Holden Jay-Christmas at age 3.5

I couldn't do a post about my baby (see previous post) without doing one about my first baby. :) Holden is my big helper this Christmas season. He loves to help choose gifts for friends and family, make yummy treats in the kitchen, and decorate the house. We have been reading lots of books about the holidays. He is at a great age to really start understanding Christmas traditions as well as the most important part of the season; baby Jesus' birthday! He keeps his Fisher Price nativity set up year-round in his room because he loves it so much and gets upset if I try to put it away. I decided there's no reason not to remember the manger all year. :) He is also very excited for Santa to come. When he has naughty moments he asks if we think Santa will "give me another chance," or if "he will bring me coal." :)

I really want to get in the habit of teaching him from an early age the fun and importance of giving to others. He has a few friends that we will exchange with, and he had a lot of fun picking out gifts for them. I am still working on getting him to realize that we need to pick gifts that THEY will like best, not gifts HE would like. As in, he wanted to get trucks and other "boy toys"for Natalie and Corinne. I had to convince him that they would really like the Barbie and Dora items instead. Since he is at a high school pre-school program, he has 1 lead teacher and 27 high school student teachers! We decided to bake cookies for all of the high school students since we just couldn't purchase 28 teacher gifts. ;) This was the first time I have baked sugar cookies with him that we actually did from scratch, not a package. He was thrilled with the mixer and helping me dump all the ingredients in. I feel bad I don't do this more often; let's just say I am the OPPOSITE of Betty Crocker! We melted almond bark and dipped double stuffed Oreos and pretzel rods in it. Yummy! Holden's job was to put sprinkles on these. He helped with the cookie cutters on the sugar cookies, and put sprinkles on after I frosted them. My big helper! (He and I also had a GREAT time eating the cookie dough! He may be picky, but he knows the really good things in life, like raw eggs, sugar, and flour. We each kept saying, "Okay, one more bite!" I think we probably ate about 10 cookies' worth of dough. No salmonella yet!)

Love the flour on the butt and on his chair!

Close up! This was one of those wonderful Saturdays that we had nowhere to go, it was blizzard-like conditions out, and we stayed in pj's all day.

Watching the cookies "grow."

This was also one of those wonderful days I didn't do my hair or put makeup on. And Holden's nose was runny. Oh well, it will just remind you that we clean up well in future pictures.

Sprinkle man!

After helping to decorate the first batch of cookies, he decided "Mommy could do the rest," and retreated to the living room to play a little helicopter, tow truck, snowman game. (?!)

We also took some cookies and a gift card to his swim instructor, Miss Betty. Holden adores her. We have moved him to semi-private lessons (He takes them with a little boy, Robert, who we know through preschool as well as swim.) We have seen a tremendous amount of growth in both his skills and his confidence level with the extra one-on-one. Betty is a retired teacher, and has a really good way with him. She encourages and challenges him without pushing too hard. I had a snow day on the last Monday of swim lessons before break, so I got to go with him! I was so excited since I haven't been to lessons since the end of summer. Jay takes him on Monday mornings while I am teaching. I was so impressed with how far he has come. He still has a long ways to go, but he is now going under and jumping in without crying-HUGE from where we started! He was proud to show me all of his new moves. My camera lens kept fogging up because it is like a sauna in there.

Some more pictures from our snow day! Holden loves to shovel with his tractor. When he and Jay come in all cold and red-cheeked from the cold, he and I curl up on the couch under a blanket and watch cartoons. And drink hot chocolate. And talk about how we need snow days at least once a week!