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We took advantage of one of those rare, warm and sunny winter days and met Jonas and Xander’s Aunt Heather and Cousin Annabella at the zoo. We had so much fun and look forward to many more zoo visits this spring…

Xander is such a big boy with his finger foods and sippy cup.  He is a hollerer if food is not in his mouth as soon as he sits down to eat, so his fascination with feeding himself has been a meal time blessing.

Here’s Jonas, enjoying snack time with his three favorite friends (Pooh, Tramp, and Teddy Bear).

We recently moved Jonas from the high chair to the booster seat (he finally showed us he was ready by consistently giving us his plate, fork/spoon, and cup when he was finished eating instead of throwing them after every meal). He is DELIGHTED, as you can see. Xander graduated from the bouncy seat to the high chair and really enjoys being able to see what’s going on. I had an emotional moment the night we made the transition, looking around the table at my three favorite, smiling guys. What a blessing.

When I was little, one of my favorite things to do was to build a fort out of blankets and sheets in my room and spend all day in it, playing with toys and listening to music and reading books. It’s been a long time so I’m definitely rusty with the construction, but thankfully Jonas didn’t know the difference. (He encouraged me every step of the way, saying, “Good job building, MaMa!”) We had fun hanging out inside it, piled up on blankets and pillows, reading books.

Both of my little guys love books, and I couldn’t be happier about it (and about holding them in my lap and reading to them countless times a day).

We had another beautiful snowfall on Sunday night. But because Jonas is a little bit under the weather, we couldn’t take him out in it to play. So, I checked out my favorite blog (Fun & Engaging Activities for Toddlers) to see what indoor winter activity ideas she might have and saw her post on snow painting and had to try it out with him. We had a blast (and, yes, that’s blue fingerpaint all over his mouth in the last picture…he’s still all about sampling the paint).

Here’s a picture of Xan-Man crawling for Petra’s bone…she’s such a good girl and never seems to mind (he loves to crawl up and inspect her paws too).

After sharing meals, gifts, laughter, and love with my family in Tennessee, we headed to Virginia to spend Christmas with Tom’s family, enjoying the same. It was so good to see everyone and to spend quality time together. Here are a few highlights from our trip: receiving the beautiful stocking Grandma Jackie made for Xander (pictured in his 25 week photo); seeing Jonas graduate to sleeping in the bunk room with his cousins; eating edamame hummus; dealing with a stomach virus that hit all 21 of us; playing two new-to me, addictive games (Set and Racko); sledding in six inches of snow; and watching the children present a living nativity.

For more pictures, click on the “Christmas 2010” picture page to the right.

We had so much fun decorating for Christmas this year. We ended up doing something I thought we would never do…trading in a real tree for an artificial one. But, after Jonas yanked on a strand of loosely strung lights and pulled the whole good-smelling, needle-dropping mess on top of him, it was a done decision. We pretty much have no ornaments on the bottom half of the tree (the bottom half is decorated with toddler-proof ish ones), as he walks around with them all day long. His favorite ornament is a little book that he calls the “Lord Bible”. He reads from it every day and proclaims in a loud voice, “Lorly, Lorly, Lorly to God” (I recently figured out that “Lorly” is “Glory”).

Here’s a picture of Jonas with the inflatables that we put up in the front yard. He loves them and marvels at how they “sleep” during the day. When we were out walking before Thanksgiving, someone already had a huge inflatable Santa put up in their front yard. Jonas saw it, got really excited, and said, “It’s Noah!”.

We also had a lot of fun cracking out the rolling pin (I can’t say that I’ve done that since I used to help Mom make biscuits when I was a little girl) and cookie cutters to make sugar cookies and dough ornaments. Jonas painted the ornaments with watercolors and fingerpaints “all by self”.

At twenty-five months, Jonas is: really starting to express his feelings (my dear friend, Rebekah, and I started a cleaning day exchange where we take care of each other’s little ones for an hour or two once a week so we can clean…Jonas loves “Miss Ebekah” and her daughter Claire…we play with them a lot…Rebekah said he had a had a lot of fun playing but had a bout of missing me, which is a new thing for him, and puckered up…so I went to pick him up, and we talked about it in the car…I said, “Jonas, did you just miss Mommy, buddy?”…and he said, “JoJo crying want MaMa so bad Miss Ebekah hold you”); hitting an all-time high with whining and throwing; showing an interest in using the potty like a big boy; and having a blast playing with his new birthday toys.

Here’s a picture of Xander with my dear cousin Heather’s little girl, Annabella. You can tell by the look on his face that he was just fascinated with her. She came over to play with us one morning while Mommy and Daddy were working and had so much fun. Jonas is still talking about “Annabellabuh”.

We had a full and happy Thanksgiving day celebration, sharing wonderful meals with our dear family and friends. We have so much to be thankful for!!!

For pictures, click on the “Thanksgiving 2010” picture page on the right.

Here are a few pictures of Jonas doing one of his favorite things…helping MaMa in the kitchen. We made some Lemon Poppyseed muffins for a quick snack and some Pilgrim Hat cookies to thank one of our sweet neighbors for her kindness. I love my little chef.

Because Jonas tends to get into toddler kinds of trouble when he’s bored, I have recently decided that it would behoove me and him to try to come up with a list of different and engaging things that he can do/we can do together…

So, I searched through all of the “activities” posts in the “toddlers” group of the online mommy discussion board that I’m a member of and found some great ideas to add to my list. My very favorite post BY FAR was a link to the blog of a former preschool teacher/current mom of a three year old:

http://engagingtoddleractivities.wordpress.com/

I am now a HUGE fan and have been completely inspired. I have even rediscovered the lesson planning part of my brain. I am shamelessly copying the format she loosely follows with her son, which is to do a little bit of the following every day of the week for a week and then take a week off: a lesson (letter, number, shape, color, animal, etc.), table time and/or craft time (coloring, playing with play-doh, matching lids, fingerpainting, finding colorful pom-poms in rice, baking, etc.), a game and/or activity (working puzzles, reading books, playing with toys that reinforce the lesson, etc.), and outdoor time (a nature walk, a visit to the zoo, a trip to the dog park, playing in the sandbox, etc.). We have been having so much fun!!!

Here are three pieces that we worked on this week: construction paper circles (Jonas liked to use the glue stick most of all, so he glued and I placed the circles), sticker pages (it cracked me up how he didn’t like any of the stickers to overlap), and a chocolate oat acorn (he loved helping squeeze the glue bottle, was all about eating the chocolate chips instead of placing them on the top of the acorn so I did that part, and had a blast dropping handfuls of oatmeal onto the bottom of the acorn and even onto the kitchen floor…oh well that’s what brooms are for, right?).

Petra loves to guard Xander…

I know it’s really more of a summer thing, but we hit up the dollar bin and found some sidewalk chalk and bubbles and have been having fun with them on these unseasonably (and thankfully) warm fall days we’ve been having lately…

So, Jonas has been outing lately with some good manners without prompting which has made my heart so happy. After throwing his banana smiley crackers in the car and seeing how upset it made DaDa, he said, “I’m sorry, DaDa”. I put some blueberries on his tray at breakfast a few mornings ago, and he said, “Thank you, MaMa”. When Xander sneezes, he says, “God bless you, Xan-Man”. And…music to my ears…I asked him to do something the other day, and he said, “Yes, ma’am”. Love it…go Jo-Jo!!!

Pictures and comments to follow…