The Boys' First Snow and Santa

Brandon and Colin had an action packed weekend. They got to see their first snow fall on Saturday, and we made them sit in a basket out in the cold while snow flakes stuck to their eye lashes all so we could snap a few pictures, heh. Needless to say they were not near as excited about the snow as we were. Here are our little snow babies:


And here is a picture of them hanging out in the Pack N Play with Colin grinning.


The next 2 pictures were also taken Saturday morning when we stuck the boys in the Baby Bjorn carriers. When they were newborns they really seemed to hate these carriers, but now they love being able to face outward and see what is going on. And they also sometimes nap in them like Colin is doing here:


On Sunday we decided to take the boys to the dreaded mall to have their pictures taken with Santa. This is a rite of passage for all babies, and if parents are lucky their baby will be upset and crying in the picture, and they will show off the picture with pride for years to come. Our little guys, however, were about as emotional with Santa as they were with the Hokie Bird, as in they mostly just sat their stone faced with not even the slightest grin or grimace. At one point it looked as though Colin might start crying, but he got over that quickly. Am I a bad parent for wanting a picture of my babies crying on Santa's lap? :) The boys' Christmas sleepers were the same shade of red as Santa's suit, which prompted my coworker to say that it looked as if Santa had baby heads growing out of his arm pits, LOL.



Those red Santa sleepers sure have gotten quite a workout the past couple of weeks!

Yesterday evening we decided to go and get our Christmas tree. I am adamant that it be up and decorated this weekend, and I know it will take several nights to accomplish that. Night 1 - get the tree, Night 2 - rearrange furniture to make room for tree, Night 3 - get the tree put in the tree stand, Night 4 - put lights on it, and finally Night 5 - decorate it. Things sure don't get accomplished around here like they used to! So anyway, we figured we could just put the boys in the car and go get a tree and that they would fall asleep before we even made it to the tree nursery. Oh the best laid plans...what really happened is that Colin started crying before we left the driveway and worked himself up into a fever pitch by the time we got to Christiansburg. Brandon started out pretty relaxed and even fell asleep during his brother's tirade, but eventually Colin's high pitched screams annoyed even Brandon who started to cry himself just before we pulled into the nursery parking lot. I can honestly say I have never picked out a Christmas tree so fast in my life. It is currently still in the garage as we don't plan to put it up until tomorrow night. And for all I know when we cut the netting off and there will be a gaping hole in the branches. It was dark, I was under duress with screaming babies in the background, and I just wanted to get home as fast as possible. Speaking of which, Bill was driving close to 70 mph on the 460 bypass, as if he could outrun the 2 screaming babies crying in stereo in the backseat. It's a miracle the tree was still on the hood of the car when we got home.

Lastly here are some recent random videos of Brandon and Colin (I've decided to upload them to YouTube instead of embedding them in the blog because the videos seem bigger and clearer there). This video of Brandon babbling was taken this past Saturday and his Grammy was rubbing his lips as he tried to "talk", which sounded hilarious. This video is of the boys in the Pack N Play and Colin looks as though he is chewing on Brandon's foot. And here is a short video of them taken the other week during tummy time. We try to do 15-20 minutes of tummy time just before bed every evening, but they really need more tummy time. That's what is going to help them roll over more and start crawling. If only there was more time in the day!