Some Pre-Christmas Fun

On Christmas Eve Eve (that's right, Dec 23rd), we decided to let Ish make his own cookies - of the pre-baked, less-mess variety.
He was quite excited.
He even waited patiently for Matt to open all the accessories.
He was - dare I say - gentle putting on the jelly pieces.
He loved putting on the buttons all willy-nilly.
Of course, there were supervisors on the job.
The little button pieces made Ish giggle.
And the icing tube was the most exciting thing ever.
Not too bad for a 2-year-old (with a 40-something-year-old's help).
After Ish's fun, Matt and I decided to tackle our very first Gingerbread house.
This one came with an awesome E-Z Build Tray - there's no better way!
We had one candy casualty - that candy cane on the right didn't make it.
I let Matt do the heavy work.
It's like caulking - and I don't caulk.
We collaborated on the tree and Santa figures.
And if I do say so myself, I think it came out pretty nice!

A Christmas Story

Santa was here.
Ish was out-of-his-mind excited about all his presents.
Dada had to help out a little.
But Ish eventually got the hang of unwrapping for himself.
And he had no problem digging through all the present bags.
He insisted that Matt build the Tigger & Pooh Super Sleuth Treehouse when he unwrapped it.
Which gave us exactly 2 minutes to open our own presents.
FYI - I don't share my Swedish Fish.
After our 2 minutes, we resumed with Ish's mania.
He tore into more of his gifts.
And he was so excited with each one he opened.
Oh, and we watched A Christmas Story the whole time.
Ish even helped Dada take apart the 5 million pieces of plastic and cardboard that each toy seemed to be attached to.
Then - after a quick waffle and some Christmas showers - it was off to Grandma and Grandpa's house - where Santa had also been.
Ish couldn't believe that there were so many presents waiting for him there.
Mare Mare stopped by for a bit.
She had quite a few presents waiting for her too.
She loved the reindeer antlers that her favorite aunt bought for me (that would be me, of course).
Ish was quite satisfied with his haul today.
All that present-opening-toy-playing led to a pretty good eating day for Ish, which makes me happy.
And now, it's 7:00, Ish is in bed (though he protested) and I'm typing from my chair-and-a-half looking over a sea of new toys that Ish is in love with. I know he can't wait to get up tomorrow morning and play play play. I can't wait either.

I hope you all had a wonderful day today too. Merry Christmas from the Ish home!

Merry Christmas!

It's going to be a busy few days here at the Ish house, so I thought I'd post a holiday greeting to you all today. We are hosting a traditional Italian Christmas Eve again this year and we are expecting quite a full house, so we are on cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, shoving-crap-in-closets duty right now. Ish is helping out by dumping buckets of toys all over the house so that me and Matt have even more to clean up at the end of the day. But he's also telling us he loves us and randomly kissing and hugging us, so we're letting him get away with murder.

So, if you celebrate, have a very Merry Christmas! Our NY forecast calls for flurries and snow showers over the next few days, so hopefully we'll get a white Christmas this year. I hope you all get what you want this year too.

Wordless Wednesday: An Ish-Picked Ornament

Cookies Cookies Cookies

We headed over to grandma's house today to make some Christmas cookies with the all the girls. Ish's best bud was there of course.
Mare Mare was there too - showing off her new standing talents.
Ish insisted on sitting next to Alex at the cookie table.
He was excited to try out all the cookie cutters and the paint brushes.
He didn't quite get the concept of painting gently, so a lot of the cookies were smooshed early on.
Annalise and Mare Mare weren't part of the cookie making action - they just hung out with Pop Pop, ate Goldfish and watched Noggin.
Alex and Ashley painted like pros.
Ish not so much.
His cookies were really just blobs of color.
And the chocolate chips meant for the cookies never made it to any of his.
A lot of sprinkles went missing too.
But in the end, he made a pretty colorful tin of cookies for Christmas.
Thank goodness that spit, drool and nose germs bake out. ;-)

Meet Squish

This is Squish. He is Matthew's little brother Noah. He will be here late April 2011.
Matthew says Noah can come live in our house but he cannot sleep in his crib, share his room, play with his toys or watch his dvds. But he does say that he loves baby Noah and is excited to meet him. The other stuff will just have to work itself out. :-)