Here comes Santa Claus

Here's a little game of "Who's that baby?" for your perusal and enjoyment. Leave your guess in the comments. Hint: they are not the same baby. But they could be. But they're not.

Three Months

In mid-December, Cole turned three months old. I am stuck in that familiar place of trying to reconcile feeling like he just barely got here with the fact that it's tricky for me to remember life without him.

Cole is surely a big guy. Earlier this month, I had a doctor's appointment, and I helped myself to the infant scale in the mother's room there to see how big Cole is. As it turns out, at three months old he weighed 15 pounds, 2.5 ounces. That means he's more than doubled his birth weight. It also means he's become quite a load to tote.


I'm trying not to be disappointed in the fact that he's reduced his nighttime sleeping hours to just nine or ten. I know that seems like a pretty dreamy stretch of sleep for him and for us, but a couple of weeks ago he had two weeks of sleeping for twelve hours in a row! At least I know it's possible...


Cole is sweet-tempered and incredibly good-natured. He puts himself to sleep, he loves faces, he's starting to deliberately swat at things, and--much to Jeremy's chagrin--he started sucking his thumb this week. We think he's just grand. I just love that baby.

Ornamentation

It's a tradition of ours to add a few new ornaments to our collection every year. For the family, we always get a "Li Bien" ornament from Pier 1. They're beautiful glass ball ornaments, painted from the inside with a Christmas scene and the year. They put out new designs every year, and since they're hand-painted each one is unique. I love them all.

I also buy one ornament for each of the kids every year. My favorite place to buy ornaments for them is at the World Market, and I was happy to be in Colorado for Thanksgiving so I could easily go to a World Market. Jonathan and Clara are developing nice little collections of ornaments, and Cole got his first one this year.

But as it turns out, none of these ornaments can really hold a candle to my favorites of the year. For Clara's pre-K Christmas party, I brought cardstock gingerbread man and snowman shapes, along with markers, googly eyes, bells, stamps, etc. I also brought Jonathan. Clara and her friends had a great time decorating their little ornaments. Clara's look like this:


Jonathan, on the other hand, spent the whole time talking about wanting to make a "spooky" (or "sooky," as he says) ornament. His look like this:



I love them, truly. It really captures Jonathan at this stage of his life. He makes "sooky" ornaments, and his favorite songs on his personal Spotify playlist are the mildly spooky "The Backson Song" from Winnie the Pooh, the slightly spookier "Heffalumps and Woozles" from the original Winnie the Pooh movie, and the ultimate "sooky" song, Michael Jackson's "Thriller." He's a great boy.