Pre-Christmas December in all it's glory!

December has been full of fun and Mom learning about how fun a 1 year old can be. This kid makes me laugh every day, just by being himself. 

Lincoln loves to play the piano...for about 20 seconds at a time.

We miss having Macy over. Of course the fun hide and seek stopped after the camera came out, but this is just a small piece of the fun we had when Macy comes to play.

Sometimes Lincoln uses a wooden spoon to pretend to stir something in this pot. This day, he decided to get in and have a snack. 

It was so fun to have friends from high school come over with their kids. We had a great lunch, and some impressive cookie decorating. 

Considering they only get together once a year if we're lucky. They sure got along well. 

Getting a picture of all of them in front of the tree was like herding cats...I'm not very good at herding cats.

Even though Lincoln slept through most of the party, he still wanted to give Mikel one last hug goodbye.

I don't know anyone who likes ketchup more thank Lincoln. He found this empty bottle in the recycle bin, and sucked all of the sticky ketchup off the lid.

We got locked out of our bathroom one night, Lincoln was so good at helping dad fix the lock.

Lincoln at temple square. He loves Christmas lights!

After temple square we went to Grandma's house. Linc entertained all of us and cuddled with Grandma too! 

A rocking chair just his size.

I'm impressed at some things that kids just do on their own. You don't even have to teach them that it is fun to put olives on fingers. They just figure it out. I'm 99.99% positive Lincoln hasn't seen anyone else do this.

Even more fun is eating the olive off your finger.

 Lincoln is full of fun and personality. We took him to the Dr. for his 18 month check up and as always we were relieved and grateful for a 100% healthy kid. Though he is still in the negative 5th percentile. (whatever that means) he is a good eater whenever he chooses to be. When he chooses not to be, I may get a bit stressed. He is also usually a good listener. However, he has been known to take a few minutes and sometimes hours off of his good listening skills. This was one of those days... When he first woke up, the only thing he could think of is milk...I try not to ruin his appetite with milk so he will eat breakfast, then the milk comes after breakfast. On this particularly "fun" day, I talked Lincoln into eating some waffles before 12 oz. of milk. After making the famous Graham family homemade waffles, I finally got the kid into his highchair. I put syrup on his waffles, and cut it up into bite-size pieces. Well, apparently he didn't want his waffle cut. Then the syrup seeped into the waffle and he wanted more syrup. Lots and lots of tears from this kid, and some budding tears from his mother, we decided to take a break from breakfast. After he was calmed down some, he decided he wanted his boots on, just like the girl in a picture of a magazine. So the boots got on, and I was ready for a waffle myself. When I took it off the grill, Lincoln indicated he wanted it, so I put him back in his high chair with his boots on, and tore a section off the waffle...well my bad, I had forgotten that he didn't want it torn. Just a whole waffle. So I ate the torn waffle and put another one on the grill. This time he was given an entire waffle without any tearing or cutting...then he indicated which piece he was going to eat next and i would put a dot of syrup on his waffle one bite at a time....Finally a waffle was eaten. Breakfast was done for the day!

 After Breakfast, Lincoln seemed to be entertaining himself pretty well, so I decided to make some chocolate cookies for some neighbors. He saw the cookie dough and of course he wanted it. Well, a bunch of raw eggs, and cake mix didn't seem like the right snack for 9:00 in the morning. I tried to tell him he could have a cookie after lunch-but that was far too much for an 18 month old to take in, and another breakdown occurred. We quickly moved to some other toys in his room, and when I got up to take the first (and last batch of cookies before nap time) batch of cookies out of the oven, he followed me into the kitchen and of course wanted some cookies. Well, I offered a piece of banana bread. He threw the piece I gave him on the floor, climbed up on the chair and opted to eat the loaf of banana bread. Somehow that seemed like a better option than the cookies, so I let him dig in. And he did just that.

 Somehow, after his nap, Lincoln woke up as happy as could be and even ate most of his dinner. It may have helped that his dad was there and did a great job cheering him on each and every bite he took. He ate chicken and would use two fists to put his peas into his mouth.

 Is this blood or chocolate? Well, I hate to say it is both. Lincoln was playing with some Christmas ornaments when he put one in his mouth...I approached him to help him take it out, because the hook was sitting in his cheek. Then when it hurt a little, he tugged it right out and scraped his cheek the whole way out. There was suddenly a lot of blood and tears. I picked him up and tried to help him rinse his mouth, but naturally, he wouldn't allow anything near his mouth. So I resorted to just trying to console him and catch the blood in tissues, then he saw some chocolate on the counter...immediately stopped crying, and asked for the chocolate. Well dinner was in 30 minutes, but I gave in. I guess chocolate really does stop the pain, and the blood in this case too.