Merry Christmas!

We had an excellent first Christmas with Owen! Grandma and Grandpa came from Calgary for a visit and Owen had a treeful of presents from all his grandparents, aunts and uncles (both Great and regular - although still great!) and cousins to open...or rather, watch me open!  All sorts of toys and clothes - what a lucky little guy!  In addition, the special cold fairy also brought him a double ear infection!  Merry. Christmas.  So sleep has been a bit of a luxury (and really has been since about 1 day after that post where I was bragging about him sleeping through the night...I jinxed it by talking about it...), but he is on the mend now, and seemingly much more himself once he started on some antibiotics on boxing day.  And it meant that for the first time since Grandma and Grandpa arrived, he allowed somebody other than Mama to hold him...albeit not for long!
Here are some pics from the past couple days!

Christmas morning, pre opening...about 95% of those gifts are for Owen

opening presents!!

playing with Grandma!

reading books with Grandpa!

notice the yule log on the TV...arguably one of my favourite parts of Christmas

mastering the busy ball drop!

something, something, dark side
something, something, jedi

kitty!

got your ear Grandpa!

high five Grandma!

Bye Grandma and Grandpa, thanks for a great visit!

snow monkey

Well, winter finally arrived here with a bang on Sunday.  There was a bit of snow Friday through to early Saturday morning, but not even enough to shovel.  Sunday morning however, we awoke to lots of snow and it came down all day without a break.  In the end, the accumulation was between 10 and 15 inches, depending on which part of the metro you were in (10 south of us, and 15 north of us...so I'm guessing we got about 12 inches at our house).  Which has meant a whole lot of shoveling!!  While Dave was doing the big job of the driveway and sidewalks (we live on the corner, so we get double sidewalk duty...plus we have a bus stop and a fire hydrant we need to dig out in the front) Owen and I tackled the back patio.

 Smallimus cutimus - a social and intelligent
 animal - active during the day.

they have been known to use tools to forage

the snow crunched down under his belly here and
he got stuck...like a "stomach turtle"

all bundled up in cousin Will's old snowsuit! So cozy!!

"what's all this white stuff?"

sleeping baby = happy parents!

So way back when, there was a post titled "slept through the night". And just in case anybody out there was like "why won't my baby sleep though the night?!?" rest assured, that was MONTHS ago and it had happened exactly one other time after that...until this Tuesday.  Now that Owen is approaching 11 months...and I have spent many of those months with very non-PG thoughts as I read parenting forum post after post about how so and so's baby slept through the night starting at 3 months, yada, yada, yada...he has finally succeeded in sleeping through the night regularly!  By which I mean, he has slept through the night 4 nights in a row...and it has been glorious! Let's hope it continues, because sleep makes me happy!

And now some pictures...

he is cute in toques...especially when they are ours!

Happily on a walk in the classic sock monkey toque

two, two, two toques in one - my toque on top of sock monkey

Wearing Dad's toque...which looks all puffy on  his little head,
especially with it tucked behind his ears...it makes me
think "Rasta"....perhaps some baby dreads are in order....

And his new favourite activity is getting into the buffet in the dining room.

"these handles are great for standing"

"hmmm...what could be in here?"

"oh, just serving dishes...boring!  But I'll
 check again later to see if it's changed"

Happy T-giving!

We had an excellent turkey day here!  Elissa and Tor arrived Wednesday afternoon, and Owen and Tor spent some time playing together with some of my old toys on Thursday before people started arriving in the afternoon.

Tor is giving Owen some pointers on proper playing technique

Owen loves a car! He even makes car noises (motorboating) now
whenever he plays with one!

mmmm...little people are delicious!

The weather was nice in the morning (although turned to snow by late afternoon) so we spent some time outside crunching through the leaves as friends started arriving for t-giving celebrations at our house around noon.

Having fun in the leaf pile together...

and then Tor decided to ride Owen like a horse...

Harvesting spinach with Elissa

all bundled up with Anna!

And a 30 person thanksgiving dinner requires a large turkey - we started this 27lb monster at 9:30am...ready for dinner at 5!

Owen for scale...that bird is an Owen and a half!

and Lars

just a couple cute pics, and a shot of our amazing dinner on Tuesday...courtesy of our daycare providers!!  How awesome is that?!!?!?  They sent us home with homemade chicken in mole sauce for dinner...it was delicious!!  They really are a great couple we found to look after Owen!

tuckered out after a busy day playing

sippy!

delicious, delicious chicken in mole!!

oh yeah...and Lars is back!  He's in town doing some lab work for a couple weeks and staying at our place.  Elissa and Tor arrive on Wednesday in time for Thanksgiving!!  I can't wait to see them!!!! 

these are a few of his favourite things

I was digging through a box of toys in our basement that were mine and my brothers' as kids,which my parents drove down/over to us a number of years ago, and I discovered some real gems!  The shape sorters have been pulled out and dusted off from their 30 year rest and Owen loves them!

mmm...tastes like yellow!

obviously he doesn't quite yet grasp how to get the
shapes back inside...

Toy cars are also a big hit these days!

and this red solo cup has become a standard fixture in the milieu.

ready for the keg party

confusing him with a rousing version of "baby-one-card-monte" Look under the cup, Owen!

he also loves a seemingly never ending stream of motorboating

his forlorn look over at the stereo...an off limit favourite.

Fall cleanup

After a hearty breakfast of cottage cheese, applesauce and toast

we headed outside to prepare the garden for fall, plant the garlic, and rake leaves.  Owen had a great time tromping through the crunchy leaves and watching all the activity!

"hmmm....what does this do?"

"See Dad, I"m helping too!"

"What?  I'm not destroying your pile of nicely raked leaves..."

Crunchy!!!