Birthday and Christmas, way past due!

Sorry for the flakiness - my book is taking up all my writing time, as I suppose it should. So here are some photos!

We gave Zephyr a toy piano - he always gravitates towards them and was getting frustrated by the fake pianos that just play music instead of notes. Then we had a robot-themed party with his buddy Jasper, who's a day younger (I made sliders and pigs-in-a-blanket and provided decorations; Katie made cakes and provided location). It was like a cozy play date with their little toddler buddies, and a good time was had by all.

3D glasses!

Random pre-birthday cuteness with snack and Yo Gabba Gabba.

For Christmas, we didn't do too much special. We went to Peacock Lane a week before, and walked around and looked at all the lights on the houses. On Christmas day, we stayed in our jammies and Tanya and Sigga came over for brunch. It was super-relaxed, and I felt like it was a perfect holiday. I even decided to not be a sardonic Scrooge about everything, and put on the Vince Guaraldi channel on Pandora and baked persimmon bread and everything!

Zephyr has so much crap that we didn't feel like we needed to get him much (plus he's too young to be greedy and insolent about toys), so we just got him some books and cars, and Scott outfitted his old Nintendo DS with a new decal to make it look like a new thing (we gave him a game to play with it, but it might be a little old for him). After the truck he got from Grandpa Jack, though, everything else was dead to him. Plus, I'm the worst and kept forgetting to take photos.

I guess these pajamas are getting too small - I just realized they're in last year's photos, too. Oops.

Zephyr is very into drawing right now. It's just repetitive swirlies connected by lines (he doesn't take the crayon or marker up from the paper), but to him it's "trucks" or "flowers" or "poop."

He's talking up a storm, too, but it's still hard to understand him sometimes because his articulation is for shit. "Truck" is pronounced "dutz"; "train" is "dain"; "blueberry" is "buh-bay" and "raisin" is "wuh-wain," but his vocabulary and grammar are actually pretty far along. He uses more than 150 words and understands tenses and possessives pretty well. He can count to 13 before he starts making shit up (sometimes he forgets four, but from five on up he's got it down). And as of about a week ago, he can finally say his own name!

Instead of tantrums, a lot of times when he's pissed he just says "mad" and goes and stands in a corner, like he's giving himself a little time-out. It's usually because the option he wants isn't practical or I get something wrong (like he wants to wear two different shoes, but I put them on the wrong feet - he wanted the gray shoe on his left foot, not right! and now he's so mad! everything's ruined!). He loves practicing his mad face and talking about different feelings.

We can just explain things to him now, and can see it really clicking. And now our early waking problems have even mostly subsided since we can just tell him it's still night time, and that we're going back to sleep. Then we just ask him if he wants his star lights and music and then he settles back down. Now the worst we get is a 6:30 wake-up where he plays alone and chats to himself ("dark. ni-night. mama sleep. daddy sleep. stars. music.") until 7:15ish, instead of just having to get up at 5:00. And sometimes instead of waking with a loud, whiny cry, he just announces "awake!"

The more we get peeks into his mind (through his talking), the more we're starting to realize just how freakishly smart he is. We're in for a thrilling ride.