Xander is a big fan of the “TEEEE!”, as it turns out. Every morning he runs to it, pointing and giggling and, more often than not, lobbing his light up bouncy ball into its festooned pines. In his defense, the ball does look an awful lot like some of the Christmas lights we have up on it.
Sunday morning we took the gate down and let him actually TOUCH the tree, and took some fun Christmas pictures of him in front of it. JS used a real camera, while I used the old iPhone stand by. Can you tell which one is which?
Then Monday was my birthday, and it was a pretty damn good one. JS took the morning off and the three of us went to brunch. Then some friends invited me and Xander over for dinner and birthday cake.
Now we’re in the final Christmas Stretch and I’m getting the last of my gifts ordered and shipped and realizing that, OOPS, I totally did what I said I wasn’t going to do and got way too many toys for Xander. Which, yeah, I know. It’s lame. He’s too young to even WANT so much stuff. And while I’m not anti-present, I don’t want to completely spoil him each year. So I’m going to have to work on that one. At least this year he’s still too young to fully realize what’s going on.
I did a TON of baking this year, like I almost always do, for various holiday gifts and cookie swap parties and just because it’s Christmas and feels like there should be something in the oven.
It’s just going to be our little family for Christmas this year. which is how we wanted it. We want to spend the holiday in our new home and really dig in and make it ours. JS is not teaching this coming semester so, while he’ll still have work, he’ll have a lot more time to spend with us and around the house. We’re hoping to come up with some sort of system so that I can get out for a few hours a few times a week and sort of get back to having a sense of myself apart from Xander. I think I used to like to do things other than digging play-do out of tiny nostrils, but I’m not sure what, exactly, those things were.
Speaking of Xander. He’s as wonderful as ever, but he’s fast approaching the “No! Mine! Won’t!” hitting and clawing and biting phase and I need to get my game plan in action. I’m not a spanker, and I personally don’t think he’s really ready for time-outs (unless I sit with him and use it just to get him calmed down). I don’t want to punish him, per se, but I do want him to learn the consequences of actions and that, no, Mama doesn’t want you to chuck that organic, lead-free, wooden apple at her face, thank you. I explain things to him, of course, but he’s not talking yet and it seems to frustrate him to have so many one-sided conversations. Any suggestions for effective positive discipline techniques?
Love the pictures with the tree! So sweet how excited they get!
And the baking looks delicious. I want some!
I think this is a tough age for when they’re naughty. My tactic is to kind of just endure it…keep saying the same things over and over again like: No throw. No touch. or whatever. Keep as much up and out of the way as possible to avoide the “nos”. And for the important things like biting or moving the chairs around and jumping from chair to chair (now I hate ikea and their lightweight chairs), I put him in his crib for a mini-time out. My two cents is to just try and be consistent and still distract him as much as possible.
Thanks for sharing the fun photos!