santa?

A couple weekends ago (December 4th), we took Zane to visit Santa.  This year's visit did not go nearly as smoothly as last year's!  Zane was most certain that Santa was a scary stranger and wanted no part in sitting on his lap:

So the photographer asked us to sit with him... you can see the big fat baby tears still:

Then we happened upon Santa later in the day at a much quieter location (that Santa is so mobile!), and we decided to attempt visit #2.  It took us quite a while to warm up enough to venture near Santa, but we had fun talking to his penguin friends and checking out the decorations.  I'm sure Zane would have asked him for a turtle or a ball or a truck if he'd only realized it was Santa and not a stranger!  We got another shot of him with Santa - less upset, but still skeptical:

Then this past weekend, we went up to Whistler with some friends.  It was Zane's very first international adventure!  It's about a 4 1/2 hour drive from home, and we managed to fill up as much of the time with his nap as possible both ways.  We had a good time stomping around in the snow and wandering the Village while someone else went snowboarding ("where daddy go?").  My only goal for the weekend was to play with Zane and take pictures... I did a very poor job of taking pictures!  I've hardly taken any pictures lately - hopefully I can step it back up as the holidays get into full swing.

Here's a shot of Zane in all of his gear, minus a mitten:

We also got a cool shot of the moon on our way up to Whistler on Friday afternoon - I can't take any credit for it beyond saying "ooh!  you should take a picture of that":

That pretty much sums up our last couple of weeks.  Zane's still busy as ever, and it was pointed out again over the weekend that Zane only has two modes - on and off, with no real in between :)  When he's awake, he's busy and on the move!  And chatty!  He's been telling us lately "I sit down" and then proceeds to sit on you without delay.  He also asks about us when one of us isn't in view - "where daddy go?", "where mama go?", "where molly go?".  He gets pretty excited when the four of us are all in his room together.  Zane also has to say "hi" to Molly before he leaves for school in the morning and greets her again as soon as we get home in the evening. 

Zane has been super excited about Christmas lights this year, which is pretty fun.  We took him to a nearby house that has a whole light show choreographed to a bunch of pop Christmas songs, and it was really hard to get him to leave!  I think it's safe to say we're going to have to stop by the next couple of weekends!

That's our last couple of weeks in a nutshell... I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out that I wanted to mention, but hopefully I can get back on track with the blog and pictures.  Here's one more for good measure: