Tivon loves stickers. That's all. No story, just a statement. :)

Chrisis coocoo's

That's right it Christmas cookie time. It may be a little known secret that I have only starting cooking/baking since having Tivon --mostly due to all of his allergies. But now, I have to say I do enjoy making new recipes, experimenting and having some family favorites.

Well, I thought we could start a tradition of making Christmas cookies and taking them to the neghbors. I should have considered my aptitude, or should I say inaptitude for making cookies.

First, I don't keep "regular" flour in our house. I make our bread and are used to wheat or white whole wheat flour--surely this is the same as plain white flour? Then I attempted to mix our cookies with a mixer that is missing one of the whisky things. That doesn't work so well. I tried to hand mix them with a fork. Again, a losing battle. But at least Tivon could "stir" too. So the dough did not look that good but I thought, hey, it's butter and sugar, what could be wrong?

So we continued. We chilled the dough and then Ti and I rolled it out. This actually went relatively well. Good mama/titi time. We cut out snowmen shapes. Very cute. Then baked them. Finally it was time for icing them. I had purchased this icing a week ago in anticipation. In my defense, it does say "Vanilla Frosting". Doesn't that mean white? I thought the picture of green icing was showing the potential of making many colors of icing. Nope. It was green icing. So here's a picture of our pathetic green snowmen. There actually kinda creepy looking. Oh, btw, they don't taste very good either.

So we may need to think of a new tradition.

HELP!!

Speaking of obsessed, Tivon is a little obsessed with "helping". I know, I know I should complain. Except he knows that Firemen help people sooo when he hears a fire truck outside (we live a few blocks from one so that it pretty often); it's like a firehouse here. Tivon runs around gathering his fire coat and fire hat and yells, "help, help! Ti ti help!" Then runs outside to wait for the truck to pick him up. I'm not kidding. I have witnesses to this charade. It's pretty cute except when it's bed time, or meal time or any time you'd just prefer to not run outside and wait for the truck.

Well fortunately, he got a chance to help last weekend when a neighbor was pulling some heavy rocks in a wagon. I seized the opportunity. I said, "ti we should go help her with the rocks." And off we were, Tivon donning his fireman regalia pushing the wagon to her house. She was so thankful, she decided to take a few pictures of us. Enjoy the helper. I know I do.

Beeeeeeeeeees. . .

Needless to say, Ti is in the stage where you introduce him to something and he clings to it for days. We rented the Bees movie since we have had a cold front here (dropped into the 40's brrrr!) and Tivon now wants to dress up like a bee all the time. Well I didn't want to go get a bee costume so we pieced together this number. He doesn't know the difference and flies just the same as if his antennae were black.

Ahhh, Christmas Time. It took a lot of convincing but Ti is finally excited about Christmas and has moved on from Halloween. I think finally giving him a Santa hat (a costume) and that worked. We are also doing our own version of an advent candle. Tivon prays, "Thank you papaw, grandma, mama, dada, nana and ti ti. Amen!" Pretty cute. Sometimes Shalosh even gets a shout out. He mostly likes blowing out the candle. The first night we did it he sang "Happy Birthday to 'ee-uh' (Olivia)". Cracks me up.

Blue Santa Parade! Tivon was so excited about going to the Austin holiday parade.He LOVED the big balloons . . .

And was practically giddy with excitement to see Star Wars characters, Elmo, Chinese dragons and of course marching bands. He seriously marched right along with ALL the bands.

This is his "surprise" face. He had actually been surprised by seeing Darth Vader and I missed it on camera so I asked him to do it again. This is the face I got. :)

This is the Biscuit Brothers. Tivon loves their music and quite honestly, so do we! They are a local band that plays on PBS and around town. We try to catch them whenever we can.

Here's the Blue Santa--pretty cool because it was all about giving toys. So at one point in the parade, all the floats stopped and all the parade goers walked over to pickup trucks and filled them with toys. Pretty cool idea.

Josh is soooo proud. His son likes Star Wars. I will say that Tivon watched one episode (I dont' even know which one) and we play Star Wars but don't watch the movies anymore. Josh was nott too happy about this. I asked Josh when he started watching them and he said, "Well, seven." I said, "Perfect. Tivon can watch them again when he is 7." :) Tivon has picked up some skillz though. It take two light sabers to ward off Tivon's "force".
Even Uncle Brandon got in on the action. Seriously, they look sooo much alike. Ti the little padawon learner.