9 Months

Elliot is 9 months old!

What is our 9 month old up to? He can officially crawl on hands and knees (but usually still prefers commando crawling), cruises the furniture rapidly and with ease, and can walk through the house with his walking toy:

(although this does make him cry very easily because he can't control turning or speed at all yet...very frustrating for him)

Still our great eater:

Alas, not the best sleeper. We have tried many, many, many things but can't budge his wake time past 5:30 AM at the latest, and alas often much earlier than that. We drink a lot of coffee.

He is going through a separation anxiety stage...if we step away from him for even a moment there is much wailing, crawling desperately after us while sobbing, and then attempting to claw his way up our legs. The other week we attempted the gym daycare again and I was paged after only 15 minutes because he was so hysterical. Very sad.

He is clapping, waving, and mimicing sounds - which is all very fun - and figuring out cause and effect with his toys a bit more. He is also in the "drop everything from my highchair to see it fall" phase...not as fun.

Happy 9 months to our little man!

Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas from the Powells!

After everyone was asleep on Christmas Eve, Santa arrived:

Alas, the night was somewhat marred by Elliot randomly being awake from 11:30 PM - 1:30 AM for unknown reasons, and then waking at 5 AM for the day on Christmas morning...he seemed remarkably unaffected by it (although Mike and I were hurting):

We decided that since we were already up, we may as well wake up our good sleeper (note how pitch black it is outside in these pictures...it was EARLY!) so he could see the Santa gifts and open stockings. The Lego sets and Lego storage that Santa brought was a big hit:

Then after a breakfast break we moved on to the rest of the gifts:

While we unwrapped, it started snowing...a white Christmas!

Later in the day there was a lot of testing of new toys:

A LOT of Lego building:

And some general hanging out:

It was a low key, staying in, wearing pajamas, and being together kind of day - perfect.

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

Christmas Eve 2012

Happy Christmas Eve!!!

Henry has been in a state of unbridled near hysteria waiting for Christmas this year. Finally, Christmas Eve has arrived!!

The day started off well:

(This is post spatula licking...)

On Friday Henry and his playgroup had made dozens of snowflakes to send to Connecticut to decorate the new Sandy Hook elementary school (a request had been put out by the Connecticut PTA), and Henry was so enamored of the snowflake making that he decided our living room also needed to be a "winter wonderland":

We decorated Christmas cookies:

Elliot spent most of the day hanging out..he was SO excited about Christmas Eve that he was up at 4:50 AM for the day, ready to go!!

We had our Christmas Eve feast:

Where Elliot had his first taste of mashed potatoes!

The kids opened their matching Christmas pajamas:

And got to open one gift (Henry chose that they open the gifts they bought each other):

(Elliot ate a lot of wrapping paper. I am scared for tomorrow)

And we put out cookies and milk for Santa, with carrots for the reindeer:

Now we just need Santa to arrive!

Party, Party, Party!

It was a weekend of festivity! On Saturday we hosted our annual multi-faith holiday party. Earlier, Henry prepped by trimming the tree (put upstairs this year to keep out of the grasping hands of crazy 8 month olds...):

(his hair is also very festive, isn't it??)

At the party we had our traditional activties...cookie decorating:

(Henry has not shrunk - he was just in a little chair)

We lit the candles:

And had some serious dreidel playing:

There was lots of eating and general hanging out:

Then things got serious with some gift exchanging:

The kids draw names for the gift exchange each year. Henry had Jake's name this year and we had purchased Jake a small Lego Star Wars set. Henry helped me pick it out and knew he would like it, but Henry also REALLY wanted one. He wasn't greedy about it, just didn't let me wrap it for a long time, would carry it around and stare at it, etc.

Here is Henry opening his gift and discovering that Liam had gotten him the SAME THING. Excitement was an understatement.

And not a great picture, but here they are, both holding their Lego sets aloft and screaming "WE GOT THE SAME THING!!!!" while the adults laugh:

The adults do a Yankee Swap each year, and we always get some interesting gifts. Like these super creepy royal masks, as modeled by Alan and Meredith:

The partying didn't end there...Sunday we went to a birthday party for Henry's friend Jonas. A bowling party! Henry had some serious moves:

Happy birthday to Jonas, and cheers to a great weekend!