Nathan loves pulling up a chair or stool in the kitchen when we’re cooking (which I will fully admit is mostly Gary!)
He likes to watch, help, ask questions and provide commentary.
He’s helped Gary make Challah a bunch of times and I love the idea that it might be something he can grow up doing with his dad. It’s nice that he takes an interest in helping cook. He’s curious about it, and he wants to be where we are and do what we’re doing.
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’ve had snow three times already and winter has barely begun. If that trend continues we’re going to have a very excited two year old on our hands. Nathan loved playing in the snow (as long as his mittens adequately covered this wrists…the one time the snow got in there, he was done.)
The first snow was relatively light, but there was still enough sticking to build a family of little snowmen. And Nathan had a lot of fun stepping on them all that night.
The next snow was much heavier. Gary measured 18 inches of snow by the end of it.
Nathan had fun “helping” Gary shovel
And Fen had a blast.
Here’s Nathan and Gary making Challah together. Nathan really likes helping in the kitchen, which mostly means helping Gary in the kitchen. 
His jobs usually consist of salting the food or mixing things up.
Nathan has become a big fan of pools this summer. We don’t get to them too often, but he loves when we do.
A few weeks ago we went to a party with Gary’s family and Nathan spent most of the party in the pool. He didn’t want to get out and thankfully Gary was a good sport and played with him the whole time.
Baby pools don’t seem to have quite the same draw. He gets excited about getting in, but then loses interest pretty quickly.
(Fenny is TOTALLY eyeing that cheese cracker in Nathan’s hand)
Nathan and Rintoo (AKA Daddy) had a long conversation while we were at the beach. Nathan howled with laughter the entire time, and it was hilarious to watch.
Now, Nathan will hand Rintoo to Gary and say “Talk to me Rintoo.” It’s actually become a great way to get Nathan to cooperate more with getting dressed or brushing his teeth. Because of this, Rintoo is often seen wearing a diaper, and even had on one of Nathan’s t-shirts for awhile. I guess it’s kind of his equivalent of having a doll and it’s cute to see him pretending to talk to him or share things with him.
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.
