Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Tyler is obsessed with birthday parties right now. He keeps asking when his birthday party will be and it's probably a good thing he doesn't understand how long it will take for 6 months to pass. A couple weeks ago we told him that before we could celebrate his birthday, first it would be Jesus' birthday on Christmas Day. Well, he immediately launched into a line of questioning (misspellings are intentional and are meant to convey Tyler's dialect):

"Desus want to wear a birt-day hat?"
"Desus want to eat birt-day cake?"
"Desus want to bow out his birt-day candles?"

I responded to all of this with, "I think what Jesus really wants for his birthday is for us to love each other and for us to love him."

"Oh," said the 2-year-old who can't understand why anyone would want that when they could wear a birthday hat, blow out candles and eat cake!

After that conversation, I decided we would have a little birthday party for Jesus, so we had the celebration on Christmas Eve.

Tyler and I baked cupcakes and then he helped decorate them with sprinkles after I iced them with cream cheese frosting. I kept hearing, "I such a good helper?" throughout the entire process. He had so much fun deciding which sprinkles to use on each cupcake and he couldn't wait to have the party later that evening.

Counting the completed cupcakes Time for sprinkles

Tyler gobbling like the turkey on his apron

"Us made cupcakes!"

After dinner, we busted out the cupcakes and party hats, lit some candles and sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. We lit 2 candles, one for each of the boys, knowing full well that only Tyler would be blowing them out. Nathan was happy to sit and watch the whole spectacle, and he didn't even protest a little when we put a hat on him at his brother's request. Of course, Nathan couldn't have any of the cupcakes, so he crawled around under the table with PJ, who waited for crumbs to fall from Tyler's section of the table.

Once we finished our cupcakes, we had the boys open their ornaments (we get one for them every year). Tyler was so excited to finally open a present after seeing a few under the tree for several weeks. Nathan just liked sticking the paper and ornament box in his mouth. Tyler's ornament was Lightning McQueen because he loves some "Yi-keen", as he pronounces it, and Nathan's was a little onesie on a hanger that has the Superman "S" logo on it because to us he really is a Superbaby.

Our little birthday party for Jesus was a great way to kick off our family Christmas celebration. With all the presents and distractions, it's sometimes hard to keep the focus on Jesus at this time of year, but this was a way to get the message across to Tyler in a manner that he could understand. I think it'll be one thing we continue in future years because Tyler enjoyed it so much, and hopefully Nathan will, too, as he gets older.

Boys in a Box

When Tim's Christmas present (a very fancy self-cleaning coffee and expresso maker--don't worry, he ordered it himself, so no surprises were spoiled just now) arrived last week, Tyler was so excited about the box in which it came. We actually kept it in his playroom for a couple days just because he enjoyed it so much. He wanted to eat his snacks in it and drive his tractors up the inside walls. Nana put Nathan in it one evening, and of course Tyler wanted to join his little brother, which presented a cute photo op.

Hugs

...and kisses

Here are just a few more photos from the past few days...

Every year at Christmas, I put out this little gold sleigh with a teddy bear named Mittens by the tree. Tyler has always liked Mittens, but he's showing even more interest in it this year. He has been taking Mittens and Monkey for sleigh rides all around the house. He requests to take naps with Mittens, and he even wanted to take the bear (and Monkey, of course) to church yesterday.

Just for fun, here's a photo of Tyler taken 2 years ago with this same sleigh and bear.

Nathan is getting up on his knees more and more. He's definitely trying to do the "real" crawl, but he always ends up reverting to the commando crawl when he sees something he really wants...

...like this dump truck. He's such a boy!

Little Crawler

Nathan started commando crawling while we were in Jeff City for Thanksgiving. Ever since, he's been getting faster and faster. This week he has been getting up on his knees and trying to push himself forward, but he usually face plants. Any day now he'll be doing the "real" crawl, but he can get anywhere he wants to go by basically dragging himself across the floor.

The things that entice Nathan the most, and therefore serve as his greatest motivators, are the Christmas tree, the gifts underneath the tree, and any toy that belongs to Tyler. He is already in love with trucks and trains, much to the dismay of big brother. Lately I've been hearing a lot of, "No, Nathan! Dat's mine!"

This video is from last week, and although he's not doing a lot of crawling in it, it shows his fascination with Christmas presents. I guess next week we'll get to see what he does with a present when he's actually allowed to tear into it!

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Jingle Bells

"Jingle Bells" is Tyler's favorite holiday tune, and he particularly loves the version that Amy Grant sings because it's really fast. He wants to listen to it over and over so he can dance to it. In this video, you'll notice that he sings the "ha ha" line and the very last two syllables ("pen sleigh", as in "open sleigh"). You'll want to turn up the volume so you can hear the song playing.

Warning: You may feel dizzy while watching him spin and dance around. Once the song is over, he immediately says, "I want to sing jingle dem bells en-again". (He always pronounces "again" as "en-again".) Then he asks, "What button we push?", so we can replay it. Like I said, he can't get enough of this song.

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Tree Photos

I took these photos 2 weeks ago. I wanted to take some pictures of the boys in front of the tree since we hadn't yet. Tyler, who usually won't sit still for a photo op, was being so sweet to sit next to Nathan.

This photo was taken earlier in the day. Nathan likes to chew on his spoon after he finishes eating in his highchair.

You wouldn't know it by looking at these, but Tyler was having "one of those days" this particular day. He actually was having one of those weeks the first week of December. We experienced breakdown after breakdown for several days in a row. It was awful. At one point Tim asked me, "Are we bad parents?" because we couldn't figure out what Tyler wanted. He would wake up in the morning and cry about anything and everything for over an hour. Everything we tried to do to help him only resulted in more fits. It seemed like we were fighting with him all day long.

I can't say for sure, but I think the reason he might have been acting this way was because he was hungry. The problem was that he'd get to the point that he was almost belligerent, so even when I offered him food, he would run screaming down the hall, "NOOOOOOO!" We started giving him a bedtime snack a week and a half ago, and he has been much better. He's still 2-years-old, so some meltdowns are to be expected, but he's been a lot happier ever since. He wakes up happy and is much more even keel throughout the day. As I told my mom today, I think the Lord gave me a moment of clarity in the midst of my frustration to see what I could do to help Tyler. And it was just in time--I think he and I both were about to go crazy!