Christmas 2009: A Photo Diary

The day after Thanksgiving we took Matthew to the Texas Renaissance Festival. He rode a pony without being held by his mommy or daddy for the first time.


On December 3rd, 2009 Matthew experienced his first snowfall in Houston Texas. This is the earliest snowfall in Houston on record.

Making Christmas cookies with Mama. Matthew's idea of decorating the cookies involved pouring the whole container of sprinkles on one cookie.

The arrival of Grandma Claus.

It looks like Swiper swiped Grandma's hat.

Matthew playing with the first present he opened while waiting for other family members to arrive.

Some of the many presents Matthew received, including lots of stuffed animals.

Matthew having fun with his Thomas the Tank Engine train set.

Matthew exhausted after a full day.

Vising friends on day after Christmas. Matthew had a lot of fun with the Deal girls, Lizzie and Rosie.

He also had fun playing with Jimmy and Collin.

If there's a drum in the house our little drummer boy will find it.

Matthew ended the weekend by supervising his Daddy's raking of the leaves.

First Lesson in Matthewese

Matthew has been attending speech therapy for about three months. He has shown great improvement. Before speech therapy and before he started wearing his hearing aids he rarely repeated words we would say to him. His vocabulary consisted of pointing out lights that he called, "la las". Now Matthew repeats words we say to him regularly. However, he usually does not repeat words correctly. For instance, he can say "D" words, ie. Daddy and Doggie. However, most other words if they start with a consonant he either exchanges the first letter with a D or just drops the first consanant and says the word by itself. For example, he calls his stuffed Piggy, "Iggy". However, he calls his stuffed Monkey, "Dunkee". The odd thing is that he can say the M sound, because he says Mama all of the time. This morning when he came into my bedroom saying with delight, "Mama!", while holding his monkey. I tried to get him to say "M" with another word referring to the monkey as "Mama Monkey". It is the larger of two monkeys he owned so it made sense. So I said, "Matthew, can you say Mama Monkey?" Matthew then said, "Da Da Dunkee."

Baby Neil Peart

If anyone is wondering whether Matthew still has his drum obsession take a look at this video. He did this completely on his own.