Benjamin's 2nd Christmas

We can hardly believe that Benjamin has celebrated his frst two Christmases already! At 21 months old, he was more aware of everything this year than last but still did not truly grasp the concept. He certainly was excited about all of the festivities and cookies all month long and especially for the influx of gifts this past weekend.

We decided to go to my parents' house in NJ on Sunday and stayed until last night. Since Benjamin's main Christmas present from us was too large to transport and he is not old enough to know the actual date, we opted to do our own "Christmas" on Saturday 12/22 so Andrew, Ben and I had our own celebration early. This way, Christmas actually lasted several days for Ben, which he seemed to not mind!

Here are some photos and video of us on Saturday morning. Ben usually likes his breakfast right away when he gets up, but when he saw all of the excitement under the tree, he didn't even seem remotely interested in eating until 9:30AM, after everything was opened!


Raiding his stocking first.

Andrew's mom always had a tradition with the kids when they were young that they would get a new ornament every year. This is something that we have adopted so here is Ben hanging his very own ornament on the tree - a Christmas ball from the Disney Cars movie. We told him it was a ball for the tree so he started saying "ball...tree!" and ran over to the tree to hang it up at his own level. I think it spent more time off the tree than on, though; he was so excited about it and just kept wanting to look at it!

Here Daddy helps him open some gifts that Grandpa G and CC sent up from Florida for Ben. He is patiently waiting while Andrew helps him loosen the ribbons before he can dig in.

He couldn't resist opening the add-on set for his Thomas and Friends Lego set right away! Daddy had a good time with this gift as well...

Like father, like son. Andrew oogles his new jumbo wrench set while Ben goes over to check out Daddy's tools and compare them to his own Ace Hardware toolbox (on table), a gift from Aunt Cinty earlier in the week. He's been talking about his "tools" ever since receiving his own set and found it amusing that his dad got a similar one from Santa! :)

The little puzzle sleuth busy at work with one of the latest additions to his collection - an A, B, C puzzle. Ben loves puzzles and spends quite a bit of time mastering all of the ones he owns. So, we decided to challenge him with this 26-piecer and also a firetruck jigsaw. He is still trying to really figure the jigsaw out but has made great progress and I'm sure he'll master it soon. I'm sure he'll be outshining me soon since jigsaw puzzles were never my forte :).

Here is Ben playing with his main Christmas present from us this year - a train table. He loves this and has not stopped "choo-chooing" since he got it! It's sort of a fun set since it not only has a train on it, but also has a farm with a tractor, a construction zone, a hospital, a port and an airport. So it is sort of like a mini city with a train and all different vehicles.

We arrived at my parents' house on Sunday afternoon. Here is some footage of Ben and Pop reading the paper together on Monday morning.

Here's a family photo of us on Christmas Eve. Ben is dressed up in a little mini sport coat - so cute!

Here's my brother Mike and future sister-in-law Chang.

Santa left this adorable kiddie sled filled with gifts for Ben under the tree at Nana and Pop's house. Too bad it was 55 degrees and raining all weekend instead of snow or else Ben would have been able to try it out right away.

Carefully selecting a gift from under the tree and then opening presents.

Taking a break to go and sit on top of Barney, just in case Barney was bored laying around sleeping.


Taking another break to dance to some tunes.

Here, Ben waits while Pop removes the myriad wire twisties on every single toy. In less than two years, Pop has become Ben's personal slave when they are together. The minute Ben would open something he'd yell "Pop" and go hand his toy to him so that Pop could remove it from the box.

Playing with his new (and loud!) Hess monster truck, which he loves. He's been zooming all over the house with it all day...


Here are some cute photos and footage of Ben's new block set. Andrew and I both remember these sturdy (and fun!) cardboard blocks from our childhoods so we were excited that Nana decided to get them for us, er, Ben...


Knocking them down (while being the center of attention) at Nana and Pop's house yesterday.



...and again this morning at home after discovering the ceiling-height tower that Andrew built last night and left for Ben to find in the basement. Ha, who says 30 year olds can't have fun with cardboard blocks too!



Ben's gift to all of the grandparents and aunts and uncles this year was a sculpted ornament of his professional Christmas photo to hang on their trees. It's basically a cutout of his head from the photo and mounted to resin to make it sturdy. He's obsessed with the one on our tree and keeps talking about the "baby" in the photo. Here he is hanging Nana and Pop's on their tree. I think he may hve snatched it away from them so he could hang it up even before they got to look at it!



Even more surprises were in store for Ben last night when we got home from NJ, as there were more packages waiting at our doorstep for him! Here he is exploring his new Lego table from Grandpa G and CC. He must have stood there for 20 minutes, taking Legos out of the mesh storage bag and moving them around the table, without acknowleging anything around him as he first explored his new toy.