Christmas!

Nate was so much fun during Christmas this year! It was so fun to see him start to get excited about all the Christmas activities.

Here he is showing off all of his Christmas excitement. I'm not sure what happened with the sound but if you turn up the volume all the way, you can barely hear it.   

After a month of practicing his "Ho, Ho, Ho", he got to meet the real Santa...he didn't really like him.

I wish I could say that our whole Christmas week was wonderful but unfortunately we had a pretty terrible Christmas Eve. Our main drain in our laundry/storage room backed up and flooded part of our basement. Since there were no plumbers open on Christmas Eve, Todd and his dad tried to fix the drain on their own. Something went wrong and we had an explosion of sewer waste. Every surface of this room was covered in nasty...stuff. It took me 2 solid days of sanitizing EVERYTHING to feel like I didn't want to move. 

That's right - every can of food and box of cereal got bleached at least twice. It took FOREVER!

Since our house was kind of a nightmare and smelled terrible, we stayed up at Todd's parents' house on Christmas Eve. 

Here is Nate opening presents on Christmas morning! Nate got totally spoiled (as usual) with lots of toys, books, and clothes. These pictures are of the only 2 presents Nate opened on his own. I opened all the others :)

My family came down later in the morning and we enjoyed more great presents and a yummy lunch. It was a great way to spend Christmas!

Todd's been dying to take Nate sledding for weeks now. He finally got his wish on Christmas afternoon and they both had a blast :)

Trouble Maker

With the newness of mobility wearing off, Nate is starting to use his skills to cause a bit of trouble. Here are some of the things he's been up to...

1. About a week ago, Nate and I were playing downstairs in the family room. He sometimes wanders into the storage room and plays with the vacuum but doesn't usually cause any other trouble. A few minutes later, he came back into the family room dragging my OPENED bag of powdered sugar behind him. He was covered in powdered sugar and I spent the next half hour trying to vacuum the trail of mess.

2. Nate has recently learned how to climb. I have never had any experience with climbers but I've heard  plenty of stories and hoped I would never have to deal with one. No such luck! The problem is, he hasn't yet figured out how to get down from where he climbs so he has to cry for help. One evening, I walked into the kitchen and found this... 

He was totally happy playing in there with his toys :)

3. He has been super interested in playing with his shoes lately. This just means that I can NEVER find his shoes because he stashes them somewhere after he's done playing with them. The other morning, I had just finished getting him dressed after his bath and was cleaning up his room when I heard a little splash come from the bathroom. When I walked into the bathroom, there were 2 little shoes floating in the water. 

4. We put up our Christmas tree last Saturday. And this is what happened less than 5 minutes after we had it up...

                                      

Now only the top half of our tree is decorated 

5. This one isn't really catching Nate in any trouble...I just thought it was cute. This is the box from the little slide my parents got Nate. As you can see, he loves playing in it because it is still sitting in the middle of my living room 2 weeks later. This is where I usually find everyone's shoes, most of his toys, and him :)