Friday night Roman got his first taste of shopping with his own money. He had been given a $10 gift certificate to Target for Christmas, and after looking at the toys on a few different trips, he decided he wanted a Little People dinosaur. So we had dinner at Target (Pizza Hut, man!) and then shopped for the dinosaur. He chose the T. Rex mama, baby in an egg, and a caveman with food. All for 9.99! Then Mama & Daddy checked out the bathroom accessories with their gift certificates and found an on-wall shelf unit thingy on clearance. Woohoo! So a happy shopping evening had by all.

Roman is great playing now. Like with the dinosaur - a few months ago he wouldn't have known what to do with it. Now he plays with it, talks to it, all kinds of stuff. The same with his trains - he used to just run them around the track. Now they talk to each other, they do things like go get fireworks or fill up on coal, and even Sir Topham Hatt gives them orders. It's great to see it happening.

He also pretends we're different characters from videos or stories. At any given moment I could be Mama Dinosaur, Bob Tomato, Wendy Darling from "Peter Pan", or Jesse from "Toy Story 2." In return, he is Jr. Asparagus, Michael, or Buzz Lightyear. Daddy is Larry Cucumber, John or Peter Pan, and Woody. Although today he was the horse, Bullseye.

Yesterday and today Roman and I were visiting my parents, who are going on vacation so we wanted to see them before they left. Also Daddy got uninterrupted time to finish painting the bathroom and do some work for his Masters class. This morning it was snowing pretty hard at their house and Roman was so excited - "go outside and play?!" He ended up helping Grandpa shovel, as well as throwing himself into the snow a few times. That boy sure is a Siberian!