Tiny Tony

Awhile back we started calling Benjamin "tiny tony" after Steph's dad. When Benjamin was first born Ben commented that he had his grandpa's hands. At the time Benjamin was fairly skinny with huge paws for hands. The paws have stayed and he's added a little extra padding. He's our little italian baby, olive complexion, the darkest brown eyes in the family, and dark hair. If you put him in a plaid shirt he's his grandpa's little man.

Our chunky monkey is just edible!

He's so tickleish, and cuddly, and lovey, and sweet, and adorable...

...he also enjoys being the center of attention and we all just love him to pieces!

A Little Girl and Her Grandpa

On the Bus

The kids had fun on some of Atlanta's old MARTA buses.

Trains!

When grandpa visited Linnea at the end of October he told her that he was going to take her and Liam to see trains when we all came for Thanksgiving. That's pretty much all we heard about from then until we went to Georgia. We did a count down to help mark the time and Linnea kept asking why we couldn't just go down now! She even tried bargaining and would say things like let's go to Omni and church, take a nap, and then we will go to grandpa and nana's. It's hard waiting, but she was patient and even managed to survive our 5 plus hour traffic snarl that was the trip down, all because she was so excited about seeing the trains!

We took a short train ride and she was so excited!

Liam sporting his grandpa's hat.

Chase and Liam looking out the window of the train.

They were so excited by every little thing!

Benjamin was asleep when we first got on the train, but he woke up and loved looking out the window with his daddy.

Linnea and her daddy in a caboose.

Linnea enjoyed the train ride and then had lots of fun watching the model trains go round and round. She had fun pushing the buttons to make them run and would run around the display after them.

Thanksgiving In Georgia

This year we went to Dad and Ann's for Thanksgiving. For the second year in a row Linnea fell asleep before it was time to eat. Last year she woke up before we finished eating, this year she slept through the whole thing. When she's ready for a nap you can't stop her from taking a nap it's impossible! The rest of us enjoyed our meal.

Our little turkey's first Thanksgiving meal. He didn't eat much because he'd already eaten lunch, but he did keep trying to steal food off our plates!

Liam did a great job sitting still with all the adults.

After her nap Linnea ate mashed potatoes and a cannoli shell. She enjoyed eating turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn leftovers for several days.

Little turkey with his nana and grandpa.

Linnea and Liam hanging out on nana and grandpa's bed watching tv.

Uncle Chase and Benjamin

Benjamin loved all the attention he got from everybody

by the end of the trip he was completely spoiled and still misses all the extra attention.

Liam reading with his nana.

Liam ready to go home. He's growing up so fast! Linnea and Liam actually managed to get along without fighting too much and even played together. It was nice because the Merritt parents both were suffering from a lovely head cold their children so kindly shared with them and they were in no mood to break up multiple fights.

Climb Not Crawl

He'd rather climb than crawl. He tries to step up on everything and then pull up even further. This by far is his favorite place to climb up.

If you look closely just below his right eye is rug burn from a recent tumble down the stairs. He's a quick cruiser and the gate wasn't up.

He had fun standing on the sit and spin, but enjoy sitting on it even more.

November saw him clapping waving hi and bye, shaking his head no for everything, and developing a little personality that is complete with a temper. He stiffens his little body up if he doesn't want to do something like get in his carseat, lay down in the crib, or sit on the floor, and the screams are loud! He has a lot of learning ahead of him! He tries to make up with cute little smiles, he wiggles his shoulders and bounces when he gets scolded.

Miss Character

There is a lot of upside down Linnea these days, along with jumping off couches, and summersaulting all over.

She's silly and loves to show off.

This is her "box of Babel"

She has been very into the story of the tower of Babel recently, building several towers to heaven. When informed that she couldn't build a tower to heaven, she informed us that she was building it to her heaven.

She doesn't like the camera very often and gets ticked if you take a picture of her while she is pretending. She likes to pretend that she is Mary. Her dolls are Hampshire, Amanium, Nan, Dolly, and babydoll. We've about have who's who memorized, very important to know! She is constantly making us pretend food, Benjamin doesn't like all the pretend food she keeps trying to feed him, he wants the real stuff! Our couches are water and you can catch on any given day taking a swim or convincing her grammie to go swimming with her. She always make sure that we have swimsuits, sunblock, and floaties! We were informed that we aren't her parents, her parents live in North Carolina and are Thaddeus and Judas. Who knows where that came from, we had so much fun laughing over it! Her imagination is just overflowing and it's fun to see what she comes up with every day!

Will Crawl For Food

Steph decided to bribe Benjamin with peanut butter crackers to see if he would crawl on the floor. He was interested and started crawling around the kitchen island.

Everyonce in awhile he would stop and rest and eat a cracker. Sometimes he would crawl dragging his head along.

It took him a long time, but he completed his circuit and enjoyed lots of crackers in the process.

A few days after going around the island he decided to try to show off for his daddy and instead of doing an army crawl he decided to crawl with both feet on the ground and hit bottom way up in the air!

He came for crackers and it was hillarious to watch.

Since then he's opted to use his knees, when he wants to crawl. He will crawl to us if he feels like it. He prefers to just sit and wail till we are driven crazy enough to pick him up, but every once in awhile he gets adventurous and explores on his own.