Sad Coldness

"Yep. That's definitely a big boogie up there. Better get a Kleenex."

It's been snot city here recently. Rhianwen got her worst cold ever in her short history of colds. Fever, coughing, congestion, sneezing snot all over everything. Despite this microbiologist's best Lysol attempts, Alden came down with it 2 days ago. He doesn't seem quite as bad as Rhi (maybe due to lovely mommy antibodies???), but still has been a bit tired, cranky, and unhungry. Mommy is bummed b/c we may not be able to go see the Great-Grands with snotty kids. Great Grandma especially is susceptible to colds and often gets bronchitis...not the Christmas present we had in mind for her.

Getting into the shopping spirit. She's even practicing her irresistible "can you take 50% off of this since it's so close to Christmas?" look.

We had my brother, mom, and brother's old friend come visit us. Rhianwen's really been into singing recently and likes to get everyone else involved. She lifts her chin up, raises her eyebrows, opens her green Gideon's Bible (aka song book), and belts out the ABC's, the Doxology, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or any other snipit of something she recalls. She got all of us singing Christmas carols when we did the advent tree. Boy did she love it!

"How can I keep from singing? Lousy colds won't stop me!"

Daddy's been reciting some of the catechism with Rhianwen during bathtime. He's gotten to "In how many persons does this one God exist?" 3. "What are their names?" at which point Rhianwen responds, "The Father, the Son, and the Glowy-Beester...oh, no...um". Glowy-Bee is her Glow-worm doll not to be confused with the Holy Spirit. She's also memorized the ENTIRE potty book we got her. She'll sit down on the potty with it and read the whole thing...somehow failing to remember why she's sitting. However, her inflection is flawless.

We also enjoyed a little visit from Uncle Brooks and Aunt Clara. With all this visiting we've had, our personal quarantine hasn't been so bad. We can't help it if people come to us to get sick.

Opening a gift from Aunt Clara and Uncle Brooks.

For some reason, mommy had the insane idea to make Christmas cookies. You can take a look at our renovation blog to see the results...well sort of.

Taking a break from cookie making to dance with Cookie Monster (appropriately...ha ha) and Daddy.

Alden has been very active. My mom calls him Tigger because he's constantly moving. He wore her out in 30 minutes. He loves to bounce, spin, dive, lean way forward to pick something up that is out of his reach. He's really enjoyed picking up his links (the things you hook toys to) and shaking them to death while bouncing then throwing them on the floor. Many days, he won't be happy unless he's playing with Rhianwen. He'll see her playing with a toy and the only thing that will make him happy is to go over there and play with her! It's amazing but true! Mommy is thankful he finds Rhianwen so fascinating and that Rhianwen obliges in playing. On top of his poor little cold, we got his frenulum clipped. It's taken the edge off of what he does amazingly. I thought there would be no effect but there has been a slight improvement. He's such an enjoyable little baby-pie. He's also discovered that the ground outside has things that he can pick up...fun stuff like leaves, pine-needles, sweet-gum balls...oh so tasty. I usually put him on a blue plastic sled if I'm swinging Rhianwen (otherwise he's in the swing), and he's started rolling off of it onto the muddy ground so he can grab a handful of whatever is easiest to get.

"Maybe if I pinch his neck, Alden will stay still..."