Our Christmas

For Christmas this year we went to Spokane for only a suuuper quick visit (about 18 hours) and we opened presents from my family and got to see my sister Annie and her BF Sam who were up from Utah. That was fun, and in typical Stephenson fashion the Nerf bullets were flying day and night as soon as we walked in the door. 

It's Tradition in our family to get to open one present on Christmas eve from my mom, and it's always pajamas. Then you have to immediately try them on and do a fashion show (which usually gets more and more inappropriate as it goes on). This year my mom made Annie and I matching jammies and funny enough without knowing it, I had made kade a matching high chair cover and blanket from the same chili pepper material. 

After our quick stop in spokane we went on to Pullman and they had just gotten dumped with snow and kade got grandpa sharratt to pull him on the sled and play with him in the snow for the first time. He thinks he liked it but he wasn't quite sure about it. In pullman Andy had four of his five siblings there so they had lots of fun playing football and video games and board games the whole week. It was fun to see everyone and get some time away to relax. Also we really enjoy pullman and we like to visit there and recall the days when we were in college and dating (and ridiculous). :)

I've heard it said a hundred times before that Christmas is more fun with kids and boy is that true. I found myself so excited to see how kade would like his toys and like the tree and all the elements of Christmas, that I couldn't remember what used to be fun about Christmas before he was around. And I suppose it will only get more fun cause right now he's only at an age where he's hardly aware of Christmas going on around him. :)

Sign sign every where a sign

I've been trying to teach kade to sign for MONTHS now, probably since he was about 6 months old with him showing very little interest. Now in the last few weeks it's really just like a switch flipped. He can sign "milk" and "more" and "all done" and "help." The American sign language sign for help is actually pretty tricky and involves what I think is a lot of coordination. You make a fist with one hand with your thumb up and place it on your other open palm and raise the two up. Soo... that seemed to difficult for a little boy just trying to figure out how to use one hand at at time. So i actually taught him the sign for "help I'm choking" instead. haha It's just patting the upper chest with both hands. Easy peasy. And he does it ALOT. It's very cute and pathetic when he looks at you and signs "help" for everything he wants, so it's hard not to cave, but I'm trying to teach him to be a problem solver at the same time and learn to do things for himself.
He also is a big fan of signing "all done" after about 30 seconds in his high chair. And he signs it emphatically! hands waving like crazy till he's literally red in the face. (He hates to sit still long enough to eat anything). As my mom told me, I guess the problem with communication is that sometimes you don't wanna hear what they have to say. :)
My pediatrician counseled me not to teach him to sign cause he told me that boys will cling to it, and then not learn to talk till later cause they already can communicate through sign.... uh? who here thinks it's a bad idea to teach their kid to communicate before they can talk to help them avoid frustration? I did alot of research and I've decided the doctors worries are old wives tales in my opinion and he can shove it. :)