The New Dad Blog

Home for Christmas

We were home in Denver for Christmas this year which was quiet but relaxing. We didn't make a big deal out of Santa Claus but we did talk about it with Jude and he left out some cookies for Santa before going to bed on Christmas Eve. Jude tends to get a bit overwhelmed with lots of presents, so when he woke up on Christmas Day he wasn't all that interested in new presents. We had opened up the presents from my family in Australia on Christmas Eve, and he just wanted to continue playing with those gifts. Above is Jude at 7am on Christmas morning playing with his new animals from his family down under.

We opened up presents throughout Christmas Day and one of his new favorites was Buttermilk, the rocking horse from Baba and Grandpa. Here is a long video of Jude and Anna both enjoying their new horses.

This week we have tried introducing some positive reinforcement for Jude, mainly around his treatment of Anna. Every time we catch him being nice to Anna he gets a sticker, and when he gets five stickers he gets a surprise toy. This seems to have helped, he has been making more efforts to be nice as you can see here with this photo above taken on Christmas morning.

We had a white Christmas in Denver this year. We had a snowstorm a couple of days before Christmas and it dropped 8-10 inches of snow. Jude likes to come out and play in the snow while I shovel the sidewalk.

Jude's Getting Ready for Christmas

Marcy made this gingerbread train with Jude this week. He enjoyed the whole process (he particularly liked the green frosting), and was quite impressed with the finished product.

On Tuesday this week it was Marcy's birthday. So we all went out for afternoon tea at Marcy's favorite tea house. Jude ordered a hot chocolate and we were all surprised to see what an elaborate creation it was. Jude loves getting sprinkles on his ice cream and here they came with his hot chocolate and whipped cream. It took him a while to get through it but he did manage to finish his big drink.

Jude got a special personalized video email from Santa this week (thanks Baba) and he was completely mesmerized by this video. He must have played it literally 30 times this weekend. You can see how captivated he is by it.

The other big news of the week for Jude is that this past week Jude went to school every morning. We gave him the option one day to go to school or play with Summer, our babysitter, and he chose school. He loves it. On Saturday morning when he woke up he wanted to start getting ready for school. When we told him he couldn't go he started crying. He said, "I still want to go to school Daddy." The bummer here is that school is now off for two weeks for the Christmas break. It will be interesting to see if his enthusiasm is still there come January.

We finally bought our Christmas tree yesterday. We held off doing it until now because we weren't sure whether or not we would go to the mountains for Christmas. We decided to stay home and Jude helped Marcy decorate the tree after we got it home.

Jude Goes Sledding in Keystone

Jude tried sledding for the first time today.We have spent the weekend in Keystone with our old neighbors, James, Amy and Max. We took Jude and Max (who is 4) sledding today. Max is an old hand at this, but it was Jude's first outing. He loved it. He laughed and giggled the whole time and was very disappointed when it came time to go. One day this season I am hoping to get Jude on skis, but we will stick with sledding for now.

Jude has never been much of a TV watcher, but James and Amy had a Little Einstein video that captivated Jude for a while. Interesting the chairs both boys chose to watch the TV.

Jude has been enjoying school so much that we have decided to up his days to four days a week starting this week. We may even do five days some weeks. He gets bored at home after a while, and he is home nearly every afternoon with Marcy. He really enjoys being around the other kids, and he talks about his friends at school now all the time.

We have been mentioning potty training to Jude now for months. He still shows no interest every time we mention it, but we will keep plugging away at him. We have even bribed him with M&M's and gum if he does it. One day soon we hope to report the breakthrough.

We have been waking Jude up from naps by 3:30pm so we can put him to bed earlier. His bed time has been 8:30pm, but that left no time for Marcy and I to spend together before we go to bed. So now we put him down between 7:30 and 8pm every night. Here is a photo I took of Jude before I woke him up today - what an angel.

Silly Daddy Got It Wrong

"Silly Daddy Got it Wrong" is one of Jude's new favorite expressions. Sometimes, of course, I am wrong and he is probably justified in saying it and other times he just thinks he's right, so he says it anyway. Like most 3 year olds he is quite certain of his positions.

We have mentioned here before Jude's love of car washes. This week we made a "pillow car wash" in the basement. He brought all his cars, trucks and buses from his playroom and put them through this new car wash. He has probably spent three or four hours this week playing with his new car wash.

In the basement we also have an old phone that Jude and Anna like to play with. Marcy got a bit of a shock yesterday afternoon when a policeman showed up at our front door saying there was a 911 call from our place. Jude had unknowingly dialed 911 and because the operator heard kids in the background they sent the police to investigate. Oops. We will have to keep a closer eye on Jude around the phone in future.

Sometimes Jude and Anna play very well together. Tonight they were playing with Jude's dump truck. And while Jude didn't like it if Anna took over the drill, he would happily let her sit next to him to play.