Cars, Trucks, Trains and More!

Thanks to the many generous gifts from friends and family, our house is now full of lots and lots of new toys! And many of them are very large toys! Now we just need a bigger house!

Thank you to everyone for all of the great gifts! Matthew is blissfully happy with all of his new stuff (and even has a few more presents from mom and dad to unwrap in the future). Thanks especially for the toys that talk or sing or play annoying songs! ;-)

Outtakes

Here are just a few (of the many!) pictures we took in hopes of a great Christmas card picture! The poor boy had four of us trying to make him smile and laugh and was a bit overwhelmed by the end of the whole thing! Anything for a good picture, though, right??

Is that Santa?

Matt loves to wear Daddy's belts around the house and with his red and white jammies on this day, he looked a bit like Santa Claus. Must be the big belly!

O Christmas Tree

Matthew cut down his second Christmas tree last weekend, or more accurately, watched his Daddy cut it down! Despite the weather (of sleet and snow) he had a great time watching Mom and Dad, Nanny and Grampy, and Nana and Grampa pick out and cut down trees! Then this past weekend, we brought the tree inside and decorated it! It looks different than in years past, since there are only silver and red balls on the top half and all the soft fuzzy ornaments on the bottom half (and on the floor all around the tree!) but it's beautiful! Matthew loves it and smiles his huge smile every time we plug in the lights! The question now is: will it be safe to put presents under the tree or will the little devil get into them!?!?!?

Happy Thanksgiving!

We all had a wonderful time visiting with family and friends in Liverpool, NY for the Thanksgiving holiday! Matthew had a blast playing with his cousins Abby, Bradley, Kendal, Gracie, and Cole! They were all very good at sharing toys and Matt had a blast discovering all of Bradley's tools and trucks as well as Abby's dress-up shoes and necklaces!

Thank you to everyone out there for hosting and feeding us! We love you and miss you again already!

Me and My Truck

Right around when Matt turned 14 months old, he fell in love with trucks, completely out of the blue! He saw and heard every truck, everywhere! His favorite book became his tractor book and his favorite toy became this huge CAT truck! He carried it all around the house for a few weeks straight and did everything with one hand so he didn't have to put it down. We even made the mistake of letting him bring it in the bath tub (and then had to poke holes in the tires to get the water out)! He has since branched out a bit from this truck, but it is still up there in his top five favorites!

This week he is enjoying a little medicine dropper his Nanny bought for him to play with and also a tiny blanket that we used for a burp cloth when he was little. A week or two ago he started playing with his baby doll quite a bit, wanting to dress and undress him (or should I say, have mom and dad dress and undress him). So I pulled out the little blanket to wrap the baby in, but he wanted none of that, because he wanted the blanket all for himself. Every time I would sneak away and wrap up the baby again, as soon as he saw it, he would unwrap it right away! I even tried to swaddle the baby up really tight so he couldn't undo it, and boy, that made him angry! It was very funny!

It seems his favorite toys change every few days, but for those few days he doesn't put whatever the particular toy is down! I guess we'll be bringing the medicine dropper and blanket with us to Syracuse on Wednesday!

"Hi Kitty" and "Uh Oh"

Most of you know Matthew does not have many words yet. He says a lot of "da" and not much else. However, we always know what he wants so he really has no reason to start talking yet. Last week, he put two words together for the first time. Now, it was basically his only two words, but it is still progress! His Nanny and Grampy's cat was sitting in the window and he looked up from the driveway and said "hi kitty" and waved!

Besides hi and kitty, he also knows what the cow says and he seems to be saying bump too. And just last week for the first time, he started with uh oh. So now when he wakes up in the morning, he lays in bed saying "uh oh uh oh uh oh" for as long as it takes for us to drag ourselves out of bed and get him! I will tape it over the monitor one of these days and post it here, it's too cute!