New Years Eve playdate

Jeanne graciously hosted us for a playdate New Years eve day. Abraham, Angelo and I walked in the snow storm to her house. Abraham brought his shovel so it took us about 45 minutes to walk a couple of blocks because he had to shovel along the way.

Abraham spends a lot of time with girls. I am wondering when their interests are going to be too different to be compatible. They seem to peacefully co exist for now.

Angelo

It's hard to believe Angelo is now the age Abraham was when I got pregnant. Whew. Not doing that again. 

Angelo is more and more asserting himself in the mix. Now that he's got his three word sentences down, he's doing lots of commanding. "Take jacket off," "Zip jacket up," etc. He's also saying the words for everything he knows all the time which is pretty cute.

Some of his recent interests are: 

Batman. He's in love with batman. We have a small batman figure, who he calls baby batman. He sleeps with him, carries him around and talks to him, offers him "nursie,". He always wants to grab the phone when I am talking and when he does he almost always says nah nah nah batman after saying hi. 

Go Dog Go. When Bubbe was here they read it 15 times in a row every day. He now has the book memorized and tonight was flipping through on his own saying "go by skooter," or "stop dog stop." He even recognized another P.D. Eastman illustrated book and held it up saying "Go dog Go."

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. His favorite part is when the snow plops on Peter's head. We often have to read that part over and over and he laughs and laughs.

Spiderman. He frequently demands to "watch Fidey" whenever I am on a computer. Yes, he and Abraham have been watching the 1960's Spiderman cartoons on You Tube which are entirely inappropriate.

Another of Ange's favorite activities is racing. You have to say "ready, set go" and  then he (and also Abraham) will run from one end of the room to the other laughing, running into each other and furniture and falling down.

Play guys. Whenever I ask Angelo what he wants to do he says, "play guys." That means getting all the playmobile people out and after a few minutes of setting them up or making them pretend to interact, biting their heads off leaving me obsessed with making sure no little parts are sitting around or in his mouth.

Play cars. Angelo is very interested rolling cars around and watching their wheels moves. He's moderately interested in diggers, dump trucks etc. 

Colors! That's what Angelo announces when we get out any art supplies. He's working on learning his colors and he loves markers, crayons etc. 

Day after Christmas

Here we are on our annual post Christmas trip to the Copley Mall to return gifts. Despite the serious looks on the faces, it was a fun trip. Abraham and Angelo don't ride the T much anymore so they were excited about that. And we had a relatively pleasant Au Bon Pain lunch in the mall before heading out in the freezing cold to Newbury Street. 

Christmas 2008

We had a great holiday this year. We stayed in Boston and spent a lot of time cooking and hanging out. We had people over for Christmas Eve cassoulet-a complicated stew that Aaron and I ate in France a long time ago. Kids were put in front of the Muppets Take Manhattan (thanks, Aaron Miller) and we had an enjoyable evening.

We then stayed up way too late cleaning and assembling toys (and luckily, we remembered to "eat" the hunk of bread for Santa that Abraham sawed off with a plastic knife while unsupervised in the kitchen).

The big hit presents were for Abraham- a spiderman suit and mask. He wore it for 3 days straight after he received it until it became too dirty. The muscles that look like breasts catch any little bit of food Abraham drops while eating.  Angelo, once he finally woke up on Christmas morning at 9:30, was in love with a little batman Santa bought at Savers. 

Among other great presents. the kids got a race track which was supposed to be from Santa but that I just learned from Abraham he thought was a cast off from his buddies Anna and Lena as they have the same one at their house. 

After presents and breakfast we froze our asses off on a walk to the Arboretum. Children were cranky and we couldn't wait to get back to the house. 

Unfortunately we don't have a good family photo from this holiday season.

Snowstorm

The first snow of the year was really fun. We were waiting for it all day but luckily it didn't begin to fall until after we had returned from a morning outing. When Angleo woke up from his nap, I went up to his room to find him standing at his window looking out. He calls the snow, "snow mant."

Abe and Angelo got geared up and went out right away. Angelo wasn't too sure at first but then loved it. They spent the good part of the evening--into the dark with Aaron outside, shoveling and playing around in the yard. 

The next day the snow was still falling and it was freezing but we nevertheless felt compelled to go sledding at Fallon Field. No one was too happy. Abraham does not really like going down hills on sleds. Angelo went with me. But their was a lot of crying and complaining involved for the most part despite my efforts to bring hot chocolate in a thermos. 

Abraham much prefers shoveling to sledding, which works out pretty good for us.

Visiting with Santa

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is Roslindale Squares annual tree lighting. Kids make ornaments at the craft tables and hang them on the big Christmas Tree, there are tons of sugary snacks, the mayor speaks, some kids from some Catholic school sing and then Santa arrives in a Firetruck.

On this day, I had to take my parents to the airport shortly after Santa's scheduled visit but we headed to the square anyway. Angelo was home napping so he didn't get to participate. We met Mayor Menino and Abraham sharply corrected him that he was not spiderman as the mayor had suggested but a knight (he was wearing a homemade knight costume underneath his winter jacket-who knew?). My parents became nervous about getting to the airport just as Santa arrived and we were line. No way I could pull Abraham away at that point so we left him with the Farones. He sat up there on Santa's lap and asked for a transformer helmet (which thankfully he's not asking for now).

Our second visit with Santa was at the Dandelion flower shop the following weekend. I thought I might get a good photo of both the kids with him. This Santa was older and kind of scarier. Abraham still talked to him. But Angelo just looked at him, shook his head and said "no" over and over in response to Santa's overtures. 

Abraham told Santa he would like a spiderman costume and when Santa asked if he wanted anything else, he said no. Santa asked if he would like any games and at that Abraham replied that no, we already have bingo at home.

Christmas Spirit

Abraham is embracing Christmas and the holidays in general with gusto. When we got out the Christmas ornaments yesterday he instantly broke out into song ("Jingle Bells--I didn't teach him that) and was dancing around the room. 

When we brought the tree home from Allendale farms on a frigid evening, he moved the tree stand into the middle of the dining room floor, which was the spot he thought the tree would go in.

After dinner, Abraham supervised the decorating of the tree. Rearranging ornaments again and again with the greatest of enthusiasm belting out his made up song about Christmas. I thought Angelo would be the X-mas tree menace but he's not. His only offense is pulling a stool up to the tree and taking this one Santa ornament off and bringing it to me repeatedly. Angelo has now fully mastered saying " Santa," "Christmas tree," and "Happy Hanukah!"

A day at the ICA

We went to the ICA for family day. The kids loved the Tara Donovan exhbit. And of course, running around outside in the cold was also a highlight.