Gingerbread Week

Every year I have done the 25 days of Christmas, but I always felt overwhelmed and tied down. This year, I decided to do week themes where I could be more flexible. The first week of December, we did gingerbread crafts.

Gingerbread Ornaments: Just takes glue, applesauce and cinnamon.

  We used a straw to poke a hole in the top. While I was taking care of Maverick, Lincoln poked multiple holes in every single one. We had to start all over, but I decided to save one of his creations.

For family home evening we made gingerbread cookies and one gingerbread man cookie. While reading Lincoln the book about the gingerbread man, I snuck out the gingerbread man cookie and hid him. When the oven timer went off, we went and checked in the oven and Lincoln was so excited to see that the gingerbread man was gone!! But he had left some picture clues and we began our scavenger hunt.

Lincoln was awesome at this game (cough, cough), he would find a clue and run to some other random object. Example: “Hey mom, look a picture of the toilet!” and then he would run to the kitchen table.

Finally we found the gingerbread man in the refrigerator!

Making Gingerbread houses! We have done this every Christmas since Lincoln was born. I made the gingerbread house pieces myself and then HOT-GLUED them together, seriously best idea ever.

We also played some gingerbread man learning games.

Counting Gingerbread Men 

Match the Gingerbread Gg on the Tree

Gingerbread Men Size Sorting

Painting our gingerbread Men ornaments

Grinch Christmas Party

I have been wanting to throw Lincoln a friend party forever, so I decided to do a Christmas party for him.

The Greedy, Green Grinch Party: Wear green, bring a green treat and a present to share!

I started off telling the story of “How the Grinch stole Christmas” and I showed them pictures from the book they could color. They colored for like two minutes and got bored, haha!

Grinch Bingo:

When they won, they got “Grinch Pills”

Pin the heart on the Grinch: Lincoln wanted to pin the heart on his face, and he nailed it!

 

For the Grinch Juice, I blended seven up and ice-cream with a touch of green food coloring. For the cups I put corn syrup around the rim and dipped it in sugar I dyed green.     I filled a platter with green fruit and vegetables: Apples, celery, pears, broccoli, grapes, kiwis and cucumbers.

Mav wearing his green Christmas shirt.Present time: We played music and they passed the gifts around until the music stopped. Or at least that was the plan, Mindy and I passed the gifts around while they tried to open every present they got. After several confused seconds we gave up and let them open them. Lincoln was SO HAPPY!

 

It was a blast and I will probably do it again next year!

Maverick is Five Months

Likes:

• Chewing on everything, especially blankets
• Lincoln is his favorite
• Getting tickled, tossed, and wrestled
• Smiling and talking to everyone
• Real food
• Getting his diaper changed
• Bath time
• Being on the floor
• Rolling all over the place
• Swimming on the ground

Dislikes:

• Poopy pants

Sleeps:

• Takes three naps and sleeps 12 hours at night.

Wears:

• 3-6 Month clothes
• Size 3 diapers
• A few 6-9 Month clothes

Nicknames:

• Smavo
• Mavo

Milestones:

Started scooting the day he turned 5 months. He is still learning but he gets on his knees, smashing his face into the ground and crawls his back legs. He already gets into our DVDs and pulls them out. He gets stuck constantly and runs into things because he is still too young to be moving. It is so weird because Lincoln didn’t scoot until he was 7 months. He still does a lot of swimming and doesn’t move at all though.

Extra:

Maverick absolutely LOVES Lincoln and is always smiling and laughing at him. He never was that interested until this past month and now he wants to be big and lay down by Lincoln while he plays or watches a movie. 

Maverick sleeps in his crib and never fusses for naps at all anymore and is just about the perfect sleeper. He is so happy when ever I go and get him.

He finally has started to somewhat like his bumbo

He gets so excited when he gets to do this trick! It makes him so excited that sometimes he can’t stand up at all.

This baby is a mad swimmer. I swear if I kicked and swung my arms as much as him, I would have rock hard abs.

Check out that drool! It is SO gross!

I wake him up from naps sometimes when he sleeps too long. You can tell by his face that he is thrilled by this.

I already started him eating solids. I know it is way too early, but he is extremely interested and ready. Whenever we eat he starts crying if we don’t feed him too and when we feed him he gets so excited he dives his face into the spoon. We cannot get food in him fast enough. So far he has loved applesauce, bananas, carrots and green beans.

Maverick has become a completely different baby this past month. He has always been really happy but wanted to be held and was usually fussy from about 5:30-7:30. We usually had to walk around with him or get out of the house. Now he fusses because he wants to be down on the floor playing. His fussy time has almost completely disappeared and he is always smiling and laughing. At church every week I have at least five different people come up and say, “He is just the happiest baby I have ever seen” and then they tell us how cute he is.  

A couple of weeks ago Mav started doing the “triangle sit” where he basically balanced on his arms. He now can sit for a good five to ten minutes but his weight is still supported on his arms.

Maverick is such a fun, goofy baby. He has so much personality for a little baby and makes us laugh every day. He is constantly wiggling, rolling and trying to get stuff. I can’t get over how freaking adorable he is. Man he is a little stud!