Santa, Baby!

Visiting Santa at Brookfield Square Mall.

We're still playing catch-up here. I can't believe that Christmas was over a month ago already, but it's too cute not to document some of our experiences with the man in the red suit this year.

As in the past, we took the boys to see Santa at the mall. We went on a Friday early in December, taking advantage of the fact that I was home on leave to avoid the longer lines of evenings and weekends. Jonah had been very excited about Santa; this is the first year that he really seemed to engage in and understand the concept of Christmas and this mysterious man named Santa. Ben and I were able to use the concept of staying on Santa's nice list to our advantage, prompting good behavior and a listening boy on a number of occasions. Before visiting Santa, we had asked Jonah what he was going to tell him that he wanted for Christmas. This changed a few times over the course of a couple of weeks, but then fortunately settled into a pretty consistent response of "an orange convertible and lots and lots of garbage trucks."

Our experience at the mall was a positive one. Jonah sat on Santa's lap without issue and Jude, innocent babe that he is, didn't mind one bit. Santa definitely got a chuckle when Jonah made his request. How many little boys ask for lots of garbage trucks? I suppose there must be a good number of them as you can find several different models in stores and online.

Baby Jude is bored by Santa.

The following Saturday, we went to Cranky Al's, our favorite bakery in the old neighborhood, to see the Santa they had there. It's been a bit of a tradition for us, and we weren't ready to give it up. Leading up to the trip, we were getting some sense that perhaps Jonah wasn't feeling as keen about Santa as he had for his first visit. Trying to get him out the door with statements about going to see Santa were met with "I don't want to see Santa" responses. While we waited in line, Jonah was more interested in placing his order for a doughnut than in getting to the front of the line to see Santa. In the end, it took a lot of bribing to get him to stand next to Santa (Jude, of course, slept through it). Santa's elf even gave him a jingle-bell hat in an attempt to make him happier, but Jonah wasn't really having any of that either. What happened between his first visit with Santa and this one? I can't say, but a doughnut made everything better.

I just don't know about this guy...

Trying out the elf's hat...

My doughnut! Awesome!

Jonah with Santa at day care, 2011.

Jonah's final experience with Santa was at daycare. We rearranged our schedule so that Jonah would be at daycare on the day of Santa's visit. Last year, Jonah didn't want anything to do with the Santa at daycare, and it is our understanding that this year, he sat on his lap for this photo, took the candy cane from him, and would then have nothing more to do with him. Wouldn't talk to him. Nothing. Poor kiddo. At least he mustered a half-hearted smile.

Jonah with Santa at day care, 2012.

I wonder what next year will bring. I doubt Jude will be sleeping through the experience at that time. Will he be afraid of Santa? Will Jonah conquer his fear? What will be on their Christmas lists next year?

Christmas Trees!

Rolling the cone in the toppings.

Continuing the arts and crafts theme, Jonah and I had a good time at the end of November making Christmas trees out of sugar cones, white chocolate, and a variety of decorative toppings, including miniature M&Ms, coconut, and sprinkles. I'd seen the idea on Pinterest or on one of the blogs that I follow and thought it was a good seasonal activity for his current skills and abilities.

In an attempt to rein in the messiness, I plated the various toppings and let Jonah roll the ice cream cones in them, as the white chocolate itself was relatively hot and I wasn't sure he was able to handle spooning it on the cones. He enjoyed rolling the cones for a while, but the sugary foods soon won out (and stuck to his hand as he touched the white chocolate). It quickly became an opportunity to eat as much sugary stuff as possible, which is fine for a "special treat."

At first, Jonah tried to be sneaky about eating the toppings. Which is pretty hilarious. There is nothing "sneaky" about a 2.5 year old. (He currently likes to "hide" right in plain sight of us.) But I pretended to ignore it for a while. Eventually, he didn't try to hide it and his face and hands became increasingly covered with the sweets. The nonpareils were especially bad for sticking to his hand and he resorted to shoving his entire hand in his mouth to eat them. What a mess he was by the end, and what a great time we had!

I'm not eating this coconut, Mommy!

I put our trees on a small table near the front entry, amidst some stuffing arranged to look like snow. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of this (or I can't find them right now), but it was nice to walk by the trees every day and be reminded of our fun time together. I think this is a project I'll keep on the list to do again in the years to come!

Oh, you caught me, didn't you?

Open mouth, insert hands.

Look at that messy face!

Our finished "forest."

Not a Box

Painting the bottom of the car.

In our house, we are big fans of Antoinette Portis' book, Not a Box, which illustrates imaginative play and all of the things that a simple box could be imagined as. In early November, just after Jude was born, I received a huge box from Amazon filled with my subscribe and save shipment of diapers, wipes, etc. While the box was sitting empty in the hallway, Jonah stepped inside it, and an evening of pulling him around the house in his new "car" ensued.  What fun!

To help reinforce the notion that the box could be a car, I suggested that the following day we paint the box and that Jonah should think about the color he wanted to paint it. In the end, he settled for pretty much all of the colors of paint, which was just fine. I moved our rolling cart from the center of the kitchen and rounded up one of our drop cloths to protect the floor. Jonah had a good time using the paint brush and liked walking around the box to work on painting different portions of it. I had a difficult time keeping him from painting the bottom of the box, which I'd placed up on the floor (only really a concern because we were going to drag the complete box around the house as a car again), and Jonah had a hard time concentrating on any one section long enough to cover it completely with paint. Unfortunately, I realized too late that we never got a photo of the "completed" car.

Getting paint off the plate, er, palette.

We had a great time and I wish I could have given Jonah more painting opportunities while I was on leave. It was simply too difficult to know when I might have to drop everything to address Jude's needs, and Jonah is incredibly messy when it comes to paints (and doesn't yet understand our desire to keep paint off of things). That said, I look forward to more and more "not a box" experiences, as Jonah is really beginning to show a lot of imagination in his play (we've taken advantage of this to some degree with his eating as well - last night, he ate spoonfuls of Thomas, Percy, Harold, Tractor Mac, Plane Jane, etc.).

I think I'll move on to this side of the car.

Waiting for Mommy to dole out some more paint.

Halloween Tricks and Treats

Cheese! Look at me working on a pumpkin!

Halloween fell right on the heels of Jude's birth, but we managed to do a remarkable number of activities to celebrate the season. I'd done a bit of planning in advance, which helped (Jude's due date was after Halloween, so I'd been expecting a bit more time to do Halloween activities), and I think I must have been running on complete adrenaline at that point. I'm not sure how we did it all, in retrospect. Apparently, Ben and I do a pretty good tag team.

I follow quite a number of blogs with kids' arts projects and frequent Pinterest as I have time, so we settled in at the new home by making pumpkins with tissue and contact papers (one set of instructions is available here). It seemed a pretty simple project we could all enjoy together and skill-appropriate for Jonah. He enjoyed playing with the tissue paper for a while, but lost interest pretty quickly. He probably would have had more fun picking the tissue paper off the floor or ripping or crumpling it. Sigh - maybe some day I will have a child who wants to do crafts with me!

All three pumpkins hanging in the window of the play room.

On the day that we brought Jude home from the hospital, we learned that the neighborhood trick-or-treat was that evening. We'd missed our old neighborhood trick-or-treat the prior night and weren't certain what to expect in the new neighborhood. I'd picked up a shark costume for Jonah in August or September in a resale shop, recognizing a good deal when I saw it (plus the selection was great because Halloween was still so far off).

Jonah had seen the costume and was excited to wear it, even refusing to take it off one Saturday morning in September while we ran a few errands.  When it was time to go trick-or-treating, however, he refused to put it on and threw a tantrum. Finally, we told him it was his last chance if he wanted to go out to trick-or-treat and he decided that he did (though still with a few tears, as you can see here).

I'm still not so sure about this trick-or-treat thing.

He chose me to walk around the neighborhood with him (lucky me!), and we went down 116th and 117th Street, where there really were surprisingly few houses participating in trick-or-treat. Whether they were also caught off guard about the date (the notice appeared in our box that day) or this neighborhood is more bah humbug about the holiday, I cannot say. It wasn't like Jonah needed a lot of candy or we needed to be out in the cold for too long, so it was not necessarily a bad thing.

Watching a movie in his costume.

I'd encouraged Jonah to try to make shark sounds upon answers to doorbells, but that didn't go over with him. So then we worked on saying "trick or treat." This worked pretty well, with the exception of one house, where he sang "happy birthday" for them. Nothing like getting things a little mixed up for a laugh! Perhaps by next year, he'll have the routine down!

We'd talked up hot chocolate upon his arrival home, so he was excited about that, and we also let him watch a short movie on TV (I think we probably watched Dr. Seuss' Sneetches or something similar).  At that point, he wasn't too interested in removing his costume, as you can see in this photo at right.

Posing with the pumpkin he selected.

The following day, we decided it was time to carve the pumpkins we'd picked up at Basse's weeks earlier (and had moved from our old house to the new). Last year, we picked pumpkins and thought that Jonah would be interested in carving them, but he wanted absolutely nothing to do with the process and even refused to stick his hands inside the pumpkin. As a result, we weren't quite sure what to expect this year.

We needn't have worried, as Jonah was very interested in checking out pumpkin innards this year. Perhaps it helped that I marketed them as "pumpkin guts." Perhaps it helped that we had some new little tools for cutting from Target that looked appealing to a little boy. Perhaps it was just a better afternoon nap and a year's growth. Jonah was definitely interested in using the little scoop to get inside the pumpkin and we asked his input about how we should carve the face. Obviously, he was too little to use the sharp tools, but he requested a jack o'lantern with "a creepy mouth with sharp teeth." That took a little clarifying - we drew some examples on paper, as you don't want to get a temper-tantrum-prone 2-year old's vision wrong, believe me - and we ended up with two similar looking pumpkins.

What's in there, Mommy?

Scooping out the seeds.

Posing with the finished products.

After we finished carving the pumpkins, we let Jonah have a piece of candy from his bucket. He chose the Reese's peanut butter cup (there's a boy after my own heart). He'd never had one before, but I think he liked it:

Hmm... first bite (and a BIG one).

This thing is pretty awesome!

Cutting out a bat for Halloween.

One of my goals for my time home on leave was to try to do some fun activities with Jonah on the days he is home from day care (we are continuing to send him 3 days a week to give me time alone with Jude and to give Jonah time with his friends and activities that would be difficult for me to supervise by myself with a newborn). I feel like I did a better job with that goal early on, before the Christmas holiday preparations began in earnest. At any rate, we cut out and frosted some Halloween sugar cookies to take to Jonah's teachers and the staff at the day care center.

Everything is easier with a tongue hanging out.

We've made cookies together before, and Jonah has naturally become more active and helpful in the process. For whatever reason, he enjoys eating the flour used to dust the work surface (he calls it sugar sometimes). He also tries to sneak hunks of cookie dough into his mouth, often giving us a knowing and taunting look before doing so because he knows he isn't supposed to be eating it. Watching where he puts the cookie cutter in the dough isn't a priority yet, so it's easy to end up with partial cookies and a lot of wasted dough in each rolling. We'll get there with time, I'm certain.

We frosted cookies after Jonah's nap and I let him have an avocado knife to frost one on his own. He went right to it spreading on the frosting and finished frosting one before really starting to get his hands into his mouth. I got out some chocolate chips to let him help with putting eyes, noses, and smiles on the pumpkins, and he did that for a while, but we had to stay right on top of him because his hands were constantly going back and forth between the sweets and his mouth. In the end, we just let him decorate a few cookies of his own and isolated them from the remainder.

Putting on a chocolate chip mouth.

The final Halloween activity in which Jonah took part was the costume parade they hold at day care. The kids bring their costumes and walk down Wisconsin Avenue on the Marquette campus (or they are pushed in buggies if they are too little to walk). My understanding is that they have done this for years and years and that sometimes employees in buildings along the way will pass out candy to the older kids. We took in a fair amount of candy for this purpose as we overbought, not knowing how poor trick-or-treat attendance would be in our new house.

Showing off his costume at daycare.

Jonah was much happier about wearing his costume for the day care event, which Ben stuck around campus for. I imagine this is the last year I'll be able to pick out Jonah's costume for him. I wonder what he might choose for himself next year and whether I'll have to help construct something to make his costume happen. Time will tell!!

Jonah's classroom at daycare. Front row: Jonah and Noah. Back row: Aurora, Adeline, Adriel, Hazel, Isaac, and Mia.

Falling behind...

There's a little smile!

Yes, we're still behind on these blog posts; hopefully the bouncing between the past and the present isn't too confusing for our readers. At this point, my aim is to catch up on posts by the time I return to work - a mere 3 weeks from yesterday. Where does the time go???

Even though we've fallen behind in the posts due to the move and Jude's birth, we took full advantage of as many normal fall activities as was possible. In years past (see here and here), we enjoyed picking apples and pumpkins at Barthel's Fruit Farm in Mequon, and I very much want to continue to take Jonah (and now Jude) to the orchard. However, the Wisconsin weather was very hard on orchards this year and virtually no one offered pick-your-own apples. Given the lack of apple picking options and an opportunity to visit with some friends while enjoying pumpkin picking and other fall-oriented activities, we decided to try Basse's in Colgate this year.

It was a cold day when the seven of us piled into our van, arriving at Basse's mid-morning. Many of the activities at Basse's require tickets, so it is important to determine in advance the activities in which you'd like to participate so that you can maximize your ticket purchase. Amongst the activities available: pick-your-own pumpkins, a "train" ride, pony rides, a "corn crib," a corn teepee, a giant "pillow" on which you could bounce, etc. We purchased tickets conservatively, but had some difficulty using them because Jonah was in a funk from the get-go. We don't know what it was, but he wasn't terribly interested in the new experiences and cried about most everything we did. The "train" ride and pony rides were good. It took him all of two minutes to pick his pumpkins, and he was done with that. Even the playground slide caused a meltdown.

Sitting with Evelyn in the giant rocking chair.

Get me out of this corn!

I don't want to go down the slide!

Peeking out the side of the wagon.

Posing before the hay ride to pick out their pumpkins.

Riding a pony. This part of the visit was okay!

We ended up using the last of our tickets on the pumpkin shooter, as Jonah had no interest in other activities at that point and we didn't want the tickets to go to waste. It probably didn't look good, with the 8+ month pregnant me shooting the gun, but it was pretty awesome to chuck those pumpkins! 

Me, with the pumpkin shooter.

On a positive note, the operation uses Farmall tractors, which thrilled Jonah (any tractor will, really) and gave us the opportunity to talk about the ones Grandpa Gregg owns and that Jonah sees when he is in Ohio.

Perhaps it was too cold (we tried to mitigate the chills with hot apple cider, but waiting for it to cool caused its own meltdown). Perhaps Jonah didn't sleep enough the night before. Who knows. A pasta lunch at Panera afterward certainly helped his spirits. Hopefully we'll have a better fall experience next year and the weather will cooperate to allow apple picking again!

A New Look for the New Year

A couple months after Jonah was born in 2010, we updated the look with a new banner image at the top and some colors to coordinate. Well, that banner has gotten a bit dated. Jonah has grown a lot, and Jude has joined our family. Here's the old banner for nostalgic purposes (hey, Michelle is an archivist! We have to keep up with this stuff!)

When the banner changes again, we will make a new post with the current banner. We hope you enjoy the new look.

Trainfest!

In November we took advantage of the fact that Trainfest (billed as "America's Largest Operating Model Railroad Show") takes place in Milwaukee annually. Jonah LOVES trains, so we thought it would be a fun activity for him, and we could have some fun as well.

The event takes place at the Wisconsin Exposition Center on the State Fairgrounds. When we arrived, we were a little surprised to be directed to the Milwaukee Mile (the race track). We got to drive on the track a little, it was fun to put the speed on a bit and pretend to race before we were directed to the infield. We weren't sure how far it was going to be to get to the Expo Center. They were running hay rides to there, but were weren't sure we could get the stroller on it so we walked. It turns out that it would have taken more time to ride the wagon behind the tractor than it took us to walk.

When we got there, we needed to get tickets, and Jude needed to nurse. Jonah and I went in while Jude and Michelle finished in the lobby.

Jonah was mesmerized from the first moment he caught sight of a train moving on tracks. We spent time at a number of different models. Jonah even got to work the controls on one train. Michelle and Jude caught up with us at a large floor model with Thomas the Tank Engine and an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Beyond this, it is probably enough to say, we had a great time, though that time was limited when we got hungry. It is best left explained by pictures from here.

Jonah takes in the first exhibit we visited.

Driving a train!

"Orange caboose!"

Thomas and Percy

My bologna has a first name...

One of the trains we saw.

Checking out the train as it goes over the bridge from underneath.

Jonah tries on his new engineer hat.

Watching a Christmas train with Mommy.

Jude slept the entire time.

More pictures are available in our family album. One thing we recommend and want to remember in the future is to bring a stool Jonah can carry around to stand on to see some of the higher tables a little better.