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    Good! I’m just perfect!

    December 31st, 2015

    S and I were in a deep conversation about our new pillows (we seem to get new bed pillows every year since the kids somehow trash them) and are deciding if the new ones are working out.

    While S was going on (about the moat he likes to sleep in), we hadn’t noticed G had snuck in our room

    S: ….. (Something something something), and I like to hug something cozy and snuggly.

    G: Cozy and snuggly? Good! Then I’m just perfect! I guess I’m sleeping here tonight!

    (And that is how kids get their way sleeping in our bed)

    Happy New Year, everyone!


    Christmas 2015 Recap

    December 27th, 2015

    We had a quiet Christmas at home. My sister and L came up to visit and stayed a few days.

    The “want/need/wear/read” approach to gift giving is still showing me it’s awesomeness. It’s seriously a lot easier to do 4 gifts for the kids and not have to stress a whole bunch of toys. And I feel like what they got is very measured. Doesn’t prevent them from being spoiled by the rest of the family, but I don’t feel like I’m stressing for toy storage either.

    S2 pretty much has spent the days following building his new Lego sets. I think he’s done with the primary instruction builds and is now onto making his own creations with the same pieces. This is my favorite part of his Lego play.

    We used the GoPro this year to track our mayhem, but I haven’t even looked at that footage yet. I’ll enrich this post when I do.

    Christmas breakfast was cinnamon rolls straight up from a package. Turns out little man loved those and has asked for them again today. This is amusing since he looked at them innitially, turned up his nose declaring he doesn’t like them, and then a minute later was biting in like a vampire. Not sure what turned him around, but at least now I have an example of “some food he tried saying he doesn’t like when in fact he really does”.

    9R3A2524
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    I’m pretty stoked with how my ribbon work came out this year. I tried something new, and it paid off.

    9R3A2509
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    Minecraft overhears

    December 26th, 2015

    [in trying to get his brother some cats in Minecraft]

    G: Look! Now we have to get them to kiss. That’s how you make a kitten.
    Look! They’re doing it! They’re kissing!
    And here’s the kitten.

    Want 5 kittens?

    I think it may be time to bring out the “It’s Not the Stork” book again.
    Also… why is he trying to turn his brother into the Crazy Cat Dude?


    He has WiFi

    December 18th, 2015

    S2 (while watching C3PO introduced in the Phantom Menace): That’s C3PO! He knows everything. He has WiFi!

      


    That time they passed me notes under the door

    December 18th, 2015

    S doesn’t travel for work often (Thank God!!!), but when he does being home alone with the kids isn’t me at my best. I won’t lie. It’s stressful. I feel like I jump into planning/prep over-drive because the unexpected ALWAYS happens, and anything I defer to tomorrow, becomes mission critical due to something invariably pops up. A routine helps a ton, and thankfully we have a flow in the morning and a flow in the evening. That keeps things doing, but the kids in the past few weeks have been turning into puddles of silly after dinner. It’s nice they are silly with one another (it’s kind of sweet), but when you’re trying to keep the train moving it’s irritating.

    After dinner I need them to get their jammies on, pick out clothes for the next day and get their teeth brushed. Then it can be free time until stories… unless there’s other stuff they haven’t done from earlier in the evening. Case in point: homework. G gets a homework packet every week. He usually finishes it within a day of bringing it home, but this time it had two assignments which involved computer access at home. i.e. = me! I told him we’d do it as soon as he was ready for bed. He didn’t get ready in time the first night… or the second night… or the third. On the fourth, S2 and G were running around like someone had spiked their dinner w/ meth. THEN they decided they wanted to play a game of barnacle. What’s that you ask? Lesse – they each attach themselves to my legs and hope they’ll go on a ride. Guess how that one makes me feel? If you guessed stabby, give yourself a pat on the back. I’m not sure how I escaped, but I went and locked myself into my bathroom. It’s the only place w/ a door lock they can’t pick. So I spent some quality time in there.

    It took the two of them some time, but they finally got in gear and got dressed. They passed me a note under the door. It looked something like this:

    Untitled

    Let me write it out… and then translate
    Original “We are rie jres. We are jres. We did got are james and we buzn are teth”
    Translation “Wa are really dressed. We are dressed. We got our jammies and brushed our teeth”

    G wrote it (if you couldn’t guess). It’s both terribly bad and terribly awesome. He’s trying so hard to figure out how to spell, and I admire that. I don’t have the heart to correct (just about) every word, so for now this stays.

    THIS is the first letter from my sons. I will cherish this forever, and it’s hard to stay mad, when your insides are laughing this hard.

    PS. If you’re curious what happened next, I opened the door. Only to see that they had tricked me, and were totally still goofing off. I went back to my sanctuary, and waited until they were really done. Sadly for G it was now bed-time, and he had to go to bed without the last bid of homework. But that’s another story for another day.


    The one where we couldn’t find the elf

    December 14th, 2015

    We finally finished decorating our tree this week-end. We decided to wait for Rose to make her resurgence until we were done. There is really no correlation between the two, other than the face that S was out of town last week, work has been crazy and navigating and elf along with a todo list the size of Santa’s nice/naughty list just wasn’t going to happen.
    Somehow in the kids’ mind the two were linked, and with the final ornament up on the tree there was no excuse anymore.
    While I read to the boys I told S to get and deploy Rose. When I was done, I saw him holding an empty Rose box. Cr@p! I had not returned Rose to her place of rest since last Christmas and had NO idea where to look.
    This morning, thanx to someone calling S at 5:30am in the morning (what’s up with that, btw?!?!?) I was up. So I decided to make the most of it and went on a Rose hunt. Checked my closets and decided to make my way downstairs and think like a frazzled mom on Christmas day: “Where would I hide an elf from a gang of rushing children on loot day?” Answer? In a lunch bag in the pantry in the dining room… where we open gifts.
    Elf magic saved, and I don’t have come up with excuses. I was ready to go out and buy another elf, except for the fact that S had pimped ours out to give her wires in her legs & arms to allow her to wrap easier around her hiding spots.

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    In other news, Rose brought a letter to the kids today, which G began to read himself. Score!!! Rose’s font however didn’t take into account the newly-found reading audience, so it was a little … difficult. Mom fail! I guess I’ll be adjusting that in future Rose letters.

    In other “other” news, someone please remind me to start planning Christmas in September after school gets in. Feels like it sneaks up on me faster and faster these days.