Edward had a good start to the Christmas weekend with a visit from Gram, Pop Pop and Aunt Bridget. They braved the fog to drive in Saturday, then braved the snow -- we received five inches according to the National Weather Service -- to head home on Sunday. Edward had a lot of fun playing with his visitors, and with the new toys they brought him for Christmas and his birthday.

One of his gifts was a very stylish engineer's hat, which he took to right away. Pop Pop caught some great candid shots of Edward, who has evolved from avoiding the camera to making goofy faces for the camera to, as those who witnesses his last video can attest, attacking the photographer to stop the picture taking. So, it's nice to get a few shots of our little boy unaware of the camera.

He'll celebrate even more today and tomorrow, with some Christmas gifts tonight and a lot of birthday celebration tomorrow after church. Then it's back to simply being the center of his own universe... for a couple more weeks, anyway.

Meanwhile, he is getting more clever by the day. His first sentence was "No Daddy belly tickle" (I have no idea where that came from), and he is stringing multiple words together more and more every day. He also is getting crafty about bedtime. We have made a reading of Goodnight Moon a ritual of sorts, and he showed last night that he's onto us. I had him on my lap in a chair in the living room, Goodnight Moon in hand. He said, "No!" took the book from my hands, got down and went over to the couch where he put the book on the cushion and then covered it with another book. He came back over to me with other books and climbed back up, clearly not ready for bed.