Twenty Two Months

22 Months

• It was a fun month celebrating Christmas. I often found you by the Christmas tree playing with an ornament, even though the tree was really prickly. A few times I had to stop you from opening up the presents. But your favorite part of the decorations was the musical snow globe that Grandma Price gave you. You would climb up the piano and turn on the music of both snow globes. The music was loud and a bit annoying when played together, but thankfully they both survived.
• The snow keeps coming and you are really starting to love sledding. We go down the hill off our driveway, and it is the perfect hill for you. You also pull out all the snow toys and truck and plop down in the snow and play for a while. We have a tradition that after playing outside, we will come in for hot chocolate. You get so excited about hot cocoa, but will only drink maybe half your cup.
• We took you to see Santa twice this month and both times you were weary of him. You didn’t mind him if there was a distance between you and him, but the moment that he got close, you were clamp onto one of us. The cutest thing is that you never said Santa, you always called him “Ho Ho Ho”.
• It was so good this year to have Dad home for all of the Christmas season. Christmas Eve morning came and we went to the nursing home to visit the residents. You found the box of toys and made yourself at home. The residents loved just watching you play, they don’t get many babies around. It was good to say hello to other people’s grandmas since we can’t see our own. We ended the night with our Christ meal (fish, bread, olives, and grape juice), reenacted the nativity (you were Mary), and opened up our Christmas pajamas. We set out our cookies for Santa, though you may have snuck one, and was about to go to bed when we heard something. We went outside and heard “Ho Ho Ho” along with jingle bells. It was so fun to see you three excited about Santa.
• Christmas was wonderful and relaxing. You could care less about the presents in your stocking, you were just excited about the candy and had most of it eaten by 11am. You received a drawing pad from Santa and Dad and I gave you books, a cute outfit (which you were so excited to put on right then), and dad made you a darling baby bed. Maggie gave you a Minnie Mouse dress up puzzle and Sam gave you a little baby doll.
• We stayed home the next day, playing with new toys, watched a movie, and got ready for our trip to Utah. The drive to Utah went well. We were able to see all our cousins, go sledding in Mantua, have the big Matthews family Christmas party, and even visit our friends in Ogden. You really loved asking Papa for Jelly beans and eating all the yummy foods that Grandma baked.