Recent Videos

My birthday was earlier this month and Simon and Mark got me a delicious cake from Baker's Peak. It has been declared that all family birthday cakes from now on shall come from this wonderfully delicious bakery. I like this video because of the way Simon says 'happy birthday.'

We took Simon to see Santa at Purdue Memorial Union. It was crazy busy there and they were trying to keep the line moving. When Simon wasn't going to cooperate, Santa told me to hold Simon and that I should sit on his lap. Yeah, kinda creepy. Ever since my college days when the giant Peanut Butter Cup character at Hershey Park's Christmas Candy Lane patted me and my friend Jennifer (Point!) on the butt, I haven't been a fan of people dressed in costumes. But I played along for Simon.

We had spaghetti for dinner last week and Mark taught Simon how to slurp the long pieces. Yep, we're classy people. : )

A New Photographer in the Family

Simon has shown a lot of interest in our camera lately. He started out ok, pointing the camera at other people and objects around the house ...

But more recently, he's been into self portraits. It's pretty funny because he'll hold the camera towards himself and say 'cheese.' Or, 'my do it' -- his new favorite phrase for everything.

See how the photos get better with the more practice he has? I never tire of looking at his gorgeous brown eyes! I'm afraid they're going to break a few hearts some day. Hopefully, not too soon!

Videos

Just two short video clips from the weekend ... the first is about an ornament with Africa painted on it. I'm helping Simon to hang it on the tree. The second is the Santa dance. : ) Enjoy!

Lafayette Christmas "Purdade"

On Sunday afternoon, we took Simon to downtown Lafayette for the annual Christmas parade. Or "purdade" as Simon says. : ) We had a hunch that he would enjoy it and we were right! We didn't realize just how cold that it was, however. I think it was like 24 degrees. Whoops. Thankfully, we were only half a block from Mark's studio so he was able to get a blanket for us. It was hard to keep Simon's mittens on his hands -- doesn't anyone make the kind attached to a string that you can weave through their coats? I'm on the hunt if anyone knows where I can find them! Here we are waiting for the parade to start.

At this point, I think that Simon was starting to doubt that anything was going to actually march in front of us! We then saw what was holding up the start of the parade ... a car was towed from across the street in front of us!


And this is what Simon did for the whole parade ... he waved and said hi to whatever was passing by in front of us. We saw many interesting sights and some of Simon's favorite things!

We saw politicians ... (and yes, I do believe that is a snowflake on her head.)

And we saw our favorite train -- the one and only Boilermaker Special!

And a fire truck ... lots and lots and lots of fire trucks!

Llama llama what a tizzy! The 4-H llama club was in the parade, too.

And several marching bands, including Purdue's own band just back from the mother of all parades, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

And of course, Santa Claus!

After being outside in the frigid cold, we came home to eat some delicious hot soup. This was a particularly messy day. : )

A good time was had by all! Simon loved the parade and I think that this will become an annual Ailor family tradition!

First Snow

On Wednesday, December 1, we had our first noticeable snowfall! Before leaving for day care and work, we took a few minutes to go outside and show Simon the snow. He touched it and said "cold" and pulled his arms/shoulders in to show that he was cold. Then he was really quiet on the ride to day care ... out of character for him! We think that he must have been really puzzled by the white flakes falling from the sky. But after work when we picked him up, he talked non-stop about the snow. They had gone outside to play that day and I think that he learned to kind of like the snow.


And then came Saturday morning, December 4. We woke up to over 2 inches of snow on the ground and heavy snow still falling. I took him to the window to show him and he said "a big one!" He loved wearing his snow boots and looking out the window at the snow. Like most kids, he likes to walk in the deep parts of the snow. We haven't really had a chance to go out and play in it but I'm sure this won't be the last snow of the season. I love this photo of him looking out the window by our front door, trying to make sense of the snow.

Birth Certificate

It's here! It's here! After three months of waiting, Simon's Indiana birth certificate finally arrived last week. This is one of the steps we needed to take to obtain Simon's certificate of citizenship. Because we did not meet Simon before we adopted him, he came home on an IR-4 visa. This means that we need to complete several steps once we're home for his status to be changed from permanent resident to US citizen. With our next adoption, we will need to travel to Ethiopia twice so we will meet Lil Ailor 2 prior to adopting him/her. Lil Ailor 2 will come home on an IR-3 visa which means he/she will become a US citizen when we land the plane on US soil. We've learned a lot about immigration through our adoption journey! And we're glad to have Simon be one step closer to officially being a US citizen.

Dicken's of a Christmas

Well it was that time of the year again when the studio gears up for "Pictures with Santa" and "Dicken's of a Chrsitmas" festival in downtown Lafayette. Wendi and Simon both pitched in to help out and we had a good time and raised a little money for a local charity.
At first, Simon wasn't too sure about "Santa", but right at the end of the day, he let us take his picture. Wendi and I are going to have to take Simon out to see another Santa as he didn't seem to fooled by this one. Uh oh.