Christmas card picture attempts . . .

Christmas snuck up on me this year. Several days ago, I realized I hadn't even thought about our Christmas cards. Since then, I've learned that it is nearly impossible to get a good picture of a 16 month old for Christmas. After Cass freaked out after we tried to get a picture of him with Santa at the mall, I thought I had a really clever idea . . . dress Chris up as Santa!!! I happened across a super cheap Santa outfit, so I bought it, and thought if Cass could watch Chris put the outfit on, surely he would let "Santa" hold him for a picture. Wrong. Very, very, wrong. As you can see from the picture above, someone is missing. He wouldn't even get close to big, scary, red Dad. So, it was on to Plan B . . .

We had our holiday party for my work Friday night. I thought we'd take advantage of being dressed up and try to get a picture in front of the tree. This time, we were able to get all 3 of us in the picture, but as you can see Cass wasn't very happy. So, this didn't make the cut either.

A couple years ago, Chris and I dressed our dogs up and took their picture in front of the tree. That was easier than trying to get a picture of Cass this year. We finally got some "action shots" in front of a big tree in Chris's office that we're going to use. They will just have to do. And let's hope Cass doesn't remember that Santa isn't just Daddy dressed up in a big red suit. :)

New Coat

A few weeks ago, a friend of Chris's called and told him that Target.com had Britax carseats (which typically sell for $229) on sale for $45. So, of course we got on line and ordered one, and I emailed several of my "mom friends" to let them know about the great deal (some of you blog readers got that email). Well, the saying "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" certainly is true, because Target sent me an email a few days later and said that it was a pricing error and they couldn't sell it to me at that price. However, they offered to give me a $25 gift card, and by me accepting it I would agree to not bring any litigation against Target (as if I would sue over a mispriced carseat anyway). So, I put the gift card toward a winter coat, hat and gloves for Cass. It hasn't really been cold enough to bundle him up in it yet, but I did it anyway when Chris was putting our Christmas lights up outside so we could get a picture.

Christmas is coming

Christmas season snuck up on us this year - I guess it's because Thanksgiving was later than usual. Anyway, we're finally getting our decorations up. Here's a couple pictures of Cass "helping" me decorate the tree - as you can imagine, he took more OFF the tree than he put on.

Hat

Cass loves to wear Daddy's hat . . .

Practice photo . . . first of many . ..

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm playing with my new camera quite a bit. I figured out how to take monochrome (which apparently is the fancy term for "black and white") pics. And, I'm also working to perfect the art of blurring the background, and it seemed to work here - the dark color in the background is actually Chris sitting on the chair in his sweats with a computer on his lap . . . who would know, huh?

New camera

I know. This is not a picture of Cass, which is the purpose of this blog and the reason you all read it. However, I am SOOOO excited . . . I got my Christmas present early - a new camera!!! Cass was taking a nap when I got it and the dogs got tired of having the flash go off at them, so I resorted to taking pictures of my orchid which is just starting to bloom. The great close-ups that I can take with this camera are amazing. I took 133 pictures the first hour that I had the camera. :) I have a lot to learn about it, but will be practicing a lot, so expect to see a lot of posts with pictures of Cass on here in the coming days!

Now he's REALLY walking

You may remember from my previous posts that Cass took his official first steps on Halloween. Well, apparently he was just giving me a "sneak peek" at what he could do, because since then he would only take 3 or 4 steps, and then would revert to crawling. Until last night. All of a sudden he just started walking around the house! He was a little wobbly, but he sure did it! Dad was quick enough to grab the camera and get it on tape. And by the way, yes, I realize his outfit looks ridiculous. He had been wearing jeans earlier in the day and spilled water on them, so before his nap I put some pajama pants on him and didn't bother to change him once he woke up. Of course he decides to do something very video worthy when he's dressed like that. :)

Here he is on day 2 of walking. He's already showing some improvement, but as you can see he still wipes out. Fortunately, he usually just laughs when he falls and gets right up and tries again!!