We are Very Boring

We haven't done much lately: play with trains, visit the children's museum, go to Target. But we did have a playdate this weekend some of Mrs. Z's best friends and their conveniently close in age little boys! The boys had a great time fighting over trains and refusing to eat dinner. Or maybe that was just Monkey. At any rate, they were hilarious and we can't wait to get them all together again:
Monkey made this face for about 45 seconds before the picture was taken, it means "CHEEEEEESE"

Winter Hardy

Icepocalypse 2011 has left us in possession of our electricity, heat, and French toast supplies and yet as it leaves it is taking our tolerance for each other's activities with it. Truly, the weather has been nothing compared to the challenges of two adults attempting to actually work from home while entertaining a housebound toddler. We are so glad to have the playroom functional for just such occasions.
Monkey has made a valiant attempt to interest himself in trains. Such hard work. ( <--sarcasm). When that doesn't work out, he opens up pockets or drawers or what-have-you and explores their contents. Sometimes this has happy results, such as the discovery of butterfly hair clips. We'll just pretend that this is an early sign of spring.

Dinner a la Monkey

We have been homebodies this past month, as we continue to battle virus after cold after infection. It's pretty boring, honestly. But it has been nice to have some time to just hang out together between disinfecting and restocking the Kleenex. It's also given us some time to find more creative activities here at home. For instance, Monkey now has his first chore - feeding Dog. He is quite good at eyeballing the right amount of food, even if his scooping skills are somewhat...irregular. He's also started cooking dinner for humans:
His custom recipe for dinner included flour, oats, water, and red, green and yellow food coloring. Most surprising was that Dog actually really liked it, and ate about half before we got it away from him.

Mrs. Z's shots from the park

We have survived the first two weeks of Mrs. Z's new semester, and poor Monkey has been sick for the past week, with Mrs. Z catching up for lost time by coming down with it yesterday. In addition, the car thermometer yesterday morning read: 4. That is it. No other digits. Just, 4. So we are thinking a little wistfully of magical 60 degree temperatures... such as those from New Year's Eve:

Until it's warm again, we are trying ride out this latest sickness on the couch. Thank goodness that there are 13 versions of "Dinosaur Show". (Something we never thought we'd say, but now state completely devoid of irony.) If someone at PBS wanted to rush some more episodes of Dinosaur Train to the Netflix streaming market, we certainly would not complain.

New Year's Eve

It was so warm on New Year's Eve that we took off for the park! Mrs. Z and Aunt B both brought their cameras. Here is Aunt B's take:

New skill

Wipe Out

If he had his way, all the pictures we have of him would be variations on this theme:

Mrs. Z has fought the tongue-out habit for so many years she isn't really thrilled to see it passed on, especially if he wants to perform later:

Yeah, those eyes are still blue.

Christmas

Greetings, interwebotron. The month of December was marked by great sickness in our house, ending with a good case of croup just days before Christmas. But Christmas came anyway, and looked a little like this:

Christmas Eve:

The amazing gift contained in the box from the picture above:

A very good time was had by all. We hope you enjoyed your holidays as much as we did ours!

Merry Christmas Party

Grandpa T plays with many local music groups, and he also happens to play with this one Masonic group that has a historic, architecturally impressive building downtown. They have Halloween and Christmas parties for kids of their members every year, and as a member of the orchestra Grandpa T gets to bring Red Headed Cousin R (RHCR) and Monkey. Unfortunately, he spends most of the party playing music instead of playing with monkeys, but it is a good time for everyone.
Monkey has never sat on Santa's lap, or really even interacted with him before. The Zoo Keeper's philosophy on this is to wait until it's something that he wants to do and not to push it. Since Grandma T and RHCR were going to see Santa, Monkey went along for the ride. RHCR wanted to see Santa but was too afraid to sit on his lap. However, Santa thought that perhaps Monkey was brave enough to give it a try:Success!! He understands Santa but doesn't really get the concept of toys at Christmas yet, so he doesn't know what to say when people ask him what he wants Santa to bring him. So he didn't have much to say, but he sat and listened to Santa and found the entire experience very interesting.