Merry Christmas! 2008, part 1

Christmas time at the Hammond house was filled with lots of visiting, and to Nate's delight, presents. :)

And most of all, love.

Nate and his 'sissy' (his cousin Samantha) sharing a sweet moment.

Niece Sydney and Mike sharing a sweet moment as well.... that or they are staring each other down in a contest of wills...

Sweet Sydney being adorable as usual.

Nate enjoying dinner with his cousins, Sydney and Kaylee. Nate's picnic table definitely came in handy with limited table space in a very crowded kitchen.

Whether at my mom's house or my house, fun was had by all. The Wii was a big favorite... See how happy Mike is? I'm quite sure I've seen this same grin somewhere recently...

Oh that's right, it's the same grin that Nate had EVERYtime he opened a present. :)

More evidence.

And this brings us to quite possibly the best present ever. Well the best and the biggest. My sister and brother in law decided to grab the title of BEST AUNT AND UNCLE EVER. See the excitement on the kids faces, and the inflatable bounce house wasn't even fully inflated yet.

Loads of fun was had by any and all children under the 150 pound limit.


Here's a picture of our Christmas tree, mere minutes after Santa had come...
The next post will reveal what exactly was in those packages, and more Christmastime pictures.

Christmas Preparations 2008

As the Christmas holiday was approaching we celebrated a bit with friends from my work. They graciously invited us to stay the night at their home in Lexington and so we brought Nate along to enjoy the party too. Nate was sooooo good and was immediately comfortable around everyone. He is definitely coming out of his shell more and more each day. Nate is still the pickiest eater I know (that's saying a lot coming from me!) and so I'm not quite sure, but I believe that his "dinner" consisted of wheat crackers, cheerios, and ranch dip. That's healthy, right?

Nate's new best friend, Jeromie, "loaned" him his iPhone, which Nate immediately fell in love with. His favorite application was the Star Wars light saber. Nate forced Jeromie to play with him and the iPhone for an hour at least. A whole hour where Mommy cringed each time the $300 iPhone got slung around and pounded on.

Back home we decided it was time to get our own tree out. Though Mike questioned my idea to put the whole tree up while Nate was awake, Nate did a GREAT job helping. He was really excited at each step along the way. It made putting the ornaments on quite a slow process, but since we still don't have a lot of ornaments yet it worked out just fine.

Each year I buy a new ornament for the tree. The last few years I've been making it a point to get ornaments that can be hung low on the tree with a toddler. :) This year's addition were these super cute mittens. I let Nate put all the soft ornaments on the tree this year. He did amazingly well, both in skill and in patience.

Here he is bargaining with me that this jingle bell ornament is indeed a soft ornament and thus he can put it on himself. Who can resist him?

This was when I realized I needed to explain to him about the reason for the nativity set.... that they were not infact action figures as he first thought. Nate did really well for the most part, not playing too roughly with the nativity figures, only needing reminders from time to time. He'd even bring them too me, showing me the mommy, daddy, and baby. However we clearly will need to explain again next year, since last weekend when we put the tree and decorations up I noticed that one of the wise men had lost an arm in battle... sadly the baby Jesus will not be getting one of his gifts next year, I'm just unsure if it was the gold, frankincense, or myrrh.

I'll post soon with pictures from Christmas. My problem is somehow deciding between the 70 gazillion pictures I took...

Nate-isms

For the past few weeks Nate has been asking to go to the Park. My response has been, "I'm sorry baby, we can't go to the park... it's too cold outside." Usually the conversation ends there. However recently we had this conversation:

Nate: "'unna go park"
Mommy: "I'm sorry baby, we can't go to the park... it's too cold outside."
Nate: "No cold outside."
Mommy: "Oh yes, it's VERY cold outside."
Nate: "No cold outside. Hot."
Mommy: "No, it's not hot. It's COOOOLD."
Nate: "No cold outside. Hot."
Mommy: "It's cold outside."
Nate: (SCREAMING): "NO COLD OUTSIDE. HOOOOOOT!"
Mommy: "Fine. It's hot outside."
Nate: (with a devious grin on his face, but said in the sweetest, most innocent voice) "Go park?"

*sigh* You gotta love him. :)

Thanksgiving in Memphis

The Hammsters spent Thanksgiving in Memphis this year. We had hardly been in the door for 5 minutes and Nate had already made himself at home on his Elmo couch kept at his Tennessee Grandparents' (TG) house. He was extra excited about the new toybox that his TG had made for him. It was full of toys! Nate was so excited and kept showing us all the toys inside, over and over again. :)

It didn't take long for Nate to entice everyone into a friendly game of catch. And by friendly I mean you lightly toss the ball to Nate and then he pummels you with it. Nana and Grandpa D were a bit surprised by his aim and strength. :)

Seriously, could you say no to this?

He even got his Great Uncle Keith to join in on some soccer.

There were two turkey's at Nana and Papaw D's house this year. Only one of which we ate...

Nate and his awesome parents... :)


Nate and Papaw D coloring and sharing some giggles.

We also visited family in Mississippi. Nate and his Aunt Patsy fed Casey LOADS of dog food. Nate quickly became Casey's best friend. They even squabbled over dog toys later. :) Nate was so adorable at Aunt Patsy's house. We were telling him all his aunts and uncles and cousins names and we told him that one of Patsy's daughters was named Sherrie, and he looked over at her and called her, "More Patsy". :)

Nate's other best friend from the visit, his cousin Hayden. Nate followed him around everywhere, even stealing his hat. :) Hayden was so great helping and playing with Nate.

Nate got lots of love from his cousin Angie.
Nate sporting his full Memphis attire, showing his Tiger Pride. Go Memphis!

We really had such a great visit in Memphis for Thanksgiving. Nate's Nana made tons and tons of yummy food, way more than we could eat. Nate really got attached to his TG while we were there this visit. During our nightly routine of listing the people that we love, Nate makes sure to say Nana and Papaw D several times each night. I hope that we will be able to see them again soon. :)

Recreational Activities

Thought I'd share a bit of what Nate's been up to lately.

Nate cuteness: The other day Nate was playing near the ottoman and he bumped his head (don't worry, the ottoman is soft and squishy). He cried anyways and held his head. I asked if he needed a kiss. "Yes" he replied and came over to get his kiss on the head. He went back to playing and a few minutes later bumped his head again on the ottoman. He started to whine, put his hand on his head and looked at me. I asked if he needed another kiss. He looked over at me, looked down at his toys, back at me, then back at his toys...(clearly torn between getting kisses for his booboo and staying to play with his toys), he then proceeded to kiss his hand and smack the kiss on his own forehead and returned to his playing. Kinda like, "nah, I got this Mom." Haha. :)

Nate really likes to look at books. Especially this Wiggles book (let me just say that I can't STAND the Wiggles show and this book is about all I can tolerate).

I love the crossed leg... chilling out, reading a "good" book.

Some friends shared this cute craft idea with us to make for Thanksgiving. It required like 30 minutes of Mommy cutting things out of foam and like 5 minutes of Nate glueing. Though a bit tedious on my part, Nate absolutely LOVED making the turkey. His favorite part was the eyes. He still points to the turkey on the fridge and says, "Googley eyes". Which is well worth all that prep work on Mommy's part.

The finished product. We ended up making two turkey's, one for our fridge, and one to give to Nate's Nana and Papaw D (Mike's parents) for Thanksgiving.

We actually were able to spend Thanksgiving this year with Mike's family in Memphis. My next post will have pictures from our trip there. Gobble, gobble!

Happy Halloween!

I'm a bit behind, but wanted to post some pictures from Halloween.

At first Nate was a little timid going up to people's houses. He held my hand to and from each house. The houses with dogs are the ones that held most of his attention. After a recent visit to my BFF Lauren's house he has become extremely interested in dogs and calls them all 'Enry (henry).

After a few houses he got into the routine and did very well with saying Thank You and a few sporadic "trick or treats" thrown in for good measure. There was one thing he was adamant about... he wanted the people giving out the candy to hand it to him so he could put the candy in his own bucket. He also REALLY loved the houses that let him pick out his own candy, or should I say the houses that let him root around in their candy bucket for several awkward minutes until Mommy would step in and say, "Nate, just pick something please..."

Contrary to what the picture looks like I didn't let him walk into strangers houses... this is Nate trick or treating at my mom's house...:)

Nate and Grandma checking out all his loot...

"Here's some Skittles Mommy." I would say, awww how sweet, but he found out earlier that day that he didn't like Skittles, so he was merely unloading the junk.

Nate's cousin, Kaylee, who was Jessie from Toy Story. She kept her costume on for all of 3 seconds once she was at Grandma's house...


She then dressed Nate up in her costume, which he LOVED. Apparently Nate wanted to be a Cowboy for Halloween , he wore this costume the rest of the time we were there. He even took the hat home with him.

We all had a GREAT time and now almost a month later his candy is ALMOST gone. Though I am embarassed to admit how much of his candy was eaten by his parents.... and by his parents I mean me. Though I might have pawned some Skittles off on Mike... ;)

Not-Too-Scary Halloween fun at the Zoo

We went to the Halloween event at the Louisville Zoo a few weekends ago. Our fall activities will never end apparently. We have a Zoo membership so it was free to get in, a nice bonus for Mom and Dad. :) The event basically consists of lots of storybook characters posing for pictures, large sets and pictures everywhere to set up the "theme" of each area, hay bale maze, and kiosks set up all over where they give out candy. I think by the end Nate had a total of 10 pieces of candy and Daddy had a Barq's Rootbeer (they both seemed pleased with their "loot"). Nate was sooo cute at each candy kiosk. He wouldn't let the people put the candy in his bucket, he wanted them to hand it to him and then he would put it in. He was really good about saying thank you each time. Very adorable. Here are some pictures from our day (notice the hood of his giraffe costume NEVER made it on his head. He was adamant about that).

This is actually my favorite picture from the day:

We let Nate pick out one piece of candy to eat that night and he picked Sixlets (Do they even make this candy anymore?). He LOVED them! He kept saying, "More candy." I tried to explain to him to pace himself, that actual Halloween was coming and he'd get loads more candy then. Patience... not exactly a virtue of a 2 year old.