December Festivities

On December 1st, Veldor returned!!!  Man, I cannot even tell you how much the kids love this elf and LOVE looking for him every morning!!  Such an easy thing to bring them so much enjoyment (our elf only hides, doesn't do anything creative or mischievous).  Dallin had been SOOOO excited for him to arrive and started counting down how many days were left before Veldor arrived, 2 or 3 weeks before December 1st.  The first morning, he was hiding in the Christmas tree, like he does on December 1st every year.  And I am proud of Veldor for not forgetting to move once since he has arrived- he has remembered 18 nights straight!

Nolan broke my beautiful Advent box, so this year I bought this type of Advent calendars for the kids.  They loved them and they brought back fun memories for me since my mom bought these for us when we were little.  Nolan loved his so much that on the 4th day or so, he opened all of his little doors and ate all of the chocolates out of them.  I thought he'd be upset every day after that when Teya and Dallin opened each day of their calendar and ate a chocolate, or that he would sneak and get into theirs, but neither ever happened and he seemed to understand and accept the consequences of his actions.

Gingerbread House time!  Once again, it was Dallin begging to decorate gingerbread houses, so we did this one last Sunday.

This is a North Pole Communicator that I bought on clearance last year after Christmas.  It appeared under our tree the same day Veldor arrived.  It's not quite as cool as we all expected, but it's still fun.

One of our neighbors, the McKenzies, organizes a Christmas caroling night for the kids in our neighborhood each year. They give the kids hot chocolate and take them around our little neighborhood caroling. Have I mentioned we live in an amazing neighborhood?!?

Teya and Dallin's school has a Cheistmas Sing every December. Dallin is in the back row, red shirt.

Tonight our neighbors had an Ugly Christmas Sweater party.  About 10 couples in our neighborhood went.  They provided dinner, which was awesome, and planned games, including a white elephant gift exchange, which was a lot of fun and pretty funny.  I bought our gifts at DI: a candle snuffer, which everyone thought was pretty funny, and two snowman hot chocolate mugs.  We ended up with a reindeer stuffed animal that sings and some fancy army pens.

Jared trying to open a gift with his feet.  The presents were passed around, it was pretty fun.  After this game we played Christmas Jepardy.  One question Jared had was, how many ghosts were inThe Christmas Carol.  He had NO idea, didn't even know the movie, so they told him just to guess and he threw out the number 4, and got it right!  

Our Ugly Christmas sweaters!  I bought the sweaters at DI (like Goodwill) and then bought cheap little Christmassy items to put on them.  Teya helped me stitch the items onto the sweaters- didn't they turn out great?!  Teya loved them and kept asking why we would call them ugly, because she thought they were asorable!!

Don't you love Jared's sweater??  He wasn't quite as excited about it as I was...

Well, we won first place in the ugly sweater contest!!!  (Everyone voted).  Teya and I were pretty excited, haha! We won these two things and a gift card. 

I had to include these other pictures of Jared because he is so funny.  Teya was taking forever to take the pictures= his "come on Teya!" face, haha!

While 8 months old...

Dallin's top teeth broke through! All four of them! The middle ones came through first, but the outside ones were visible just under the skin when this happened and they appeared within a week or so after. No wonder he has been so darn fussy lately!! Poor kid! I figured it was teething pain!
He has become a major mama's boy! He whines and fusses for me to hold him all the time, even if Jared has him. He is so cute! He started waking up again sometimes at night to nurse, like around 11pm or 5, 6 am. Still no hint of crawling.
He really studies and focuses on people. He is very loud! He is more wiggly than Teya was. He does NOT like to play on his own and wants to be held CONSTANTLY!!! He will sit in his highchair and play with toys for a little while though.
He is so sweet and just adorable!!!
When he had just turned 8 months old, he weighed 18 lbs, 12 oz., exactly the same that he weighed at his 6 and a half month check-up! I was concerned and asked the doctor about it, but she said he was obviously doing just fine! That when they start out so big, it's okay for them to not have doubled their birth weight by now! I don't remember where he was at in his percentages at this visit.

While 7 months old...

Dallin became a mama's boy! He started leaning towards me and whining while others, even Jared, were holding him, and would smile and be totally content when I took him. He decided that he wants to be held ALL THE TIME and cries and cries until he gets picked up! He is still so darn cute though!!!

Daddy Love

Dallin is SO crazy about Jared!!!! Teya always was as a baby too, but she was definitely a mommy's girl. Dallin on the other hand is much more crazy about Jared than he is me. I don't feel like he is super attached to me the way Teya was. She was SOOOO mommy crazy and clingy to me. Dallin seems to like me a lot, don't get me wrong, but when Jared walks into the room, he lights up! His arms and legs immediately start flailing all over the place on turbo speed, he gets super smiley and you can just SEE him begging and hoping that Jared will come over to talk to him, or better yet, hold and play with him!! A couple of times while I was holding Dallin, Jared has just come up to him and started talking to him and I felt like the poor baby was going to explode out of anticipation of having Jared pick him up, so I was like, "Oh just hold the poor kid!" Even if he just hears Jared talking, he will immediately start twisting his little neck all around trying to find Jared. It is so cute!! I have told Jared a number of times how Dallin doesn't do this with anyone else, but Jared never really saw the difference until David came over the other day. Jared was able to see how differently Dallin responded to David verses him and has realized how right I am about Dallin's excitement over his daddy!

Getting around

Dallin is really starting to get around more and more with the way he scoots around in circles, rolls, spins some more, rolls, etc. Also, just a day or two ago I saw him push up onto his knees for a second and once saw him push up onto his feet for a second.

Laughs, Smiles and Observing

So Jared and I have realized that Dallin may not be such a smiley baby anymore. He doesn't smile as easily as he did before, especially at others besides us. He does smile instantly when Jared looks at him though! And often me too. But we are thinking he may be a little more like Teya in that department than we had originally thought.
Another way he is like Teya is that he doesn't laugh super hard or easily. He chuckles, but you have to work to get him to laugh and then it is usually just a chuckle or two. I was so hoping to get kids that just giggled uncontrollably like the babies on America's Funniest Home videos, but oh well! I wouldn't trade him for the world!
And yet ANOTHER way he is like Teya is that he really like to just observe and study people. He will sit and watch strangers especially. Just watch and watch them. It really seems like he's observing them too, not just staring.