Christmas-Neuman Style

Christmas at the Neuman's is warm and cozy, calm and relaxing. It's kind of our calm before the chaos that the rest of the holiday season brings! (Good chaos of course!)
I didn't get too many pics playing outside because the snow was really coming down. I love his smile under his hat in this picture!Opening gifts! He really got the hang of it, but still wanted to play with everything as he opened things.Tight squeezes from Grandpa.His new camera!Taking a picture of baby Cole sleeping.Getting decorated.Playing with his new kitchen!Imaginets! What a great toy, and a great gift.Baby Cole not digging his new Beatles onesie.More creating with Imaginets.Here is Reid holding "baby Cole," which was by far the highlight of the Neuman Christmas for him. When we got home, that is pretty much all he talked about. Baby Cole was warm, he was tiny, he drinks milk, he cries, he wears diapers all of which are things he described in detail when my parents asked about his trip. He didn't mention his awesome new toys, just the baby.

Giving him a snuggle.Help! I'm done now.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

So my tree is still up and we are still enjoying it! Here are a few pictures of Reid decorating it!

So does anyone else ever have picture guilt? Well we received some sad news the other day that my in-law's puppy passed away and I realized I don't have any pictures of Reid with Caza, or very very few. Then I started thinking about the holidays and realized I never took any pictures of Reid with his great grandmas! Ugh, there is nothing I can do about it now except to make a mental note to never forget to do that again. So now I've added "take care of my pictures" to my list of new year's resolutions. Yup I usually have a few resolutions that I just mentally tell myself I'm going to do. This year I'm adding...... deal with my pictures of our family, which mainly consist of pictures of Reid. Mark my words by the end of 2011 I will have Reid's first 6 months in an album!
Maybe at some other time I'll tell you the rest of my in my mind resolutions!

The Christmas Tree

Pretend this was a month ago.

Here are a few pics of us getting our tree.

Cathinging up and the Holidays!

Life is slowly getting back to normal after the holidays, surgery, new windows, and crazy work deadlines. I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted.
The holidays were a lot of fun this year! Reid had a blast, not sure if Christmas won out over Halloween though. Reid still "needs" to watch Halloween guys on YouTube and talks constantly about being scared or scary. He is just so much fun right now. Over the last month we have become Mom and Dad instead of Mommy and Daddy. He has become more and more analytical, for example we were singing a little song about him moving really fast and flying by and his reply was, "Silly Mom, I can't fly. I don't have wings," with a simple fake flap of his arms. Since I haven't written in a month I of course can't remember anything else to write! He definitely doesn't really know what to think about Kevin and his knee, he's getting used to it, but I had cut my finger and a lady at the YMCA was wrapping it up for me and he looked at her all concerned and said, "My mommy's finger is hurt, and my daddy's knee!" I think he was feeling sorry for him a lot and constantly needed to be by him, but that is wearing off now! I've got a lot of pictures coming if I can locate all the disks so stay tuned!

Santa

We went to Sentry for Santa, games and bouncy houses etc. Reid loved the games, and music.
See all those bouncy houses and huge inflatable slides behind him in the above picture? Well he really had no interest in them, he just liked hanging out by the speaker dancing! Since I really should be working and I'm just procrastinating here are some unedited Santa pics!So sorry I left you hanging. So after many days of Reid saying, things like, I don't want Ned the dinosaur from Santa, I want a DVS, (a nintendo DS) we were really wondering what he would say to Santa when his turn came. He was a little nervous, which is very unlike him, but it's a big deal to sit on Santa's lap! He climbed up and shyly said, "I would like monster slippers." Yup there you have it monster slippers.

So before....

I tell you about Santa I wanted to document this because I thought it was so cute and I didn't want to forget.Reid was painting one day and having a blast. I looked over and saw this.... do you see that serious face?Do you see where that little hand is located?
I saw it, yes I did. Then I saw water all over the table. I said, "Reid honey you can't spill the water all over the table and your art work." His response...."It's OK mommy, It's OK, I am an ARTIST," and he continued to paint with the water. I laughed and laughed and wished I could just dump water everywhere or anything for that matter and call myself an artist. Well maybe someday I will be able to, you never know!

Thankful

Here are a few photographs from Thanksgiving. Didn't have a flash so embrace the grain, I love these pictures they remind me to be thankful for laughter and fun. Yup this is what happens in our kitchens on Thanksgiving. Just an FYI those are my sister's big glittery shoe/slippers in the foreground.
El's facial expressions crack me up in these two.Reid escaping the madness.Then heading back for more.
El and Reid with "sniffy" aka Spiffy.This is so sweet and cuddly isn't it?They are not reading books which is what I originally thought when I looked back at these pictures. They are playing Nintendo DS. Which is a great lead into my next post. Stay tuned to find out what Reid asked Santa for!