Don't you be a turkey

Hey there!  I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving!  This is the first year in a quite a long time that we didn’t travel. Papaw visited and I prepared my first ever Thanksgiving feast. We had a good day.  Otter really enjoyed a visit from Papaw and is still taking about it several days later.

We also had a visit from a special Elf on the Shelf named Chip- as in Chocolate Chip.  The elf has been up to a few shenanigans. Otter doesn’t quite understand WHY Chip is here but he welcomes his company all the same.  I’ll post a few sneak peak photos, but will follow up the Christmas season with all the Chip has done.

We did our first Holiday related events, picked up our very first live Christmas tree which was promptly decorated.  Otter was really in to it.  However, he was having troubles placing the ornaments on the tree so he had a really good time handing me ornaments to put on the tree. We then went to a quick and chilly Fire Truck parade in a nearby village.  Otter loves fire trucks and was pretty thrilled by the experience, but if you asked him if he saw trucks or Santa, he will tell you “no”.

That leads me to the terrible two’s we are dealing with. Otter, has taken to telling us “no” always. This is incredibly frustrating. I understand that this is normal phase of a two year old, but Doc and I can’t help but be irritated when we ask our son to pick up his shoes and he yells “no” with a smile on his face. This, usually, leads to a time out because even when I offer another opportunity to do what we’ve asked he doesn’t budge and uses the naughty word, again. Seriously frustrating. Why do toddlers have to be so stubborn?!

Anyways, any suggestions on how to deal with phase would be openly welcomed.  We’ve got a nice weekend planned with a visit to Santa and maybe Otter will make a few Christmas presents for some of his grandparents.

The tree-partially decorated.

Chip with his milk and cookies

Chip in the tree