Christmas!

Colin on Christmas morning! Santa is awesome!

Well to start, our biggest update this time is that we are expecting a new baby in June! Denise has been to several appointments already (I stay home and watch Colin - he is too much of a little monkey to be around expensive medical equipment), and we have seen a few ultrasounds and Denise has heard the heartbeat several times. Things are going great for Mommy so far, though we expect some challenges later when she is bigger and Colin wants to wrestle more. Last night he thought it was hilarious to push Mommy off the bed - we can't imagine what two will be like! More updates on the baby as they are available.

Well, the next big update this time is Colin got to celebrate his 2nd Christmas! We thought last year was a blast, but this year was even more fun!

Christmas Eve ended with Colin going to bed around midnight, and then Mommy and Daddy had to frantically set things up so Santa had a place to drop off the goods! Once that happened it was to bed for everyone. Colin sleeps a lot later than most kids, but was up around 8:30am.

Mommy carried him out to the living room, all groggy and bleary eyed. Before we brought him out we asked him if he heard Santa on the roof and he said yes. We asked if he heard Rudolph's hooves as well, and he said yes as well!

Once he got out and caught a glimpse of what was there he had to get down and run over to his new toys! That's when the real fun began. It started around 8:40 am on Christmas, and he opened his last present aroud 4 or 5 pm on the day after Christmas. It's not that there were tons and tons of presents (just tons - forutnately a lot of it was clothes) - but Colin did a great job of playing with everything after he opened it. We let him open everything on his own, with a little help getting the paper started. He did a great job last year, but was a shredding machine this time around!

Of course Christmas excitement means he didn't go for a nap until close to 5:30. He then woke up a couple of hours later and played until 2AM! It's taken most of the week to get him back on track, but somehow he must have known about New Years Eve - he stayed up past midnight and we are back to square one. Oh well, we didn't really need sleep anyway.

In other news, Colin is having his language explosion and getting his 2 year molars. Teething is rough on him this time, we just hope it goes quick - even though it seems like they are going to take forever to get in.

As far as his words, Colin can count to 10 and even sometimes 12. He can say almost all of the colors and loves to read books with us. When we read Old McDonald he loves to make all the animal noises and he also will say 'Ee I Ee I Oh' but a lot cuter than I could ever type.

Another new thing is to stand on the bed and count to three and then plop down on his bottom! We can play this game forever! He loves tickle fights, and can do summersaults all on his own.

Of course his love of Elmo and 'Shade' from Elmo's World continues. Now when the characters on Elmo do things like do a headstand, so will Colin. Wiggle your ears, check. Hop on one foot, check. He really is an amazing little guy - we love him so much.

We hope everyone's New Year is off to a great start. Who knows what the next year will bring (this time last year we would have never dreamed we'd be living in California).

Well, thats all for now!

Bye...

- Eric