years. Considering how much snow we're getting, we went out to do a mid-blizzard driveway shovel. There was already a good 8-10 inches when we went out. Of course, since it so rarely snows here, we only have one shovel. So, I helped out Darren using a dust pan. How pathetic. Noah loved playing in the snow, though he did fall in a couple times and needed help to get up.

ETA: These photos were taken at about 9 am. It continued to snow, hard and fast, for about 12 more hours. Maybe we're in the middle of a snow drift, but I think we have close to 2 feet of snow.

Hanukkah and Decorating Our Tree

Yesterday we celebrated Hanukkah with my parents and took the opportunity to decorate our tree. Our tree looks a little like the Charlie Brown tree this year. We don't have an awful lot of ornaments and we probably needed at least one more string of lights, but it's still nice. Sadly, no pictures of the Menorah lighting this year.

Decorating Uncle Myles and Aunt Lisa's Tree

We went to Noah's Uncle Myles and Aunt Lisa's house yesterday to join them in decorating their tree. They reserved some soft ornaments and the bottom of the tree for Noah. We will be putting up our tree next weekend (when we do Hanukkah-- way to confuse the kid!)

Noah also enjoyed playing with Guapo, Uncle Myles and Aunt Lisa's dog.

And, he enjoyed playing with Uncle Myles's toys.