Grandparents and 12 Days of Christmas

Since having kids I have decided that grandparents are the best idea ever. Ellie heartily agrees with me. And Charlie hasn't come right out and said as much, but I think he likes the idea too. He has gotten some good grandparent time in his short life so far.

My mom could put Mary Poppins to shame with all her babying skills and help.


My dad can't resist a turn to hold Charlie. One night before dinner he was holding Charlie and kind of bouncing him, trying to get him to stop fussing a bit. Ellie, who was playing under the kitchen table at the time, was watching and said, "Grandpa's dancing!" She hurried out from under the table to join in, spinning and goose-stepping. She's quite the little tag-along to her grandparents.


Brady's parents surprised us with a visit during Thanksgiving weekend. They were in the neighborhood, if you consider only a six-hour drive to be "in the neighborhood." I may be partial, but I think that a new baby Charlie is pretty hard for any grandparent to resist. It was really nice of them to make the sacrifice to come all that way to see us (well, let's be honest, Ellie and Charlie) for such a short visit.


Before they left, they gave us a fun bag of gifts to open, starting on Dec. 1. Each day for the first 12 days of the month was a fun gift to get us into the holiday spirit. The first day was a couple of advent calendars with a chocolate for each day. Ellie never fails to remind us about the "chocolate calendars."

Some of the other days included:

Some Christmas crafts to decorate. Ellie was really excited about the "pon-pons" and started ordering the sequins around like they were people ("guys, you go over here . . . c'mon guys, over here . . . on this one, guys . . .")


Cookie cutters and play dough. For some reason Ellie is convinced that the candy cane is a letter 'r.'


A Santa decoration. When Ellie first saw this, she kept introducing herself to it ("Name is Ellie, name is Ellie . . ."). Meanwhile, when we went to take her to actually sit on Santa's lap, she played mute the whole time. Go figure.


And a Santa Pez dispenser. This quickly became one of her "guys." She spent a good hour showing him the Christmas tree, making him climb the tree, ride the rocking horse ornament, etc. She was pretty excited later when we showed her that there was candy involved.


There were also ornaments, books (which Ellie loves reading at bedtime now), a plate for leaving out Santa's cookies (Ellie pretends to eat and feed me cookies from this regularly), and other fun things. We have had a lot of fun looking forward to the presents every day. Plus, there's still Ellie's favorite, the chocolate calendar. Today Ellie and I made a thank you card for all the fun presents. Just in case it doesn't arrive as the artist intended it (some of the sequins have already been pulled off by a toddler who will remain nameless--we didn't even try for pom-poms), here is a picture of it. Thanks again for all the fun!