Grayson and Santa

Grayson got to see Santa again yesterday at the mall!  This picture is sooo fitting of how he feels about Santa this year! :)  We kept asking him while we were at the mall if he was sure he wanted to see Santa.  Each time he'd say "uh huh".  So we made our way to Santa and was very happy to see there was NO line!  I was shocked at this seeing how it's the weekend before Christmas and the mall was crazy with lots of people hitting the holiday sales.  Grayson had a big smile on his face when he saw Santa and climbed right out of his stroller.  He took a few steps... and then Santa held a hand out to him.  That was the end of the smile!  Once he was within reach of Santa, he promptly ran to Will and did NOT want to see Santa on his own!  When Will tried to sit next to Santa on the chair, Grayson still did not care of that so Santa gave up his chair for Will and Grayson to look at an Elmo book he had.  Santa snuck in next to them for this picture while Grayson didn't notice him there.  After, we tried to see if he was more comfortable with the chair to sit with Santa, but he ran away.  We got a couple other shots of Grayson in Will's lap and Santa in his chair, and one with Grayson standing near Santa, but neither of those had Grayson smiling and I thought this picture was the best fit for Grayson's attitude toward Santa.  I'm glad there wasn't any kids waiting in line behind us because Santa and his helpers were so patient in trying to get a good picture!  I was so happy with how Santa was patient and willing to try different things with Grayson as well.  Sometimes Santa's at malls can be so indifferent towards the kids or grumpy and it was wonderful to see a Santa that you could tell enjoyed what he was doing!  Maybe next year we'll get a good picture with both the boys on his lap! :)

Gingerbread House

Grayson has anxiously been waiting to decorate his gingerbread house all week! Daddy wanted to decorate it with him so we waited till the weekend.  I found one at Target that was pre-built so I didn't have to have the headache of trying to get an almost 2 year old to patiently put together a house.  Of course he wasn't able to squeeze the frosting out of the bag very well so Mommy got the job of putting the frosting on while Grayson and Daddy decorated it with candy.  Before we even got started though, Grayson reached right into the candy bowl and popped a piece in his mouth to eat!  After that one little taste, it was all over!  He ended up licking almost every piece he put on the house I think!  He especially liked the gum drops.  He wouldn't put it in his mouth and chew it up, he'd keep licking the sugar off of it and then eventually put the candy somewhere on the house.  Daddy was talking about how the best part was eating the candy off the house.  However, after seeing Grayson slobber on half the house he's now rethinking his plan of eating the candy later on!  

Early Christmas Present

Grayson got an early Christmas present, mostly because Mommy and Daddy didn't want to put it together Christmas Eve and we also had a headache the first time around with the sink being broken and waiting for the store to finally take care of it and ship a new kitchen!  Grandma and Grandpa Campbell got Grayson a kitchen set this year for Christmas.  I already had dishes in storage for a kitchen set from my classroom in Washington while teaching Kindergarten. Now we just need to get some play food! :)  While this kitchen is very cute and sturdy.... it was a pain to put together!  There were so many small parts to it and the screws were headache to get in that I think we spent almost an hour and half with both us working on it to get it done!  It's done though and will never come apart again! :)  Whew!  We're leaving it by the tree for now and after Christmas it will find it's permanent spot in his playroom upstairs.  When he came downstairs the next morning he was beyond thrilled!  He immediately went to it and began checking it all out!  Later I grabbed the dishes from his playroom and brought them down.  It'll take some modeling to show him that the dishes are to "pretend play" with rather than just throwing all over the floor.  However, when he was playing with it this morning he was doing pretty well at pretending to cook and wash dishes.  I think he'll "play" more once we have play food as well.  He thought it was pretty fun to get Daddy a drink from the sink and bring it to him too and giggled when Daddy pretended to drink it.  :)  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for the Christmas present!  Even though Grandpa thinks it may be a "girly" present... Grayson loves it already!  I see us getting many years of use out of it!!

Advent Christmas Tree

December snuck up before I knew it!  I had initially thought about doing some advent activities throughout the month, but realized it was already well into the first week of December before I realized it!  I did find a little Christmas tree advent activity that Grayson could help do.  Each day Grayson colors a number in a circle, then I cut it out and he gets to glue it on the tree.  It counts down to 0 which is a star that goes on the top of the tree on Christmas tree.  Of course I end up forgetting most days to have him color a circle so as you'll see in these pictures he's coloring about 6 numbers!  Whoops!  I forgot for a whole week!  I'm sure next year it will be easier to do a daily advent thing with him since he'll remember better about it too and remind me!  His favorite part about his advent tree is getting to use glue!  Sometimes it takes awhile to color the number because he keeps stopping and talking about the glue. :)  In fact, I think we should maybe go catch up on the last two days while I'm thinking about and have him color the next two numbers before bed!!  Merry Christmas everyone!!  Hope you're enjoying this holiday season! 

P.s.  Grandma Sand and Aunt Dee.... look at how well he's holding his crayons!! 

Christmas Cookies!

Grayson and I worked on making Christmas cookies this week!  Rather than trying to bake and decorate cookies all in one day, I decided to break it up.  I have found that it provides MANY days worth of fun for us that way and something to do after nap rather than having him destroy the house with toys all over the place. :)  Earlier this week we worked on baking the cookies.  Grayson had fun trying to roll out the dough and using cookie cutters.  I made a double batch of sugar cookies and he did pretty well "helping" the entire time!  His favorite part was when I'd put new flour on the counter and he'd get to "spread" it out.  Of course there was a nice pile under his step stool by the time we were done! A couple days later, we decorated just the candy cane cookies.  He tried his best to frost the cookies, but would hold the knife straight up rather than putting it on it's side on the cookie to get the frosting on there.  I ended up frosting them and putting the stripes on.  He then had a blast with the sprinkles! He'd sprinkle a few, then try to eat some off the cookie sheet that the cookies were set on.  Today, we decorated the Christmas tree cookies.  Once again I ended up doing the frosting as he anxiously waited to get his hands on the sprinkles!  He immediately put sprinkles on the cookies and then tried to pick them off and eat them. :)  He likes to eat a little bit of broken cookies although he's not interested in eating them if they have frosting!  But given the choice of sprinkles or cookie... he'll go for the sprinkles every time!  He's not typically one to have a sweet tooth and really only cares for smarties or suckers.... but we can officially add sprinkles to his list of "sweets" that he likes!  

Santa came to our neighborhood!

Last night right as we finished dinner Grayson yelled out "uh oh!  wee-wee!"  He had heard sirens for a fire truck (which he calls a "wee-wee" because of the sound it makes).  Will saw lights on our street and looked out the door and saw Santa walking down the street.  Grayson wasn't too sure what to think about it all so Will carried him out there to meet Santa and get a candy cane.  Unfortunately Grayson wasn't too sure about this strange man in a suit so I didn't get a great picture with him and Santa.  Once we came back inside and Santa and his "sleigh" moved on to other houses, Grayson talked the rest of the night about the "Wee-wee" and saying "bye bye".  We skyped with G'ma and G'pa Sand afterwards and Grayson showed them his candy cane and how yummy it was. :)  Today as soon as we came downstairs and he saw the window where he looked out at the firetruck, first thing he talked about was how the "wee-wee bye bye".  I have a feeling we'll be hearing about Santa and the firetruck all week! 

Dancing

Recently Grayson has gotten into dancing to music.  The other night as I was cleaning up the kitchen, he was playing with his farm animal magnet toy that plays music and started to "dance" around the island counter.  However, he wouldn't "dance" unless Daddy and Mommy were going around with him.  It ended up more like we were marching.  Every time the music on the fridge would stop, he'd run over and push the button to make it play again.  Along with him "dancing" that night, the next day after nap he decided to dance along to the music I had playing for him with his blanket.  Of course every time I try and catch him on video doing his "signature move" (left elbow held up by his head and other arm flapping) he stops doing that move and won't do it again for me!  :)