Say Cheese... Please?!?!

Do you have any idea what it takes to get a good picture of Gabriel? No? Let me inform you. See Gabriel is not one of those kids that like to have their picture taken and will sit there patiently while you click away on your camera with an award winning smile on their face. Oh no. Gabriel doesn't like to have his picture taken. Actually, I don't even know if it's that because sometimes, rarely, he asks to have it taken. I think it's more Gabriel likes to make it difficult to take a good picture. Really, truly enjoys making it difficult.

Like in this picture, this is when I asked Gabriel to smile and look at me.

So he closes his eyes and half smiles.

This is when I told him he had to open his eyes.

He half lunges at me with a crazy face!

I took 30 pictures before I got this one.

30!

29 pictures of him being his cheeky self and one picture of him being a little angel :) We're going to have so much fun taking Christmas pictures... yep... or at least he will.

*By the way, in case you are wondering. Gabriel's bruise on his nose is from him spinning around in our living room, loosing his balance and crashing into our bookshelf. Poor guy!

My own little Hammy

This is Gabriel.

Err... Wait.

Actually this is Gabriel.

But he acts like Hammy.

See the resemblance?

I do. In more ways then I can count!

Advent

Today is the first day of December! Do you know what that means? It means that it's time for advent calendars!

When I was growing up my family always had advent calendars. My mom came from Germany when she was 5 years old and she had them when she was little so she wanted us to have them too. Advent calendars are more of a European thing then an American thing though. I don't recall many of my friends doing it when I was younger and I still know very few people that do it. Anyway. My mom had quite a few advent calendars and each of us children would get to pick one to hang up in our room and every day we would get to open up a flap and see what was behind it. It was always the most fun thing for me and I wanted to be able to share this experience with my children.

Problem is, America isn't very big on advent calendars. You don't find them all over the store like you do in Europe. So I went online. I was able to find some very cute ones at A Bit of Britain and Vermont Christmas Company. I ended up getting quite a few of them because I couldn't decide which ones were the cutest and I figured that my kids will use them for years to come like I did when I was little. This year though we're hanging them all up!

Gabriel had so much fun opening them up this morning! He wanted to open up more but I had to remind him that we only open up one a day!

I really wanted to get a 3D advent calendar that you can open, like with drawers and be able to put a piece of candy in them. But all the ones that I found that were cute were already sold out or extremely expensive. Next year I'll have to remember to start looking for one earlier before they are all gone! I also had a had time find more cute manger scene ones, so if you know a place where I can go for those let me know!

Do you do advent calendars? Did you do them when you were a child?

Happy First Day of December and Happy Adventing!

my conversation with Gabriel this morning

So if you don't like topics that children talk about and the sheer openness of a two year old, then you might not like this post. But, I had the funniest moment with Gabriel this morning!

Gabriel at the breakfast table, face beat red holding his breath: *Grunt* "Mama, I *Grunt* poop on potty *Grunt*"
Me: "I'm pretty sure you are pooping in your diaper."
Gabriel: "No! *Grunt* I poop *Grunt* on potty!"
Me: "Well we can go poop on potty, let's go."
Gabriel: "Mama, *Grunt* I BIG poopy!"

Hahaha!

On another note. My five and a half month old seems to think that he can put his hand in his mouth the same time he is nursing... he doesn't seem to have figured it out that he can't nurse and eat his hand at the same time.

It's Christmas Time!

On Sunday night we were able to decorate our Christmas tree! I for one was extremely excited about our tree this year because it was the boys' first tree! I know, hard to imagine that even though this is Gabriel's third Christmas and it's his first tree. See when Gabriel was first born we lived in a tiny apartment and had no room for anything! Our dining room, living room, and my office (I used to work from home) was all shoved into a tiny living room and there wasn't much space to even lay down. Scratch that, there wasn't room to lay down. We also weren't sure if we were going to have to move around Christmas time that year so decorating and having a Christmas tree didn't happen, much to my dismay. We did however make a Christmas tree out of paper and hung it on the wall so we could put Gabriel's present under something.

It was fun and we will probably do it again this year and let Gabriel decorate it and hang it up somewhere.

Gabriel's second Christmas we lived at my parents and yes they did have a tree but it wasn't ours. They let us help decorate it and all but, I mean, it wasn't ours... you know what I mean? I hope so.

Anyway, so this year it's our first Christmas tree as a family! I was bummed that we couldn't get a real one at first. Our apartment building won't allow real ones so we had to buy a fake one. I have never had a fake one before, my whole childhood we always had a real tree, so when Josh came home with a boxed tree I didn't really know what to expect. When he put it together my words were 'it's so ugly' and then Josh explained to me that you actually have to fan out all the branches and what not to make it look like a real tree... oh.

So after we fanned out all the branches and curved them upwards like the little pamphlet said it actually looked pretty good!

So on Sunday after supper we made hot chocolate and popcorn, put on some Christmas music and started to decorate our tree! Gabriel had so much fun! He loved putting the bulbs on and especially the angels, he LOVES angels!

We let Gabriel hang the ornaments wherever he wanted to which ended up with a very interesting tree in the end!

All, and I mean ALL the bulbs were cluttered in one little spot at the bottom of the tree along with the angels and snowflakes! It was about the cutest thing ever! He wasn't even hanging them on the tree anymore, he was hanging them on the string of lights because he was running out of room. I loved it!

Even Eli got in on the decorating, sort of :)

We had so much fun decorating!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!