Breakfast with Santa. Or not.

This past weekend we made an attempt at getting Dresden to sit on Santa's lap. There are no photos of the event. How can that be? You ask. Simply because it did. not. happen. I was fairly certain Dresden would nix the whole lap-sitting idea immediately upon seeing the big red suit and white beard. Call it motherly instinct. Or common sense. I was never a fan of visiting Santa myself. Frankly I didn't think it really mattered where the presents came from, as long as they got there. Am I right?! So instead of Dresden and a cute little Santa and his little Mrs. Claus, Grammy got pictures of Dresden with a gator figurine (it was at mom's school, Green Valley, whose mascot is a gator, for those who love a backstory, ha!)

See his little JC Penny pose? Every time you tell him "Smile!" he makes some kind of different gesture and poses for the camera. It is hilarious, especially since he just started doing it one day on his own. I have no clue where he picked it up.

So posing with Santa was a no-go. Posing with Gator Claus there, no sweat. We do also have to give Dresden kudos because he increased his vocabulary by two words at the craft fair in the adjoining gym. I went to show mom/Grammy these adorable knit animal hats, and she was fabulous enough to buy Dresden the turtle one, cuz he looks so cute in it, and he clear as day pointed and said "Tur-tul" as we were paying for it. Then Grammy held up a tiger hat and said "Should we get you the tiger, too?" in jest, and he said, "Ti-guh", and so she bought him that one, too! (Pictures of said animal hats forthcoming in the next week or so).

Other than that, we've just been dressing up in a LOT of Christmas pajamas and playing with old Christmas dinosaur ornaments that used to be mine when I was little. I didn't take these pics; Grammy did. This was last Sunday morning and I was taking the morning shift off (read: sleeping in for the first time in 6 days!!! Hallelujah for Grammy being an early riser! She is nice enough to take care of him on the weekend mornings when I simply cannot see straight enough to stay awake. Thank you Mama!) So they do things like feed the dinosaurs scrambled eggs and ketchup, make blueberry muffins together, sweep and mop the floors, and basically more in two hours than I could get done in an entire day. Ha!

Below, this is what an entertained Dresden looks like:

And here, what a not-so-entertained Dresden looks like, just mere moments later. 

A fickle fickle boy is he:

Later on that same afternoon Alex and I ran to a disaster area  Wal-mart to try and get our Christmas card act together, which almost did not happen, but that's a post in and of itself! While we did that, Grammy changed Dresden's outfit to one that Alex immediately changed him out of when we returned home, but I thought it was cute, so here's the proof. 

Dresden "reading" to Papa:

Yet another smile pose. What a crazy kid!

And this is what an elf looks like on his day off. 

He looks a bit like he had a bit too much nog the night before!

Monday marked my second week as a SAHM. Like I said, lots of Christmas-pajama wearing, and pointing to ornaments and saying "DAT!" (he says it, not me, just to clarify), which means "Tell me what THAT is!" and we go one by one around the tree to all the ornaments at his eye level. It's pretty precious. And the other morning we watched "Elf" together, which was so sweet for me, I loved it. Especially when he would giggle without a provoking giggle from me at parts he found humorous all by himself. Sadly it has been too cold to go to the park, but I'm going to have to just figure out a warm enough get-up for him because this nature boy needs his outside time. The closest we got to "outside" this week was making it "snow" in his room with packing peanuts from a shipping box. It was, in retrospect, kind of a crazy idea on my part, but it was fun for him so I'm glad we made the mess in the end.

Let it snow!

Normally we do encourage him to think outside the box ;-)

There's the "Okay I'm bored with this" face like the one in his high chair above...

And just some other randoms from this week so far:

His shirt absolutely 100 percent describes this crazy kid:

My Elf watching Elf, sharing an interest in "elf culture"

On the move in a Christmas romper and stylish racecar cap. He loves that darn hat!

FINALLY he let me put the elf hat back on, though he was not pleased. 

That, my friends, is a toddler fake smile! Fake or not though, still cute.

Sorry this post was so long! I had no idea we'd taken so many pictures already and that I'd gotten so behind. Anyway, if you made it this far, good for you and thanks for hanging in there. We will post more Christmas Cutie stuff soon.

Love,

Cassie, Alex and Dresden