Eleanor and Henry celebrated Christmas this week! Both kids had the week off from school, and they took advantage with lots of fun trips with Mom. Friends Stacey, Ben, Anna and Jackie were in town and went along for trips to the Museum of Science and Industry and the Brookfield Zoo. Then, next thing we knew, it was Christmas Eve! We decided to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve, so we cooked up prime rib, sweet potatoes, corn, mashed potatoes, and of course bread and olive oil. Both Eleanor and Henry ate the prime rib (a first for both), and Henry especially liked it. We capped off the evening with chocolate fondue for desert. Henry’s eyes proved bigger than his stomach, as he dipped one of everything into the chocolate, but then left most of them on his plate. Eleanor, on the other hand, licked her plate clean….literally. Uncle B and Lala were over for dinner and for bedtime stories, and then Lala slept over in Eleanor’s room with both Eleanor and Henry on the trundle bed. Listening to Eleanor and Henry talk about Santa coming over the baby monitor was hilarious! Eleanor said, “Henry, if I hear a loud racket on the roof, I’m going to get up.” They eventually wandered off topic, with Eleanor going into a lengthy diatribe on why she was an adult and Henry wasn’t (mostly because he still wore a diaper at night), and what they wanted to be when they grew up. Eleanor: Airplane Driver, Henry: he ended up falling asleep before Eleanor finished her answer :)
Christmas morning we donned our matching pajamas and went down to tackle some gift opening. Eleanor was a little sad that Santa didn’t bring her the tea cups she had asked for (we already have so many!!!) but she quickly recovered. We had most of the kid’s presents open by breakfast, so we took a break and ate oatmeal and waited for Uncle B to come over. Eleanor and Henry spent most of the morning mastering the cool balance beam that Lala gave them. After Uncle B arrived, we opened the presents from him, and then had a pancake lunch. They were super tasty, although Henry was sad that we had to choose between waffles and pancakes (the machine is either a griddle or a waffle iron, but not both simultaneously…). We spent most of the afternoon constructing the cool train that Uncle B gave us. For dinner, we decided to do make your own pizzas, which were a fun hit. All the excitement proved a bit too much for poor Henry though, and he nearly fell asleep face down in his pizza. We were all watching him eat with his eyes closed and his head bobbing around, then Mama asked if she should move his place, and he said yes and promptly put his head down and fell asleep for about an hour. Of course, the first thing he said when he woke up was, “pizza”, so Uncle B fed him about three more bites and then it was back to sleep.
