Verbosatron

The holiday season is in full swing, and I actually ended up with a break the weekend before Christmas, since family isn't coming in until Sunday.

 We've had some fun times this season so far - the first weekend in December, my mom, sister, and one of my brothers came around and helped us all set up the tree and decorations. Levi got to pet a doggie (rottweiler puppy) while we picked up our tree, and also kept edging toward the golf carts, seemingly with the intent to drive away with one...

The second weekend in December my other brother came down from NY to visit us, and we had a blast with some local burrito eating, watching The King's Speech, and of course, How I Met Your Mother.

The following weekend, Tim and I had a night out with my wonderful coworkers at a fancy work party...which we got no pictures of. But the night was memorable for the funny stories, and to be honest, the incredible cheesecake that I got to eat two of (sometimes I benefit from Tim's allergies, what can I say?)

A couple of nights later we headed to our annual Life Group Christmas party, with tons of delicious, completely healthy food, and took home a lovely autographed photo of our friends and some candy/dog treats from our famous White Elephant gift exchange.

Mmm... Cornbread batter.

In Levi news, it feels like he's hit an explosion of words. It's really only just a few more than before, but he's been gradually adding words and signs for the past 9 months or so, and in the past couple of weeks he's been very good at repeating us and starting to use several words regularly: banana, Momma, Dada  cheese, cracker, dog, cow, moo, duck, and so on.

Probably tied to the words, he's become slightly obsessed with books about animals, particularly farm animals. There's a book my parents got us called Good Night Farm, and we read that every day, along with books about the zoo, monkeys, bunnies, and so on. Oh, and Sandra Boynton out the wazoo - I think hippo might be his next word :)

He's also starting to want to help us do things, or do things himself more. Cooking with daddy, dishes with mommy - even dipping the bubble wand himself before letting one of us blow the bubbles.

Levi is also getting very good at cleaning up - sometimes after himself, sometimes after us :) If he makes a mess during dinner, it's his job to pick up things that fell on the floor, and if he spills his milk by tipping his cup sideways, he has to wipe it up. He can spill all of his toys out of his toybox...but he has to pick them up after. And he's regularly coming around behind us (read: Tim) and closing cabinet doors, the fridge, the drawer with the trash in it....yes. Next up: folding laundry at 20 months :)