Our last adventure of 2010: Snow Time

One of the books Erik checked out from the library a couple weeks ago was "The Biggest Snowman Ever" and since that moment on he has been asking to go to the mountains to play in the snow. I have slowly been collecting snow gear for the boys in hopes that once we have a cold enough storm and the snow sticks I could take these guys to the mountain. Today was that day.

We tried to get a early start, but had to stop at Big 5 to pick up some extra sleds. We packed up all our snow gear into the car and headed on our way. It was a bit crowded when we got there at 11, which we expected. Next time we'll get an even earlier start.

Now I truly understand what parents who live in snow mean. It takes you 15 minutes to get your kids dressed for them to play outside for 5 minutes. In our case it took us an hour to get there, 15 minutes to get dressed and for only an hour of fun in the snow, but it was worth it.

Elliot's was the easiest to get ready for the snow. I already had his snow suit from when Erik was little. I have to do comparison pictures of the two boys in their snowsuits at the same age. So cute, I almost die of cuteness every time I took at these pictures.

  

 

   

As I knew from past experience Elliot would freak out in the snow and Erik I was unsure of. I knew he was excited to get there and play, but I really had no clue how he would really react. That picture of him in the snow is honestly the last time we went. We were more than over due for another visit.

Erik got dressed first, but I didn't take a before picture, instead here is my oldest after a full day in the snow getting ready to leave. Probably one of my favorite pictures of the day. Anyway I got him ready and then sent him off with Daddy while I got Elliot ready. Elliot was freaking out and I figured I should just deal with it myself and let Erik have fun.

I guess one of the very first things my dear husband does it take Erik sledding down the hill super fast. Go figure, men are so clueless that way! So I come back to find them heading down again and to my surprise Erik did well with it. Last time he totally freaked out on the sled so I was happy to see him so content to slide with his parents today.

In the meantime I am entertaining Elliot who would much rather be with daddy than me with. I love my kids and give them lots of hugs and kisses, but when they are hurt I tell them to brush it off if it isn't serious. I am not a big coddler, or in this case since he is freaked out I just set him down in the snow and walk backwards to take pictures. He wasn't too happy about it, but it did make him feel a bit better. He tried to walk a bit and this is probably the only time he walked the entire day.

After daddy came back from his trip down the hill Elliot immediately detached from me and asked for his father. Not surprised on that one, kind of expected it.

Although I did try to take a more subtle approach to getting him use to the snow. I decided to sit down with him in it and just let him get comfortable with the idea. He played a bit around my legs, but hardly moved a muscle to be honest.

My oldest on the other hand had the greatest time in the snow today. We did everything, but of course his very first request was to build a snowman. This snow was terrible to build one so we did the best we could with what we had. Luckily three year olds are very distractible and didn't care that we didn't get very far.

  

    

Then after we half finished our snowman we decided to do more sledding. I asked daddy to go first because I wanted to get a good picture of him going down the hill. I am trying the "al servo" mode on my camera and wanted to test it in action. It definitely worked. After I got the shot of my husband, Erik asked for me to go down the hill. I just put the focus dead center and told my husband to focus on that. It worked and he got fantastic results too.

Our kids definitely go through phases on their "favorite" parent. Maybe its because Elliot is so dependent on daddy lately, whatever it is Erik and I have really been bonding and I love this picture and how it captures that. Also I really like this picture my husband took of me.

And of course my orally fixated child ate the snow and I told him immediately not to put it in his mouth, we were in a high traffic area, but daddy still captured this priceless albeit kind of gross moment.

During Erik's sledding adventure Elliot hung out on daddy's legs and felt safe. Even mommy couldn't hold him anymore at this moment.

After a couple times down the hills an hour had passed, it was close to nap time and time to head home.This is when Erik gave me a picture perfect moment laying on the sled. Love these pictures and there are a lot I'm saving for his scrapbook. Look on flickr if you want to see everything.

 Then it was time to unload and get undressed and head home for lunch and maybe a nap (no naps occurred). Luckily we didn't push it and the kids weren't grumpy about getting undressed. We have learned to not test the limits lately.

Here is our wintry wonderland until we headed back to the buildings and bright light of Southern California. Its great that this truly natural place is only an hour away although I will admit it gets insanely crowded at time.

Just some general notes about my strategies for photographing today. I initially was using AV mode since the conditions were completely unpredictable and the light was constantly changing. After looking my my histogram I realized my camera was over compensating for the white snow and I am not sure how to set my AV mode to stop the over compensation. I just switched to manually metering my scene and decided to just take my pictures 90% of the time in the shade. When we were doing the sled pictures I metered for brighter conditions. I definitely recommend doing that if you want your snow to look like snow and your people to look like people in these bright light conditions.

The Zoo: Daddy's Perspective

My boys have been hanging out at home, with visitors since Friday so we decided a pit stop this morning to the zoo would be a good excursion to burn off some energy. I really wanted to go because I could spend one on one time with each child and let Elliot walk since daddy would be with us. On our usual zoo visits Erik and Elliot mostly hang out in the stroller because I have a difficult time controlling both of them out of the stroller. Today was even more exciting because there was a new elephant exhibit we hadn't seen yet.

On our way out the door I told daddy I wasn't bringing my nice camera and for him to bring the point and shoot. When I saw how many pictures he was taking I thought a blog from his photographic perspective might be a good change of pace.

Almost immediately both boys wanted to walk. Carl and I always handle our boys with a man on man defense because Erik has a really bad running habit. It is hard to control this because sometimes it is ok for him to run and sometimes not and I am having a hard time teaching him when it isn't and he has a hard time listening to me when I tell him not to run. So today was a good day to work on it.

We stopped first for lunch, zoo bought, since we are out of food at home and were running late this morning. We wanted to guarantee good spirits and no meltdowns during our time there today. It worked for the most part.

One thing I have noticed about my boys at 20 months old, when they are with me they are fine with my comfort and holding them, but when daddy is around they won't let me hold them or comfort them. So the entire day anytime I tried to hold or play with Elliot he just turned to daddy and asked for his attention.

On the other hand Erik and I have been getting along great and are best buds. So it gave me an opportunity to run around with my oldest and answer all his "why" questions. Some people get annoyed with the why process or questions, but I love it. I think it is great when my 3-year-old asks me what each animals eats and listens very hard to the answer. I love when he searches for the baby in a herd of animals and asks who the mommy and daddy are. I love that he is engaging with his environment and relating to it the way a 3-year-old relates to the world. Most of all I love that daddy was there today so I had the energy and focus to answer all of his questions about the world.

I am a little disappointed because I can't tell you what Elliot's favorite part of the zoo was today. All I know is what daddy told me because I was too busy chasing Erik and answering all his question. He did say the he liked the fencing and plants more than the animals, no surprise there. I also think he liked hanging out with daddy and just being able to walk around the zoo for once.

Here are just a couple of pictures that don't really have a story, but are too cute not to be excluded in all these photos from today.

I also wanted to point out how crowded it was at the zoo. Erik was so excited and running around that he kept almost running into other strollers and other people. How do you teach a 3-year-old to look where he is going, especially when his mom suffers from the same problem? I saved him from numerous collisions today.

Since we lived 5 minutes from the zoo and go there often we almost always run into someone we know there or make new friends. Usually it's not worth mentioning, but today we ran into our friends the Anderson's. Ella and William are some of Erik and Elliot's closest friends. We were all walking out together at the same time, go figure, it was close to naps, and I was again reminded of how challenging Erik is with his running habit. I let him out of the stroller to walk with his friend Ella when he tried to run with her. He does this often with Ella, but Ella listens to her mommy and now let's go when Erik does this. Eventually Erik took off down the ramp full speed and didn't stop at my calls and I was pushing the stroller. This is a constant battle, run with the stroller, yell at Erik, or ditch the stroller and chase after him. This is why he is not allowed out of the stroller with just me at the zoo. I think being with friends especially when he is overtired gets him over excited and he doesn't act appropriately. We definitely have to work on this running problem. Maybe some internet research is in my future. The punishment of being put in the stroller or being forced to hold my hand doesn't seem to be very affective. Thankfully his brother doesn't seem to suffer from the same habit! Small blessings!

The Simplicity of Christmas

I remember being stressed out all last Christmas because I had to throw three parties in four days and I was so ready to take down the Christmas tree by the time Christmas was over. This year I decided to pace myself. I asked my brother to host Christmas Eve, I am not throwing a party for the Gotlieb Family and I just hosted everyone at my house on Christmas day, no travel, no stress, just a simple Christmas.

Leading up to Christmas was a bit stressful for us. Carl has been traveling and working most of this month that the boys and I have hardly seen him and I barely had a moment to catch my breath so I could plan what I wanted to do on Christmas. Sometimes its not a bad thing, but I just winged it this year.

I decided to just have an open house and emailed my family the schedule. Whenever they wanted to come they were welcomed. I knew my family wouldn't all be there before 1 pm when the boys needed to nap so I wasn't stressed. They'd be there before 4 pm when everyone was going to be up and ready to open presents.

Our day started simply. Erik crawled into our bed at 6:30, but we wanted to give Elliot a chance to sleep until he needed too and for mommy and daddy to wake up slowly. We put "Merry Madagascar" on the tv and told Erik we would go downstairs when Elliot woke up. Luckily Erik was feeling patient that day.

The minute Elliot woke up, the show was not over, and Erik headed for the stairs. We had to beg him to wait for us because we wanted to see his face when he saw what Santa brought. He saw the "cars movie stuff" he had asked for waiting under the tree and of course Erik started playing with Elliot's toys and vice versa.

Erik is the kind of kid who doesn't want to play with his presents when he gets them. He wants to open everything all at once, look at what he got and then choose what he is going to play with. Over the course of the day everything will be opened and played with, but not as it is unwrapped. Elliot is completely different. As soon as he unwraps a present he wants to play with the toy immediately and won't touch any other presents until he's finished playing with that toy.

 

By the time we had breakfast at 8:30 Erik had unwrapped all of his presents and Elliot still had half of his under the tree. At the end Erik had to beg Elliot to unwrap his presents and ended up helping him to unwrap a lot. I think part of this might be having communal toys and kids of the same gender. There really are no Erik or Elliot toys in our house, they all just go in the same melting pot so Erik is just as excited to see Elliot's toys knowing this fact.

We tried not to go crazy with the kids this year and gave them only a few things. The biggest hit was a Thomas train set and two trains that Elliot got from Santa. They were even a bigger hit than the "cars movie stuff" Erik had on his Santa list.

 

The biggest Christmas flops this year, were the "Cars" ramp Santa got for Erik. Its sitting in a pile on the ground untouched. Also the trike since the handle bars are too high and Elliot can't scoot on like I thought he might be able too.  Everything else went exact as planned.

I would like to say that we spent the morning relaxing and just hanging out as a family waiting for everyone to arrive. I wish I could say that.

Instead Carl and I found ourselves in a new role of toy arbitrators. All morning long the boys wanted to play with the same toy and fought constantly. Neither boy cared or understood the concept that the toy was given to the other child. It just doesn't work in our house. So we quickly learned the art of toy arbitration because you can't take toys away on Christmas morning.



Then comes the hard part for me. Right at lunch time family came pouring in and I spent most of the rest of my time in the kitchen cooking, washing dishes or putting my kids to sleep. When my family is there I feel a bit overwhelmed and never really break out the camera much. So I only have one picture from that moment. The rest of the story doesn't come from my own hands.

When Grandma and Grandpa arrived they got the boys their "big" present, a power wheel. The directions say 3 and older, but Erik really needs a few driving lessons for this thing. It was pure chaos as everyone yelled directions and tried to teach him new things about this car. I got it that everyone was excited, but the poor kid was a bit overwhelmed with information. He just wanted to drive his new car and wear his new police man uniform. So we played for a bit and all went inside for companionship. Driving lessons to resume the next day.

My next favorite part of the day involved me so I wasn't able to capture it on camera, but my sister-in-law captured the moment a bit. We all gathered after naptime to open our family gifts. It is dark in the room and I had no clue where my flash was so my camera was useless. Besides in that moment I just wanted to be with my kids and not capture them.

In my family there is the tradition of Santa's Helper. This person is the one who passes out all the presents, and in the past it was usually me who performed this task. Well without prompting Erik took on the role of Santa's Helper. He would bring me the present and ask who it was for and then bring each person their present. He went one step further and helped each person to unwrap their present. I have to say, the adults probably loved it as much as Erik.

Wearing the cowl my sister-in-law made for me. LOVE it!

Then we ate our big feast made by all the Johnson women and everyone started to say their good-byes. It was a fun day and great to be with all the friends and family we love. I knew Erik had a fun Christmas when he asked me this morning "who is coming over today," hoping that I would tell him our family was visiting again. Sorry kiddo, it was just us today.