Silas' festive tour and music box

Happy Holidays!

Pants are the new ears

Just a funny video to share today...I am planning on posting about progress in the garden soon and yes, there will be house project updates as well. For now, at least this video gives you a peak at the living room (we love our cork floors!), such as it is at the moment :)

Birthday Greetings for Grandma

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Emergen-C (not really)

Rudolph the January Reindeer

The Christmas season is over, but reindeer continue to appear daily in our lives in the form of song. Silas sang this (twice!) for my parents in our latest video chat and they commented how they wished they had a video of it. Well, now they do. Enjoy!

Waiting for Santa

We decided to light up our home on this, the shortest, darkest day of the year, by decorating our Christmas tree. In the midst of our efforts, Silas ran over with two pillows and pretended to sleep. That's when I took this video:

Happy Solstice everyone!

St. Nick

I whipped up a pair of fingerless cabled mitts to match Si's Little Rabbit hat just in time to put them in his boot for St. Nicholas' Day. Good thing too, given the bout of cold weather we've had this week. (The picture above shows the entire ensamble, including the sweater I made a while back with the same yarn that still fits, but is getting a tad short in the arms.)

And, since I intended this post to be about Father Christmas, I will just mention that there will be no pictures with Santa this year (or possibly ever). He knows who Santa is. He knows Santa is pretend but that being said, the line between fantasy and reality is pretty much non-existent for him, so he seems more than willing to metaphorically embrace Santa. But literally embrace Santa...not so much. I didn't want to deny him the opportunity to visit Santa so I told him last week that we could see Santa if he wanted. Pretty quickly, he became interested in the concept and said "I'm going to see Santa." But just a few days later, that sentence got lengthened to "I'm going to see Santa, and I'm not going anywhere near him."
So we took him to see Santa, asked if he wanted to proceed with the traditional sitting-on-Santa's-lap-while-mom-and-dad-pay-for-an-overpriced-picture experience. He replied that he did not. And that was the end of that... or maybe not... We were in the local indi book store on the Island when a man dressed totally like an old school Father Christmas (green tunic, crown, glittery beard, etc.) came wandering in. Silas clung to me but gradually started to talk to him and gave him his request (a firetruck, which has been his unchanged request ever since we started asking him). No pictures were taken and no money changed hands. It was a sweet moment.

And now, for your feature presentation:

ABC Song Duet

Been meaning to post this for 2 weeks now...

Silas and the sheep

This is the video I took last week that I said I would post...

Slicing plums

Our little kitchen helper.

I sliced about 12 cups of plums for a plum liqueur and Silas helped by trying very hard not to shove them into his mouth. After a while, his resolve faltered and he started eating everything he sliced. Guess it's only fair since he won't be able to drink any of the liqueur once it's ready in a few weeks :)

Silas finds his (loud) voice

Hiking Hurricane Ridge

Last Sunday, we ventured up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park.
"I'm going on a hike!" he said proudly from his comfy backpack carrier as Drew and I sweated up an in incline in the sun and heat.
While we will probably choose a few more level hikes to take him on so that Silas can walk without fear that he will pull away from us and fall off a cliff, we couldn't resist taking him up to the mountains. I love it up there. We hiked in the Olympic Mountains almost every weekend in the summer back before Silas was born, and we want to get back into a hiking routine. While one is more limited with a toddler, clearly, it's not impossible!

I took a picture of the three of us in this same location two years ago, and it can be found as a picture in this post. I have to say, we look way more hot and tired in this current shot, but I think, just as happy :)
The young buck, who was unaffected by the constant crowd of people gathering around him near the visitor center did not fail to disappoint.
But what Silas undoubtedly was most interested in that day can be heard in the video below. "I don't know what that noise is," he proclaims. On the way home when we asked him what he liked about the hike, he said "the animals." But it wasn't the deer he talked about, it was the crickets. Go figure!

Happy Father's Day!

Be kind to stuffed animals

(Please ignore the mess of unfolded clothes on top of the dresser.)

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

tick tock

I haven't been posting much because I'm in a mad dash to finish Silas' Knitted Farmland by his birthday on Monday. It's down to the wire! Here's a link to a video of Silas "helping" me put it together, which I posted on my knitting blog a few days ago.

I'm sure there will be more posts as soon as the blanket has been completed!

An artist at work --the video

Drew took this video before we left for WI butI didn't have a chance to post it till now. He took some great pictures too. I'll publish those as well, as soon as I have an opportunity...

Adventures in Sledding

I took this video on the 20th, and it accompanies the pictures in this post. This was filmed the day before our big snow storm, and there is just a thin layer on the ground (but it's still a lot for Western Washington!). What fun Silas had that day despite the little tumble he took!

Silas vs. Vacuum --a love/hate relationship

Way back on Thanksgiving, I noted that Silas called the vacuum "gummy." I suppose you can look at the second syllable of vacuum and get the connection he's making. This video shows Silas using a little sweeper vacuum, which we got for Silas at my friend Jill's suggestion. It really is sweet to see how helpful he can be with his little sweeper, which he will push around all over the house. As you can see, he loves it, and we are hoping it eventually leads to him not being deathly afraid of "real" vacuums. So far, no dice. If our vacuum is even in site, he makes a pouty face and begins to cry. One time, I brought it downstairs thinking that if it was around enough, he'd just get over it. He started crying and shaking violently and I quickly nixed that idea. We'll stick with his little "gummy" for now and hope that he outgrows this fear soon.

For Papa