Christmas Letter - 2008

Well we finished off last year celebrating Simon’s first Christmas. It was a hectic day spent traveling between families coupled with lots of eating. Simon didn’t quite get the concept of unwrapping the gifts (which seriously irked his cousin) but he did love climbing on the box for his new wagon.

Much like 2007 (and I’m sure the years to come), 2008 was a year of firsts. We went from crawling, to walking, to running, to climbing, to jumping and finally in recent weeks we have talking.

In February, Matt and I headed down to Pittsburgh for a long weekend getaway. As many of you know, Matt is a big Pittsburgh Penguins fan so to celebrate his 30th birthday we took in a game at the Igloo. Matt was thrilled to be surrounded by his fellow fans and I was happy to tag along for the outlet shopping. I did well picking out our hotel as we were able to scout out players from both our home town Senators and the Sharks.

March saw us celebrating Simon’s first birthday and my dreaded return to work. Simon transitioned to daycare like a champion and Simon quickly grew attached to his childcare provider Ursula and to his Grandparents. Matt and I have since been demoted from Simon’s favourites list.

In July, Simon gained a new little cousin Seamus. Lynsey and Shawn welcomed a surprisingly small little boy (estimates had him at 10-11lbs.). Simon is a little perturbed at having to share his Granddad’s lap but otherwise pretty much ignores his new cousin.

November saw another getaway, this time somewhere tropical for a whole week. We headed down to celebrate the wedding of our friends Kevin and Sonja. We stayed at a beautiful, adults only resort and the break really helped us in getting through until Christmas.

We still trying to keep our blog updated regularly so if you’re interested in the goings on of the Fullers (well mostly just Simon), check it out at www.weinerwonderland.blogspot.com.

Christmas Festivities 2008

Simon broke his 5am waking habit in time for Christmas, so we were able to start off the day a little fresher than the past week! Terry is staying with us over the holidays so he was here to watch Simon unwrap his gifts (which were endless despite my best efforts) and to give Matt a helping hand in getting everything assembled. As expected, Simon struggled in getting past the book in his stocking and was ready to be done at the point. He eventually got into ripping off the paper and was over joyed when Matt inflated his soccer net. The day only got better and better as his scooter was put together, a addition was added to his Tonka ride on and the playdough was removed from the packaging. By the time we had to open gifts at Nanny and Granddad's, Simon had caught on to what was happening and in addition to unwrapping gifts, he wanted everything removed from the packages and assembled - a little challenging when you are managing 4 kids opening gifts, 12 adults watching and 2 very large basset hounds! Simon definitely doesn't share his parents love of Christmas dinner as his feast consisted of a roll and numerous Christmas cookies but Matt and I more than made up for it and indulged on the food and enjoyed the company. It was a great day and Simon fared better than last year where he ended up passed out in his Granddad's arms.

Little People Nativity

We managed to get hold of the Little People Nativity set this year and Simon has been playing with it daily, rotating all of the characters to the treasured musical spot on top of the stable. Simon really felt like one of his non-Little People animals was being left out of the Christmas scene so he begin integrating his Swiss cow (compliments of Ursula) into the Nativity. Well the other day we cracked up when we saw the cow perched on top of the stable watching over baby Jesus.

Naughty or Nice?

He didn't love Santa at all but he did enjoy the candy cane that Santa gave him!

I've created a monster

Simon does not appreciate any diversion of attention away from him so needless to say, he is less than thrilled when I log onto the laptop to check out email. I got the brillant idea the other day to do a google search for animal pictures to get him to appreciate the computer more. Problem is that now he's obsessed. Instead of trying to close my computer so I can't use it, he keeps it pried open so that I can search for animal pictures. It gets a little old looking at lion pictures for half an hour, but he seems to enjoy it and it's a great quiet time activity.

Explosion of Vocabulary

Simon has had a recent explosion of vocabulary in the last week. He's expanded from "more", "mine", "hi", "bye", "mama", "daddy", "BruBru", and dozens of animal noises to a more useful array of words to describe what he wants. We're going to start having to be careful about what we say around him now! His understanding has also increased and he can point to almost everything in all of his books and can actually go select the book that you're requesting from his pile (this is quite the feat as Simon has quite the library of books).

Trimming the Tree

Mum and Dad were brave enough to invite over all of their grandchildren to help trim their tree. For those of you who have seen their tree, you know that Mum takes great care in placing the ornaments, almost like they have been put up with the assistance of a ruler (and knowing my Mum probably a level too!), so I was surprised they would want the help of three kids under 4 feet tall. Well to my surprise the tree turned out beautifully and the ornaments are surprisingly well distributed. Simon only wanted to put up the Christmas balls and shuned any non-round ornaments. He also insisted that Granddad put all of the ornaments "up" and he would always jump to illustrate when passing off the ornaments to hang. Next year Seamus will join the fray so Dad needs to work on speed hanging as he was already ragged by the end of it and this year there were only three demanding grandchildren.