John, Elise, and the train

A few days before we left for Christmas vacation, Elise came over for an evening visit. Although she was wearing a very elegant holiday outfit, she had no qualms about "playing train" with John, who was already in his PJs.

To start, Elise played conductor while John played passenger.

Then they switched roles.........

Some random pre-Christmas videos

I am very, very behind in uploading videos and pictures of John! So to avoid any confusion, I'll first upload some that were taken at home a few weeks before Christmas.

Here's John playing with his favorite kitchen toy (again), but this time it's even funnier because he's bare chested.

I've entitled the next video "From the window......to the wall!" (Kind of like the rap song, except much, much cleaner, hehe.)

Kami's birthday

Kami's birthday was on Wednesday, so we all got together at Stephanie's house for a chili dinner. We tried snapping some group Mommy-Baby photos in front of the fireplace, and in one of them, we're all actually looking at the camera! Amazing!

As always, John and Elise had fun playing at the coffee table. (Elise lapped him at least twice.) They enjoyed playing with Aunt Kami, Aunt Jen, and Aunt Sheri, too.

Reading a book

John loves reading books! He sits very nicely in Mom's lap and pays close attention to what's on every page. Dad got out the camera yesterday and captured us reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and I Love You Through and Through.

The new playroom

This past weekend, Daddy turned the rarely used office into a new playroom for John. This required the complete reorganization of the guest bedroom to fit all of the bookshelves from the office as well as the dismantling of several pieces of furniture and our old desktop computer. The new playroom is convenient, spacious and, best of all, carpeted!

Elise came over for a date yesterday (John's 11-month birthday!), and she and John had a great time "breaking in" the playroom. Here are some cute videos we took of them together......

First shoes!

We finally bought a pair of shoes for John at Target the other day. (We had looked around for a long time but hadn't seen any kickers worthy of John's adorably short and plump feet.) These are brown leather Oshkosh loafers with a velcro strap. They are both rugged and refined (if that's possible to achieve with a baby boy shoe), and they will look good with almost all of his clothing. Plus they only cost $14.99!

As this video shows, however, they are still a tiny bit big. John is in between sizes 3 and 4, so we got the size-4 pair so he could wear them longer.

John's train

One of John's Christmas gifts from Mom and Dad is a walker/ride-on train. (Mom decided it would be ok for John to open it a few weeks early, since he likes to practice walking around the house so much.) Here is a video of him playing with his new toy. He loves it!

Three videos from today

Video 1: John helping Mom unload the bags from our trip to the grocery store.....

Video 2: John devouring a snack of Puffs cereal.....

Video 3: John playing with a mixing bowl and the dishwasher.....