First things first: we had to prep for Christmas festivities in Durham. So Chad helped decorate the tree:
A little confused about how a tree appeared in his living room during naptime.
Brief conference with the second string cat to decide who would do what tasks. It was decided that Chad would decorate the tree while Fen held down the tree skirt.
Chad handed me the ornaments to hang, but took over when it was time to do the candy canes. We ended up with a ring of candy canes at Chad-level encircling the entire tree.
Chad also took a trip to Lowe's with me to help pick our outside decorations. He chose a welcome mat with a Santa scene, two boxes of icicle lights, and a pine scented candle. He also got a Frosty the Snowman Jack in the Box, because Mommy is a sucker, and didn't realize how much it cost when she agreed to let him put it in the cart.
Chad was pretty good about leaving the growing pile of presents under the tree alone. The only snafu was when a package arrived from his Uncle John and Aunt Sue, and I gave it to him and told him to go put it under the tree. After a few too many minutes of silence, I went into the living room to find him, sitting under the tree, unwrapping the gift a few days early.
We had our own Christmas on the 22nd, but I don't have many pictures to show you of him opening his stocking or other presents. Whoops.
That's a little drill set from Learning Express. It says it's for children 3 and up, but we all know that Chad is extraordinarily advanced for a two-year-old, so he's been drilling those little screws in with no problem.
The first leg of our trip North was to Maryland, for a sleepover with his buddy Luke.
Chad was in awe of Luke's impressive collection of "Beep-beeps".
Taking a break from the beep-beeps and opening the presents they got each other.
Luke gave Chad a pair of jammies that matched his. Do you want to know what one of the cutest things in the world is? Two toddlers running around in matching monster jammies. Want to know what the hardest thins in the world to get a photo of? Two toddlers looking at the camera at the same time. I have many pictures of the two of them together, but never with them looking in the same direction, and half the pics are blurry.
Look, they're in the same frame in this one!
Reading a book before bed. Storytime was interrupted when Santa came around riding a fire truck! Maryland has so many fun things!
Not only did Luke have a great beep-beep collection, but he had a working choo-choo in the house! This blew Chad's mind. (Note to self: Buy Chad a choo-choo for his birthday next year.)
Luke worked the command center, while Chad observed and hydrated.
On Sunday, we caravan-ed to Pennsylvania for a friend's baby shower. Andy, Chad, Nick and Luke spend the afternoon eating at OIP and then looking at the "an-muls" in Cabela's. I don't have any pics from the shower, but since you really care more about Chad, here they are on their lunch date.
Apparently, Chad dipped the mozzarella sticks in sauce, and then licked the sauce off them, but wouldn't eat the sticks themselves.
Applesauce!
Next, we got back in the car and headed to NY, so Chad could hang out with a real live Ruff-ruff and get his first taste of pierogi!
Story time with PopPop. Sometimes Stella was invited to join them too.
He learned the hard way that running in the house can lead to bumped noggins. Fortunately, Uncle Dave was there to help hold the ice pack on his head.
Holding small children makes Uncle Dave thirsty.
Waiting patiently for presents!
Yay, a lawn mower that blows bubbles!
The grass in the house was meticulously trimmed by the time Chad left.
Play-doh! (See that gold-toting Magi? He suffered an accident about ten seconds after I took this picture.)
Uncle Dave got to read Chad his current favorite book.
Cool Aunt Steph was amused by Uncle Dave's reading.
Snuggling with Uncle Mike for a really cute picture. (Chad saw this picture when we got home, and said, "Mike!")
Family shot
Chad and his new best friend.
Experimenting with Play-doh after dinner.
The next day was snowy, so we made a giant cookie!
And then Chad got to go play out in the snow for the first time ever!
All bundled up! Good thing Santa brought him mittens and boots this year!
Shoveling is like cleaning, but for the outside! You know Chad was all over this!
Taking a break from shoveling to walk in the snow.
At first the snow wasn't too bad, and he didn't understand why Mommy and Daddy had to flee from the North.
But then he suddenly tripped and got a cold wet bum. Then he realized that snow is evil, and he was grateful that we're raising him as a Carolina pumpkin.
Unfortunately, the monstrous amount of snow the Northeast got that week meant we had to cut our vacation short and skip the next leg of our journey. Even worse, this meant that our final drive home would be a few hours longer than it should have been, which wasn't particularly appealing. We left NY at 7:30, and sailed through NY, NJ, DE, MD and even around DC, with no problem. Chad happily slept in the back, and occasionally pointed out the beep-beeps we were passing. But as soon as we got into northern VA, we hit a 30 mile traffic jam that took over 2 hours to get through. It was miserable, but Chad was a champ, and didn't cry once during the trip. He spent a lot of time making Max dance and playing with the fish app on his iPad. (Due to a series of events, yes, Chad has his own iPad. He has limited screen-time during normal days, but on a 14-hour car trip, all rules go out the window. He knows how to open apps and swipe to unlock the screen, but lucky for us he has not figured out how to change the parental controls. So we can set him up with the fish app, and then he can only play with the fish and can't break out of that, open Facebook, and post jibberish as my status update.)
Good travelers get strawberry sundaes during rest stops.
We got home at 9:30 that night, and Chad was so happy to see his cats! In fact, he didn't even want to go upstairs until we told him Fenway was going upstairs too.
Since our road trip got cut short, we've done a few other things, like build forts:
And visit the Triangle Tree Exhibit:
This was the tree by the organization that saves the Ruff-ruffs.
Chad also had three slices of Cauliflower Crust Pizza for dinner (oh, Pinterest, what will you come up with next??) and we finally upgraded our phones. (I know, the suspense has been killing you: we went for the Galaxy S3s.)
And best of all, the Panthers ended the season with a 7-9 record!
Finally, we have a public service announcement from Chad. As we were running errands yesterday we saw that someone scraped the bumper on my car. :( Andy was examining the damage, and told Chad that it's not nice to hurt someone else's car and not leave a note. We got in the car, and for the next five minutes Chad kept muttering, "Not nice... not nice...." At the next store we went to we bumped into someone Andy works with, and after he introduced her to Chad, Chad immediately babbled something that included the words, "Beep-beep.... outside... not nice!" because he was still so upset about the situation. So if you ever accidentally bump someone's car, be sure to leave them a note with your contact info, or Chad will be very disappointed with you!
Merry Christmas!
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