build-a-bear firsts

so today we took the boys to the haywood mall to get their picture taken with santa. evan was super excited while standing in line to see santa. he kept yelling santa's name. unfortantly, that was short lived. no, he didn't cry like last year. he just sat there in santa's lap facing forward. he didn't even look at him. i think he was scared or embarrassed to turn around. after all these crazy adults were calling his name, ringing jiggle bells, and taking photos. who really blames him. joel was not fazed one bit by meeting santa for the first time. he looked at us and smiled for the photos, but then he's look over at santa. he was like, who's this guy in the red suit? as soon as we were done meeting santa we felt a sense of relief and accomplishment. another thing marked off of the holiday checklist. next, is driving through the roper mountain lights display.
while we were at the mall we finally got to take the boys to the build-a-bear workshop. from the time when we first found out we were pregnant with evan we've wanted to make a bear. we had some much fun making a panda bear for evan and a tiger for joel. evan picked out the panda bear. they both watched the bears get filled with stuffing with amazement and wonder. joel lit up when we showed him his tiger, and evan now has a new favorite bear. he wanted to bring him into the bath with him tonight. he even put a diaper on it. i did allow the panda bear to join us for dinner at the table. needless to say, we all had a great time making them.

transitions

this week was a week of growth. evan grew out of his crib, and into a toddler bed! joel is now eating a lot more solids, like toasted breads. we have also been slowly working with evan and the potty. slow is the key word. taking care of joel makes it harder to give my full attention to potty training. they are both growing like weeds. one of the best parts of this week is that matt got back from his interview for the uf naples pediatric program, and the worst part of the week was the gator loss. :(
we still don't know what happened! we were all in our gator gear cheering on the team. evan still says, "go gators" and "tim tebow" when asked who the quarterback for the gators is.
when matt got back he still had two whole days off, so he was able to take evan to school and join joel and i at kindermusik. matt was surprised at the amount of dancing in the class. i only got him to dance once!
i will be taking evan to some preview classes in december. i really hope to restart kindermusik with evan. he started it in gainesville when he was six months old.
we've been cooped up in the house for the last couple of days. it has been very cold, and tomorrow we will be here again. we are supposed to get sleet/rain. on the bright side it has allowed me to keep up with the house work!
enjoy the photos from our past week...

a month of turkey fun

*evan is the one directly in the center of the photo.
the month of november whirled by for us. we spent much of the month traveling to visit family in florida and then in georgia. evan had a thanksgiving parade at his school. the two year old classes dressed up as scarecrows. the wore a flannel shirt, a straw hat, jeans, and a painted black nose. they were all so cute, and we were blessed that pipo and mima were able to be here for his very first parade! at the end of his parade we returned to evan's classroom to pick him up, and take more pictures. the last photo in this series is of evan and his two teachers, mrs. kim and mrs. tammi.


following tradition we spent our thanksgiving with our family in ellijay, georgia at the coosawatee river resort. we had an amazing dinner! matt and i both thought it was one of the best ever. kudos to the cooks...jeff, dino, and nicole! all the kids had so much fun hovering over evan, and fighting over who got to hold joel.

cribs are not for chomping

we got a surprise package in the mail...a crib wrap! i had given up hope on finding anything that worked to protect the crib from joel's chompers. as mima says, you can find anything on the internet, and she did. after going through the typical plastic rail protectors from babies "r" us, which evan figured out were easy to remove himself. these are fleece and tie onto the crib. they are super soft too! i am very excited and had to share. my mom found them on amazon, but here's the direct website for them.

http://www.cribwrap.com/