E's training of us.... the rest of the family

Rub a dub dub three kids in the tub

This was the flashlight playground walk night.  E was having so much fun running down the hills and climbing up and down the stairs.  Laughing so hard

A very cute pic of E

boys playing together

W looking at my favorite light display at the botanical gardens. The slug. The white slime lights behind the slug were twinkling.  So perfect

W angel and T shepard

W next to her friend Bella in the  center

T shepard

Here is your hidieous santa picture.  I was trying to capture it while keeping E from going off the stage.  Santa is buried in too heavy big kids

Too much excitement

E driving cars two fisted

T made a big brother flower.  W made a little baby flower.  They put them on wheels

E was lining up cars and making train noises

Fell asleep in action

The advantage of mini Christmas trees in their room.  enough light to get sleeping pics. I don't have those of these guys any more

T out for the night.  He sleeps on top of his covers.  A technique I also employed to get out of making my bed

E continues to amaze me.  He is so good at training us and we do it with pleasure.

E for some reason loves to walk around with one of W's slippers on his feet.  He gets really upset when he can't get it on, like on the wood floor. 


E also likes to brush his teeth and wash his hands like the big kids.  He even ends the toothbrushing time by hitting the toothbrush against the counter in perfect imitation. Video below

And him saying "what?!"  just like I and J both do when I call his name continues to crack me up.

E likes to kick a ball.  He can catch a ball rolling on the ground with his hands, get it in the right position and kick it to me.  He thinks it is especially funny to go through puddles.  I guess early verbal skills and ball kicking skills are hand in hand.  T and W never really thought balls were much fun.  T was so into his mop bucket and W into drawing and crafts.  But E doesn't get mop bucket.  T used to push that thing around the house for hours, driving it, parking it, etc.  E plays with the handle a little bit and splashes in the water, but after that he is done.

E was crawling around meowing just like T likes to do in play.

Since it has been cold (ie since he got home from Grandma's) T has gotten to really love wandering around the house with "kitty fur" on.  If he isn't wrapped in a blanket, T calls himself a "kitty skeleton".  Just like Papa, wandering around the nice warm house in a blanket.  I think that is why E was crawling around.

E also fake laughs to a lot of stuff T and W laugh at. 

His first word combination that I understood was "more rice".  He ate a kid bowl of eggs and a 2 kid bowls of rice with fish sauce for dinner tonight.  Then a lot of milk.  That is a lot of salt.

E figured out how to climb all the way onto countertops Dec 11.  He pushed the stool over to the counter then finally figured out which box he can flip over to make it a perfect stairway for him. 

He also decided to help me make bread for the first time while he was up so high.  Maniac that melts my heart.

I left him at someone's house without any family members with him for the first time.  I was traumatized.  I got back and she said he didn't cry at all, but stayed by the front door snuggling his blanket for.....  the first 2.5 hours I was gone.  I was gone a total of 3 hours.  The only thing that got him away from the front door was lunch.  He was sitting at the table just fine eating like a big kid.  He has been at this house before and has played fine, but always had siblings with him.  The kids that live there were trying to entice him to play with him, but he just said "no" to all their offers.  The oldest kid said he said no so cute and he was the cutest baby ever.  That absolutely sounds like my charmer child.  She said he did cry a bit, when he turned away from his fuzzy for a bit.  I hope there isn't a no blanket rule in nursery.  He can conquer the world as long as he has fuzzy.  Without it, the end has come.

We went for a flashlight walk.  It was in the low 60's for a day, so we went outside.  It was only sprinkling.  But we had to do it by flashlight since the sun sets at 4:17 pm.  With clouds, it adds even more to the darkness.  We met some dogs that had flashing lights on their collars.  E and T both liked that.

On our flashlight walk we went on the playground, splashed in tons of puddles, and threw gravel in the puddles, too.  We also went "fishing" with reeds pushed into the water.  T and W found a "spikey spooky forest", bushes as high as them devoid of leaves.  E loved running up and down the grass hills.  It was so much fun! Way better than being stuck inside all day like we have been.  Then we came home and rode bikes in the dark.  All adventures you all can't go on before dinner like we can.

E was making me laugh because I really didn't think he could balance on the curb or run up and down hills just like the big kids.  They are steep hills and his boots are really big on him still.  But he did it.  It only ended when he started screaming about how I pulled him away from throwing rocks in the puddle.  He didn't like that.  But he might have also been a bit cold since his arm inside his jacket was wet.  His jacket goes to the top of his boots and he hates his hood. 

Another thing E does to train us is read books.  He has been especially bad about this since returning from Grandma's.  And it amazes me how long he can do this.  He comes over to me or J asking to read a book.  If he doesn't have his fuzzy, he has to go find that too.  Then he backs up and sits in our lap.  And then he does it about 10-20 more times in a row if no one is fighting and I tell him no more books.  He can easily repeat this for about 20 minutes.  I still have a theory he will get languages later in life. 

We had a girls night where I invited a few people to go look at the Christmas lights at a nearby botanical garden and then come back to our place to make snowflakes and drink hot cocoa. I'm still not sure if W liked it or not but I really was impressed with how patient she was about it.  For some reason I thought it wouldn't rain.  Boy was that dumb.  It poured.  I had brought our warm gear, not our waterproof gear.  So W and I walked the other half of the trail with the paper brochures on our heads instead of hoods.  W's friend thought that was funny.  The paper got so wet, it broke at the fold and fell off of us.  W didn't mind.  She ran down the hill back to the car in the downpour saying she was a "soggy buggy just like a raincloud"

The next day J was home during E's nap and T declined a trip to the playground, so we had some real girl time anyway.

I love how T does well with important jobs.  He is so caring when it is his job to give E something to eat.  Or how well he did hanging up all the learning box school stuff on the walls.  Or fixing something.