Christmas Lights

Evan wanted us to take a picture of him in front of the house with our new blue Christmas lights:

Dancing

As you may remember from several previous posts, Evan loves to dance. I don't remember what the occasion was here (not that he needs one), but this session made for some good pictures:

And after dancing comes resting:

My First Vet Clinic™

Aunt Hilary and Uncle Brian sent a box of Christmas presents to us before the holiday but we decided to wait until we got home from our trip to Santa Fe to open them. There were a couple of nice gifts, but Evan's favorite was undoubtedly the pretend animal hospital (Hilary and Brian are both veterinarians). Once we helped him set it up he immediately put the stethoscope on to listen to the doggie's heart:

He used the otoscope (I had to look that one up) to look in the doggie's ears:

And after he gave the doggie a shot with the hypodermic needle he gave him a treat for being such a good patient:

We hardly even touched the band-aids and cast (although he's wearing one around his foot in the picture above), or the different x-rays you can look at. I think this present could keep him occupied for some time to come.

Skiing

Hallie, Mark and I went skiing at Ski Santa Fe (which is just a half hour drive from downtown Santa Fe) on our last day in town. We thought about having everyone come for part of the time so Evan could play in the snow somewhere along the way but in the end it didn't seem worth the hassle (and I'm not sure we had the car space since my parents didn't rent a car). That didn't stop Evan from trying on some of our extra ski gear before we left, though:

Out on the Town

After three days Steph and I hadn't seen that much of Santa Fe, so Saturday afternoon we bundled ourselves up and headed out to walk around the downtown and look at some of the art galleries.  Hallie also borrowed a cool car seat blanket for Alex, so we turned him into a baby fleece taco so he could join us:

I don't think Alex saw much of downtown Santa Fe, but Steph and I enjoyed walking around a bit and seeing the sights.

Star Trek Baby

I got Alex some high-tech long underwear from REI outlet for this trip before he was even born (I was buying some other stuff so I figured I'd throw it in), which he finally got to wear today.  The suit fit pretty well, although it looked a bit like a Star Trek costume:

Here's another shot of him in his costume before we head out for the afternoon (more on that in a sec):

Sleeping with the Grandparents

Hallie was able to borrow a Pack 'N' Play from some friends for Alex, which was great. Evan is too big for a Pack 'N' Play, though, and Hallie & Mark's house only has two bedrooms, so we made a nest for him on their huge couch in the family room. That was also where my parent's slept on their Aerobed, so Evan got to sleep with his grandparents for the week:

He seemed pretty happy with the arrangement.  And of course, a couch that big begs to be covered in cars when it's not being slept upon:

Christmas Day

Christmas morning finally arrived, and Evan was excited to open presents -- all those wrapped boxes might contain cars! Alex, of course, didn't know what would make this day different from any other, but that didn't stop us from dressing him in his most-Christmasy outfit:

The first present Evan got to open was his stocking stuffer from Santa, which was a Mater to go with his Lightning McQueen:

His very own Mater (which he insists on calling "Tow Mater" -- I think we may have mistakenly told him that was the character's name when he came on screen the first time we watched Cars and it's stuck) was pretty cool, but the prize gift of the season was a new car carrier from Grandpa Jim and Grandma She (they shipped some presents to Hallie so the kids could open them on Christmas), which also included a blue Dodge Viper. Once he opened that box the rest of the morning looked something like this:

Go open the next present, give it a glance, return to playing with the Steel Stork (the car carrier's name), repeat as necessary.  That was pretty much the recipe... for a happy Christmas.

Canyon Road, Almost

There is a Christmas Eve tradition in Santa Fe where they essentially shut down parts of the downtown (namely the insanely dense cluster of art galleries along Canyon Road and the surrounding neighborhood), closing the streets to cars and turning off the street lights. People then walk around and enjoy the farolitos (candles placed in sand at the bottom of a brown paper lunch bag -- I've always seen them called luminaries in other parts of the country) lining all the adobe walls and fences. In several cul-de-sacs homeowners build mini-bonfires and hand out hot cider, and all the galleries on Canyon Road stay open late into the night (apparently... more on that in a second).

Knowing that we'd be heading out into sub-freezing temperatures and walking around the snowy streets I'd gone out during the day to get Evan some boots along with some other last-minute Christmas shopping (we'd hoped to get him new boots before the trip but we somehow never found the time). As usual he was not excited about wearing them the first time (it's always a struggle to get him to wear new shoes), but he warmed up to them after he saw Baby Bunny wearing them:

Canyon Road is only a little over a mile from Hallie's house, but since we were bringing two little guys out in the bitter cold we thought it best to drive as far as we could and then park and walk once the traffic became unbearable. We ended up staying out for around an hour, although I didn't get any good pictures of the farolitos (or anything else for that matter). Here are a couple of representative photos I found on flickr:

I did take this picture of Steph and Evan in front of one of the little bonfires, which Evan found quite fascinating:

I mentioned that the galleries on Canyon Road apparently stay open late into the night.  I say "apparently" because we never actually made it to Canyon Road. We were just following all the other people as we walked from our car, and at one point there was a pretty significant fork in the road and the number of people going either way was pretty much equal. We were directed to take the right fork when we asked someone which was the best way to Canyon Road, but it turns out he pointed us to the wrong fork. Instead we ended up wandering around the neighborhood surrounding our destination without ever getting there -- poking around Google Maps when we got home I found we were pretty close but we never knew to make the one turn that would take us there. We did end up stumbling upon a school where there were several fire trucks (always a big hit with Evan) and where they were launching aerial farolitos from:

That picture is obviously pretty awful, but we didn't know what was going on until the farolito was already drifting away, so I took the best shot I could get.  We'd seen a couple of these mini hot air balloons floating across the sky as we were walking through the neighborhood without really knowing what they were, so it was an unexpected treat to luck into a close-up view of one beginning its flight.  Check out this picture on flickr and the one or two after it for a better idea of what I'm talking about.

By the end of our jaunt we were hustling back to the car with an increasingly fussy 2-year old in Steph's arms (his hands were getting pretty cold despite his mittens, which for some reason caused his legs to shutdown) and a sleeping infant on me in the BabyBjörn (although the combination of my fleece jacket and his fuzzy bear suit seemed to do an adequate job keeping Alex warm), but I think it was worth it to experience some local culture firsthand.

Uncle Mark

We've been doing our best to take advantage of all the extra hands to get a break from holding Alex (like most babies, Alex is happier when he is in someone arms). For example, between stints of playing outside in the snow Uncle Mark spent some time with him:

Snow

As I mentioned before, we went to Santa Fe for Christmas this year to visit my sister Hallie and her husband Mark. Fortunately Hallie warned us to prepare for cold weather and snow (Santa Fe sits at over 7,000' elevation and is nestled against a mountain range) because it was snowing when we landed in Albuquerque and it continued throughout that first night. That meant we were in for a cold week, but it also gave Evan his first opportunity to play in the snow:

Of course, it was only 20° so he had to come back inside after a few minutes to put on a proper winter coat and mittens.  After getting ready he was right back out there driving his dump truck around full of snow:

We've talked to Evan about the concept of the snowman, so he was pretty excited to try and build one. The snow was fairly good for packing but it didn't roll that well, so we ended up with a pretty lumpy snowman.  I think Evan was more interested in the carrot nose and the rocks we used for eyes than he was the actual snow parts anyway:

Here are Hallie and Evan posing with the finished product:

Here's the snowman in all his glory:

Toddler Cage

Overall Evan is a pretty good kid, but sometimes he misbehaves and must be punished:

Of course I'm joking. For some reason Evan really gets a kick out of hiding under the laundry basket recently.

Christmas with Jodi

We leave to go to Santa Fe tomorrow, so we had Christmas with our regular baby sitter Jodi today.  Jodi obviously knows what Evan likes since she spends three mornings a week with him, so it was no surprise that her gifts were a big hit, especially Evan's own Lightning McQueen!

In this first picture Evan is exclaiming loudly the joys of having a Lightning McQueen car:

These two videos are basically more of the same:

I don't know if you could make it out, but Evan asks in the second video if he can bring Lightning McQueen to bed with him. It's not like this happened anywhere close to nap time, but what would happen to Lightning when he was asleep was already on his mind. I guess you could say in Evan's automotive pantheon Lightning McQueen is first among equals.

In the Studio

Usually when I get home from work Evan has either seen my car drive up or heard the door close so he is waiting at the front door (or possibly he's burst through it and is coming down the sidewalk), but sometimes this is what I find:

I know you can't see Alex, but he's probably napping just off camera or in the guest room across the hall.

The shot above I took surreptitiously, but I thought it was worth capturing a posed shot too:

Christmas Bush

We're going to see my sister Hallie in Santa Fe, New Mexico for Christmas this year, and since we won't be home for the actual holiday we didn't want to bother setting up our Christmas tree. Evan started asking when we were going to decorate the tree, though (Where does he learn this stuff? I swear Steph and I never told him about Christmas trees! I'm going to blame the baby sitter.), so we thought we should at least get a little tree for him. Unfortunately this task was delegated to Evan and I one afternoon along with some other errands, and according to Steph our Norfolk Pine is more of a Christmas bush than a Christmas tree. Regardless, I stand by my selection. As you can see, Evan still had plenty of fun decorating the tree/bush:

Christmas Card

Here are the pictures we used for our Christmas card this year:

If you look closely at the family picture you can see that Evan is holding the camera remote, so technically he took that picture!  That was the only way we could convince him to sit relatively still with something close to a smile on his face.

More Brother Pics

More cute pictures of the boys being brotherly:

Easel

Recently Steph set Evan up at her easel so she could get some work done in the studio while he had his art time:

He thinks drawing cars and bunnies on the easel is pretty cool.  It's possible we've got another artist in the family!