Christmas in Austin - UPDATED

For the first time, we celebrated Christmas in Austin. We started things off by having Christmas eve brunch with our dear friends Joel, Stacy and Gideon Hock.



They are about a year apart in age, but Jasper and Gideon are chums.

We attended Christmas Eve service as a family which was special. We're now a family of four, and it feels to us like we're so much more of a family than we were with one child. (Maybe it's just because we're so tired all the time. There are fewer breaks as parents of two.) It felt nice to sit in church each holding a child and singing Christmas hymns. And since Jasper is growing up, learning and understanding more about things, it feels right to create memories of our own that have impact. After church, we returned to enjoy a wonderful meal. It's very similar to the Christmas eve meal Erica's family has enjoyed for years. We made Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes & seafoam salad. For whatever reason, not having vegetables as adults was totally ok ... but we made some carrots for Jasper. The meal was great, and Jasper enjoyed "Nana's special meatballs".

After dinner, we gathered around the nativity scene as a family to discuss the Christmas story. We considered this year a practice since we anticipated Jasper wouldn't be that interested. We've read & talked about the Christmas story a lot throughout the month of December. Jasper loved reading about the baby Jesus, the angels coming to talk to the shepherds & glorifying God, the shepherds running to find the baby Jesus and the wise men coming a long way on camels to worship the baby Jesus in his Bible. He can even gladly tell you that the angels sang "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to men." However, on Christmas eve, he was more interested in playing with the characters as if they were truck drivers than he was talking about the significance of Jesus' birth, but that was ok.

After Jasper was asleep, Erica and I got wrapping! Jasper tried to unwrap a gift that arrived in the mail a week before Christmas. He didn't understand that you had to wait and impatiently did not want to wait. Since we don't have tons of storage space in our house, it was easier to keep things hidden when they were not boxed and wrapped. But that meant last minute wrapping. Oh joy!

In addition, I needed to put together the "Jeep" that Nana and Papa got for Jasper. I had a funny thought realizing this was the first of many years where I, the father, had something to put together during the evening hours between Christmas Eve and Christmas. It was a long night of assembling and wrapping.

here is the "Jeep" in pre-assembled form.

After we finished preparations, we tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately, Benjamin needed to feed during the wee hours and then Jasper woke up very early. We don't think it was from anticipation for Christmas, but regardless it was way too early and a bad combination with Benjamin. (I think they're in cahoots sometimes!) Since pancakes are fast becoming a special Saturday morning tradition around here, we thought there was no less reason to celebrate with them on Christmas morning. Here are some fun photos from breakfast. The pancakes are green & red from sprinkles. Jasper really liked that.

We started things off with Jasper opening his stocking.

His favorite gift out of there was his new spiderman toothbrush that plays music.

Jasper, having just had a birthday, was very excited about having gifts to open. He opened them with glee, and he didn't waste any time nor try to preserve any paper. The kid's got flare.

This is a four-foot puzzle Jasper got for Christmas. He and daddy took a break to put it together. Jasper loves puzzles, and I don't think it will be long before he can do this one himself.


In preparation for our trip to Utah, Jasper got new long underwear and a neat hat. We love Smartwool!

Jasper got this cool front end loader spoon from his Minnesota cousins, Auntie Brittany and Uncle Adam. He thought it was sooooo cool!

Benjamin was sleepy on Christmas morning, but he still got into the spirit.

While he was awake, we tried to take advantage of Benjamin's alertness for some Christmas morning photos of the boys.

We're checking out Benjamin's new book "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes." Jasper helped me count out his fingers and toes to verify that he did indeed have ten of each. He can count to ten, no sweat now! We counted Benjamin's, too. It was nice of Benjamin to be sock-less. It really facilitated the counting.

Here is the Jeep. This was our last gift to open on Christmas morning. We actually didn't wrap it, we just ceremoniously led Jasper out to the garage to see and play with it. He knew exactly what it was and was happy to get started playing with it right away.

He's thinking about going around the block with his Jeep

It's just the right size!

Looks like it might have failed a crash test along the way. I guess there are different criteria for human-powered vehicles.

Jasper only got one day to play with his Jeep before we left for Ohio. Here he is playing with it once we got back.

Phot Op

In mid December Jasper asked once again to have photos taken of him and Benjamin. At first I thought it would be an okay time, but quickly after I got them into the chair Benjamin decided to try to sleep. It was amazing how tired he got so quickly.

how precious is this?

One Sunday in mid December while at church we commented that Jasper was having a really good hair day and thought it was the perfect chance to get a photo of the boys for our Christmas card. These are some shots from that photo op. Obviously some didn't make the cut, but they're all cute.

We wanted Benjamin in the outfit he wore at Thanksgiving, but it's already too small for him. (One wearing of a 6mo outfit ... nice!) He isn't wearing it anymore, so we needed to change him into it when we got home from church. He was quite compliant. He loves the carpet area in front of our large front window that gets lots of sunlight.

Jasper loves being close to his brother any chance he can get.

Jasper liked holding the baby Jesus from his nativity set while we were taking photos.

Benjamin is really cute when he laughs, but catching him mid-laugh isn't as cute as the full experience.

Jam Session

Jasper learned how to sing Jingle Bells this year, and he even has a set of bells to jingle while he sings. Despite that, he seemed to like banging on metal tins better. :)



Jasper loves the guitar he got for his birthday. At first he showed a fondness for "All Star" and "Love Shack." But he has since settled in on "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." He dad is so proud! Check it out.

As a side note, our friends and frequent baby sitters, Mark and Teri Burchfield discovered that Benjamin is a fan of the Police. He was calmed by "Message in a Bottle" from the Little Tykes guitar.

Christmas Decorating

This was the first year Jasper was into decorating the Christmas tree. He liked the cranberry and star garlands especially.

check out how he got the star garland up ... and what found a home under the tree. :)

Photos of Benjamin

With the past few posts focused on Jasper, I feel like we need a photo heavy post of Benjamin. These photos occurred between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So Much Alike

taken Dec 11, 2008

As I was changing Benjamin's diaper tonight (the second blow-out in a row), I was able to look at his chubby cheeks, button nose and bright eyes and then directly look at a photo Drew took of Jasper when he was perhaps about the same age. They look so much alike I am going to have to either date all the photos or label everything from their infant years. Even I cannot tell them apart in photos ... all the time. Of course, as much as they are alike, they also are very much individuals.


For starters, physically they have different projectile tendencies.

• You could not change Jasper's diaper without a) him screaming and b) him peeing into the air or hopefully into a cloth diaper that you had to use for cover immediately. Benjamin has no such issues. He's happy as a clam on the changing table, and I can count probably on one hand, maybe just spilling onto two, how many times he's pee'd while getting his diaper changed.



• However, Benjamin spits up ... sometimes great volumes, and at times in projectile fashion. (Sorry if that's TMI.) I seriously did not know why they made bibs for infants when Jasper was at this stage. All those layette sets with bibs were just an annoyance to me. He didn't need bibs until he was cutting teeth and drooling all over everything! Benjamin can go through multiple bibs in one day just with spit-up. It's unbelievable! (And they have to be sizable bibs. Those layette bibs are still an annoyance to me. They aren't big enough.)
  

While they were both big, healthy babies, Benjamin has never been able to eat as much as Jasper at one feeding. In the early days / weeks I'd try to get him to eat on both sides only to have him projectile vomit (see above) a good portion of his meal. That got old. So I'd acquiesce and feed less but more frequently. That, let me tell you, is not the preferred method. There were weeks I'd be feeding him every 1.5-2 hours all day and maybe every 3 or (on a good night) 4hours overnight. Those were l-o-n-g weeks. Benjamin has since stretched his feedings to every 3 hours pretty consistently again. However ...

The child is still not sleeping through the night. Every evening and night is different. But have no fear, he will wake up at some point to eat while we would rather be blissfully sleeping. Jasper was sleeping a solid 6 hours overnight by 10weeks. We're way beyond that at this point (13wks). Some nights for Drew and me it's just deal with kids, deal with kids, deal with kids until we crash from exhaustion. Sometimes I fall asleep while feeding Benjamin his last nighttime feeding, and then Drew huddles us off to bed to sleep a little while until Benjamin wants to eat again sometime between 3-6am. The worst nights seem to be when I've made it to bed around 2am, am awake at 4:30am for a feeding. Fall asleep on the couch while burping Benjamin. Wake up at 5:30am and don't want to try putting Benjamin down in the crib for fear I'll wake Jasper - who of course does not go back to sleep once he wakes up in the morning. So then I try to sleep a little more on the couch and then have to be back awake and ready to go when Jasper wakes up - which is always way earlier than I want it to be. On Christmas morning, it was at 6am. That was not the present for which I was looking.

Benjamin is not the angelic traveller Jasper was at this age. In fact, on the Cleveland - Houston flight on our way home on new year's eve, Benjamin got so riled up I could not calm him down. We had to swaddle him, and Drew had to hold & jiggle him to get him to calm down. Jasper was honestly as close to perfect traveling as we could imagine. We never had to coerce or cajole him as an infant. So now ... so much for perfect travel, especially when we don't have anything else going on ... like traveling with a toddler. (I did not say Jasper was angelic as a toddler.)

Benjamin's hair that started out surprisingly dark (not overly dark, just drker than we expected) is finally starting to lighten. Remnants of his dark hair line the base of his skull, but on top it's soft blonde lockes. Pretty soon they are going to be harder and harder to tell apart, but we can't wait for the fun that is yet to unfold.