A belated Christmas post…this is always a fun holiday, with lots of time spent with Gary’s family, and lots of food. It starts with Christmas Eve at Gary’s Grandmother’s.

Here’s Nathan getting ready.

Playing with Opa after dinner.

Gary and I managed to get a nice picture of just the two of us. This might be the first one since Nathan was born!

Christmas morning is spent with Oma, Opa, Aunt Julie, Uncle Jason, Jake & Ben. After coffee and opening presents, we have breakfast. It might be one of my favorite meals, partly because its a warm and happy morning and partly because it includes a contest to see who can eat the most. I think Opa took it this year.

Nathan broke into the candy cans before we even started on the presents. Eh, what’re you gonna do, it’s part of the holiday!

Oma has jingle bells, and Nathan made sure we all had them.

Nathan playing with one of his favorite new toys.

We got some cute pictures of the cousins this year. Nathan really loves them and it’s awesome to see them playing together. Jacob is especially good with Nathan and has a lot of patience.

Family portrait.

There aren’t any pictures from Christmas Day Eve because about an hour in to the family party the day caught up with Nathan and all that junk food he’d eaten came back up. We made a quick exit because even though Nathan seemed to be feeling okay afterwards, he’d been sitting on Gary’s lap…so, yeah, you get the picture.

Hanukkah was fun this year. Nathan was of course excited about the presents, but the best part was that he was really excited to light candles every night too, and by the last couple nights he was singing the prayers with us too. We got him a wooden menorah with candles he could put in himself and he helped us light the menorahs too.

We had Latkes on the first night and he liked them a lot. Also liked dipping them in his applesauce.

Oma and Opa came over one night, and Grandma and Grandpa Bob came for the last two nights and stayed for a few days. I think Nathan had fun celebrating with them and I loved having them all be part of the holiday.

Nathan had fun helping Grandma bake cookies.

I’m glad that Nathan is getting old enough to start to understand things about the holiday. He loved reading Chanukkah books throughout the week and even still likes to now. And we got a Rugrats Chanukkah movie that Nathan loved and wanted to watch over and over. Lucky for us, it was surprisingly not bad!

We went to a 3rd birthday party recently and it was at a Volunteer Firestation. This is the second party like this we’ve been to and Nathan was just as excited to ride in the Firetruck again. It was fun watching him run around with his buddy (the birthday boy) too. There are a few kids he’s really clicked with and Owen is one of them. They’re really cute together.

Nathan, Oma and I went to the Maryland State Fair this weekend (unfortunately Gary had to work.) It ended up being a lot of fun. We visited the animal area first and saw lots of baby animals, including adorably playful piglets and some just born chicks. Nathan got a big kick out of hearing the pigs oink…he kept telling them to do it again and then he’d giggle.

I think the rides were his favorite part, even more than the corn dog and cotton candy (he didn’t seem to quite know what to do with that.) But I knew he’d love the rides, which was one of the big reasons I wanted to take him to the fair in the first place.

Nathan’s first corn dog. He seemed to really like it, but then quit halfway through, so we’ll have to give it another try.

Rides!

Nathan loved this boat ride at first, but after a few minutes his face went from smiling and excited to a little scared and maybe feeling a little ill. And unfortunately the ride kept going and going and going. I felt so bad for him, but Oma and I just kept cheering him on whenever he came around. I was proud because he got off, wobbled a bit from turning in circles for so long, smiled, and told us he wanted to go ride the motorbikes.

The motorbikes were a big hit. Nathan went on them twice and would gladly have gone on again, but by then it was obvious he was getting tired and it was time to head out.

We enticed Nathan to leave the fair by telling him we’d go look at the helicopter out front. The Medivac had landed earlier and we ended up getting there at the perfect time…right when it was about to take off. They warned us it’d be windy, but I had no idea it would be THAT windy!

Wind blown and watching the helicopter fly away.

My brother came for a visit recently. It was great to see him, but most of all I love when Nathan gets to spend time with him because he lives so far away. Plus Nathan loves Uncle Ethan because he’s so much fun.

Besides just hanging out, we took a trip to the zoo. It was mildly successful…Nathan wasn’t as in to most of the animals this time and had more fun petting the goats than anything else. It was a little hard because he wasn’t the most cooperative toddler, but we had some fun.

We tried the carousel and started to get Nathan on an animal, but ended up with him clinging to me in one of the seats. Afterward he said it wasn’t scary, so we’ll definitely try it again soon.

Nathan will occasionally pick up one of the play phones we have and call Uncle Ethan. It’s very sweet and we can’t wait to get to see him again!

My Mom got remarried a couple weeks ago in a beautiful wedding in Ithaca, and Nathan got to be the ring bearer. We weren’t sure how he’d do because he didn’t want to sit still at the rehearsal, but he managed to have perfect timing and come back to me under the chuppah just when he needed to take the pillow to Mom and Bob. He got to wear a tux, which was completely adorable even though it was a size or two too big.

We got some nice family pictures after the ceremony. It was drizzling a little, but the setting was so nice it didn’t matter.

There was some other nice moments too.

Gary and Nathan picking flowers during the rehearsal dinner.

My Mom and I putting her veil on.

The Itkoff Family (It was so nice to see my aunts!)

Nathan loved watching the band playing at the reception; he kept wanting to see the “instruments”. And he had a blast dancing and stuffing his face with chocolate covered strawberries. He was completely exhausted by the end of the weekend, but thankfully that meant he took a pretty long nap on the way home!

Congratulations Grandma & Grandpa Bob!

*Credit goes to John Sullivan for the lovely pictures*

Ok, so this is a little late, but Mother’s Day weekend we took a family trip to the Aquarium in downtown Baltimore. We made the same trip last year but Nathan enjoyed it so much more this time around, and we had a gorgeous day.

Nathan loved looking over the side of these walls that run all the way through the aquarium. On the other side is a big open tank so you can look down at the rays, sharks and fish.

I just love his little head poking out here, trying to see over the side.

The best tanks were the ones that went ceiling to floor where there were big fish or turtles to watch (I think it was an amazon rainforest exhibit?)
This is not one of them, but he liked the tropical fish too…he heard some kids calling the fish Nemo and Dori, and then whenever we saw an orange clown fish or bright blue fish, he’d call them that too (I think Nemo is the only movie he’s watched to date, so he knew the characters.)

These are always one of my favorite animals to see.

Last we headed to the dolphin show. Nathan was intermittently amazed and fidgety…as were we, since the show is light on dolphin action and heavy on slideshows and environmental messages. But still fun of course!

The afternoon ended with lunch at Hard Rock Cafe. It started out well, but ended with Nathan throwing up into his bowl of mac&cheese, probably due to the huge amount of milk he sucked down in a really short amount of time. Luckily the mess wasn’t bad and he was fine afterward. I felt worse for the other diners than I did for him and us

More photos in the May 2009 album.

In late November, Nathan and I met a friend and her daughter at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. Wendy lives about 2 1/2 hours away and Longwood Gardens was about halfway between both of us. We weren’t sure how the day would turn out because it was rainy, but there was an awesome indoor children’s garden with fountains that the kids are encouraged to play in. We didnt know this of course, and weren’t really prepared for two soaking wet kids, but they had a great time splashing in the water and running around.

Eventually the weather cleared and we took a nice walk and ate lunch. It was a great way to spend an afternoon and so nice to catch up with Wendy. Nathan and Ava are only one month apart, so I think they had fun playing together too. They would copy eachother, like one would take off their shoe, so the other one would too, or one would have a cup of water, so the other one would want one, and they were pretty similar developmentally so it was nice to hang out with another mom going through all the same toddler drama

Spray!

The kids were pooped by the end of the day!

We took our second plane trip with Nathan this past weekend, and it was another trip to Dallas to visit my Grandma and other family there. Nathan was very excited when he saw all the airplanes at the airport and loved watching out the window once we were on the plane. I wasn’t sure if he’d get that he was actually on an airplane, but as we were walking down the hallway to board the plane he got more and more excited and kept pointing to the door and telling me “airplane!”

On the way to Dallas Nathan didn’t fall asleep until 15 seconds before we touched the ground. Literally. He was happy to be in his carseat for the first 90 minutes or so, and then understandably got fidigty, so we brought out the DVD player and just about everything else we’d brought with us, and I walked him up and down the plane a few times.

Having a snack before we got on the plane.

Sleepy, but not sleeping.

Since Great Grandma is a handful to say and Nathan already has a Grandma, I started calling my Grandma, GiGi. Nathan picked up on it fast and was calling for GiGi during the entire weekend. I’d tell him we were going to find GiGi and he’d run to where ever she was yelling “GiGi! GiGi!”. It was very cute, and so sweet to see how much he loved her right away. He even called for her a few times after we got home, which was a little sad since he couldn’t see her.

Every morning we took a family walk to Whole Foods for breakfast and coffee. It was a nice way to start the day.

Saturday we went to the Dallas World Aquarium with Uncle Allen. We loved this aquarium. You enter in at the top and spiral down through a rainforest that’s filled with fish and other animals. There are also other great areas with fish, sharks and land animals.

Saturday evening we visited my Aunt Helen and Uncle Arthur and then went out to dinner. Nathan was not entirely thrilled to be at a restaurant, so we took turns walking him around outside until food came. Gary found a dog statue that Nathan had fun with and it kept him entertained.

Sunday morning was low key at home. Since we didn’t bring lots of toys with us, we had to keep Nathan busy and ended up spending time outside playing in the leaves. The weather was gorgeous most of the weekend.

Sunday afternoon my Grandmother had friends and family over to see Nathan. I’m so glad she does this when we visit because its really nice to see everyone and for Nathan to spend time with family he doesn’t see much. Once everyone left Uncle Allen broke out his guitar and played a little for us. Nathan was fascinated with the guitar and loved the music.

Nathan started trying to copy how we look when we take pictures. Here he is pretending to use GiGi’s camera.

GiGi & Nathan (and me).

Monday morning it was time to pack up and go. By this time Nathan was just bursting with energy and didn’t want to listen to anyone. I think it was a combination of wanting to express his opinion and independence (which he’s been wanting to do a lot lately) and having been in a new place and different timezone with a new schedule and us constantly keeping after him to make sure he didn’t get into anything he wasn’t supposed to. We were lucky that he slept well throughout the trip (minus the 5am wake up the first morning), and on the plane ride home he fell asleep before we even took off, and slept about half the trip.

As usual, I went way overboard on pictures, but they’re all here.

Last weekend we spent a VERY hot, but fun, day at the zoo. Maybe it was because of the heat, but we didn’t have to deal with any crowds, which was really nice. Nathan really like looking at most of the animals and getting to run around. I think his favorites were his first peak at the zebra, the fish tank in the monkey house that was filled with tons of little fish and turtles, and the goat petting zoo. He could have stayed in that petting zoo all day going from goat to goat to goat, trying to feed them hay and dirt. He didn’t seem to have any fear, and luckily they were all pretty friendly (they were probably too exhausted from the heat to try running away.)

Pointing to the Zebras.

Showing me what a Monkey does.

Picking up dirt to try to feed the goat.

Talking to the goat.

Someone was nice enough to offer to take our picture.

More photos from our day here.