Christmas music was playing in the background to all of this

When I walked in the door with our little Christmas Tree today, Ross looked like he'd been run over several times by a toddler. (Do you capitalize the "tree" in "Christmas tree"? I think the lots just always do the whole thing in giant red-and-green capital letters...) Anyways, we did a quick kid-swap. I think he was out the door within 5 minutes, poor thing.

E's reached this stage of constant chatter. And, believe me, this kid was chatty before. He loves to talk and loves to ask questions and is really a pretty cheerful guy. He's just also loud about it.

So we've started counting some of the most frequent phrases. Today's count:

"s'Daddy dooooing?" - 64
"s'Mama dooooing?" - 10
"s'Dat, Mama, s'dat?" - 28 (between 5:45 pm and 7:15 pm)
"s'Dat, Daddy, s'dat?" - Ross has no idea
"Nank yoo" - 7
"Oh, ok!" - 31
"Daddy, a twain!" - 3
"Post. Office." (with arms up in the air) - 39
"Kitshen" (only said while opening the baby gates to get into the kitchen) - 6

So Ross needed a bit of quiet time. Fair enough.

E and I put the lights up on our tree while he was gone. It was adorably, ridiculously, infuriatingly cute. He was totally uncooperative, except for when I asked him to hold the lights. He spent most of the time either scared of the tree and asking for hugs, or throwing a little nerf ball into the tree and then running up and getting it back. By the end of it he was shouting "Cwissmuss" at the top of his lungs and really into the lights.

I think tomorrow we might try to make ornaments. It's going to be a huge mess. Ross is gonna be really anxious about his table while we're doing it. I'll take pictures.

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Today, I'm thankful for vodka sauce, the fact that I don't work in a post office around the holidays, the Christmas decorations my grandmother made, and the terrible and excellent comics I saw today. The first got me in trouble with my cousin's wife, because he loves puns SO much that he works them in every chance he gets, and he's driving her crazy. He is the king of dad jokes, so I posted this one on his Facebook:

From Cartertoons by Carter

to which he replied "I always love it when new puns are throne out there!" This guy is a genius! I love it!

And then this one, from the always awesome XKCD, shared by a buddy on Facebook:

From XKCD

It makes no sense and also it's totally logical and wonderfully geeky and just my sense of humor. The only thing I'd add is glitter, because that makes everything better.