A Griswold's Christmas

I have spent the past hour finishing the lights on the main tree in the family room. I don't like doing things half way and the Christmas Tree on the main floor is no different. Parker's Nanna and Grand-dad had given us their very large and beautiful Christmas Tree to us a couple of years ago and I want to make sure I do it justice. What does that mean? It means weaving in and out of every single branch throughout the whole tree. By the time I have finished the tree it should be the home of 1800 little white lights. My wife makes fun of me with my obsession for the perfect tree, but I don't hear her harping on me when I am on my hands and knees cleaning every speck of dirt behind the toilet. Funny thing is, I clean behind the toilet as often as I put lights on the Christmas Tree.

Now, for Parker. The little monkey is upstairs yelling at his mommy because she is trying to get him to take a nap now since he was unable to have his morning nap due to having to go to Sick Kids. It seems to have quieted down for the moment, as I heard her through the monitor singing to him as she holds him in the glider chair.

On Wednesday, I had reported to everyone that Parker was able to pull himself into a standing position by himself. Yesterday, we decided to continue working on this and Parker was repeatedly pulling himself up. We were all quite surprised and happy to see how quickly he was able to do it. Now that he knows how to, he is very confident and now does it with ease. Parker even crawled over to his toy box and tried to pull himself up without me sitting him beside it. As of yesterday he had not realised that he had to be in a sitting or kneeling position to help himself up. He was unsuccessful getting into a standing position from his hands and knees. I will make sure that he has several opportunities to work on that in the next few days.

We did decide to have Parker spend 15 to 20 minutes of his play time standing at his toy box playing with his work bench that sat on top of it. Parker has gotten really good at repositioning his feet whenever he decided to move his upper body while holding on to his toy box. Still, my wife and I are going to have to find a way for Parker to learn how to cruise as we do not have a lot of furniture that he is allowed to be around to cruise on.