On Christmas Eve morning, Sage was feeling rather inquisitive.
He grabbed his headlamp and his animals and started investigating!
Then it was time for some brother bonding.
These two are so close. Sage is on the border of being "obsessed" with Kale. He gets mad when Kale is sleeping and is unavailable for play. He likes to sit next to him...and has to be touching him. He prefers to hold Kale's hand or put his entire palm on his little head. Kale doesn't seem to mind. Sage likes to talk and sing to him too. Or babble nonsense sounds with lots of gesturing - and always about a half inch away from his face. We try to him Kale wants space and peace...but Sage tells us to stop talking and corrects us. "No...Kale like it!" he says. He also tries to bury him in blankets and tells us that "Kale is cold." This is probably the scariest thing Sage does. Because Sage likes to cover Kale from toe to head - with no concern for his breathing. So we can no longer leave them unsupervised in a room together.
Matt ran some errands in the morning, and I was home with the two boys alone. While he was gone we built a super fort! Complete with its own string of Christmas lights. Sage loved it! And Matt, upon his return, was quite impressed with our handy work. All four of us could fit in there quite comfortably. And it was so warm with all that body heat! We spent a good portion of the day hanging out in there.
A Christmas Eve bath.
And then it was time to start a new tradition....
Setting out milk and cookies for Santa.
And a little bit of reindeer food too.
And before we knew it, the long anticipated day arrived. Christmas morning! Sage rose before the sun did, and asked to see the presents. And so the festivities officially began.
Sage explored the gifts quite thoroughly, but we only let him "look with his eyes." (That's a common phrase in our house. In other words - don't touch!)
We started with our stockings.
Sage's was filled with candy. Which has become an annoying nightly battle in our house, as we try to finish off the ginormous stash.
Remember pez?!?! Sage got one!
Before commencing the present-opening, we all got dressed.
And then the multi-hour present extravaganza began! Sure, we had a lot of gifts under the tree. Some very nice ones. Some very small and inexpensive. (And many of them were free books I scored from a campus literacy drive.) But Sage is also a slow opener. And he likes to play with everything once before moving on. And so our present opening lasted all day. It lasted until 6pm or so. It was exhausting!
One of Sage's big gifts was a set of 50 new Hotwheels cars.
He also got a track to go along with them.
In the early afternoon we made some appetizers. Above is a seven-layer taco dip. This is a long-standing recipe in our house. Made on many an occasion. Below, is a picture of a new meatball recipe Matt tried out. He said they were quite tasty and would be interested in making them again. The sauce was chili and cranberry based. It smelled wonderful!
Kale got himself a new teddy bear!
Early in the morning the snow started to fall. And it continued throughout the day. We had a real WHITE CHRISTMAS! It was just beautiful. And the two oldest boys in the house wanted to play in it.
Eventually, the festivities came to a close. And we were beat. So tired, I couldn't even muster up the energy to make the Christmas dinner I had planned. And the mess we had created from opening gifts was appalling. We didn't even know how to begin cleaning up. It was a chaotic sight.
We filled our recycling and trash bins to the brim!
A little buyer's remorse and a little guilt from all our good fortune started to set in about this time. I feel that way after every Christmas. Spoiled. But grateful for the comfortable life I live.
Then it was time to polish off the champagne and play with all our new toys! Sage had many to choose from.
The Hotwheels track, complete with battery powered boosters, was probably his favorite gift.
And I was quite excited by all the play food he got.
We finally got around to making our Christmas dinner on Friday. Matt roasted a stuffed pork chop. And I made two casseroles - green bean and sweet potato. The greenbean was disgusting. I overdid the crunchy fried onion topping..to the point it was more like an onion casserole. And it was way too salty! The sweet potato turned out better. But it was so sweet, I felt like I was actually eating pumpkin pie. Not the best of Christmas dinners. They can't all be winners....
Sage tried out some of his new bath toys.
And Kale debuted his new winter booties!
Both boys enjoying a good self-soothing suck on the fingers.
Many of the adult gifts in the house were food focused this year. And that's not a bad thing! I love food. I love cooking it. So no better area to receive a gift. Matt and I both received slow cookers (crock pots) for Christmas. Sage helped us unpack the boxes.
I am also the proud owner of a new set of dinnerware from Crate and Barrel. This gorgeous whiteware replaces the forest green and black ivy set I've had for over 6 years. Not to mention...so much of it had broken we were down to 3.5 place settings. Now I have 8 place settings - to help serve my growing family. :)
And...Matt surprised me with baking steal....which is like a pizza stone, but heavier and hotter. So we started practicing our pizza making skills. Our first attempt was on Monday night.
I mixed up garlic olive oil and grated two kinds of cheeses (a mozzarella and a romano).
We topped the pizza with roasted red pepper and fresh tomato. I thought it was delicious. But some people in the house preferred a different topping combination. So we gave the pizza experiment another try on Wednesday. We subbed the olive oil and tomato with marinara and artichokes. And it was also good! Now we just have to figure out how to get the crust thinner. Cracker thin. Because both our previous attempts were a little more hand-tossed, even border-line thick-crust. And there is a restaurant in town with very think crispy crust pizzas that we are trying to replicate at home.
Then on Tuesday after Christmas, it was time to face reality. I had to send Kale to daycare. While it wasn't as sad and scary as the day I dropped off Sage that first time, I was still nervous. Kale won't take bottles. And there's just no way he can get the same attention and stimulation he does at home. But when I went to see him at lunch, he was smiling with no sign of tears in his eyes. The first day was a success! They haven't all been that perfect, though. On one afternoon he screamed so bad, the teachers gave him 2 ounces of milk by syringe - feeding him like a baby bird. But apparently he fell asleep quickly after that. I guess we'll just keep taking it day by day. And I will continue to spend every lunch with him. It's good for both of us!
