Gametes In Love

I suppose this will be the last year that I won’t be interrogated about Santa by the kids. I still stand by my goal to not lie about Santa being a jolly elf that delivers presents one night a year. At the same time, I’m trying to be sensitive to my friend’s desire to “perpetuate the Santa magic” and not have G and S2 be the ones to ruin Santa for them. I’ve spent some time this year getting my story straight on 1) Who is Santa?, 2) Is he real? and 3) Why does he hang out at the mall?

Here’s what I have for now. Length and detail of below story may vary to match the attention span of asking child.

A long time ago, in Greece, there lived a man whose name was Nicholas. Nicholas came from a very wealthy family. He was very kind and caring, and he liked to help people.
In the same town Nicholas lived in, there also lived another man who was really, really poor. Nicholas, secretly gave him money to help his family out. Over time, Nicholas’ deeds turned him into a saint in the eyes of people. Many began to call him Saint Nicholas (Saint Nick). Because of different languages, other people call him Santa Claus, or Santa, for short. What Nicholas did, was so special, and so nice, that every year, around Christmas, people dress up as Santa Claus and give gifts. Nicholas’ spirit of generosity and kindness is alive and the gifts we receive on Christmas day are through that spirit.

There is, of course, a problem with my Santa plan. S, for example, is so fatigued of two-year old tantrums, that he would very much like to instill the fear of Santa (or more specifically the fear of not getting any loot on Christmas day). All so that he could milk out a few weeks of good behavior. I kind of think that if G knows it’s us that are getting him said gifts, then it would behoove him to be nice to us. Plus, at this point, I don’t really think he cares much for gifts, so Santa or no Santa the tantrums will continue.

Anyway, that’s my Santa tale. Let’s see how it holds up.

Meanwhile, today, we took the boys on their Santa deliveries. This will likely be the last year I pick for G. I’m hoping next year he’ll decide what he wants to donate. This year, however, on G’s behalf Toys for Tots is receiving a Melissa & Doug fruit crate. He received this for his birthday this year and has loved it. I’m hoping that another child will enjoy this set as much as G has. I was actually a little worried how today’s drop-off would go. I pulled out the unopened toy to show to G side by side to his set. I was worried that if I pulled it out at the Fire Dept. he’d freak out and think we were giving away his set. So now, here there were, side by side, two fruit crates, and G insisted that both were his and that “My need it!” (aka he needed) the second, new set. But it went well. G dropped off S2’s donations in the bin, and then dumped the fruit crate in there too without any protest.

Speaking of S2. He donated Gum Drop pacifiers. Being a whole 6w old doesn’t really give me a great depth of “toys” he enjoys, so the pacis it was. S2 slept on the job, but I didn’t expect any different from him on this trip.

I’m excited and happy about how today went! I’m really hopeful that in a few years, G and S2 will be really excited about gift drop-offs too and also picking out the toys they want to gift to needy families.

Here’s this year’s video of our drop-off. It’s jittery and you stare at G’s feet awhile, I know, but it’s not easy to hold a toddler and a camera and walk at the same time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q0pl6UDMVU]

I’m not sleeping. I’m just thinking real hard!

G gets the star honors this year…

…and gets Hi-5s for a job well done

Bath-time fun. We clean ourselves. We clean the shower door…

… and then sit in a bucket (3 sizes too small) to take a rest.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get photos of G these days? Or more specifically get him to cooperate for said photos. Yeah, well, it’s hard. Which is why I was dumbfounded when G agreed for me to take his picture WITH his umbrella.

While I couldn’t find him the yellow umbrella he requested, I found a cute monkey one instead. Best part is that G likes it! We’ve had to have words about when he can use his umbrella. We’re OK to keep it out of the house, but are still trying to convince him that he can’t open it while in the car. Small steps, I say.

Anyway, to give S a bit of a break from the Big Dude, I took him and his umbrella on a photo date. G even occasionally posed. I know!!!! Shocking.

Now… what else I can get him excited about so that he’ll let me take photos of him.

I had to take G for an emergency pedi visit today (don’t worry, he’s fine). As we’re driving back from the appointment, I felt a shoe hit my seat and land right over my emergency break. Joy. A toddler who’s taking off his shoes AND it’s raining outside. Double bonus. This is then followed by hearing his sweet voice call out “Mamma, look-a me!” As I peak in my rear view mirror at him, I see him pulling on his sock with his teeth. He had stretched the teeny sock out so far, I think it’s now a knee-high. I shook my head and tried not to laugh. We then proceeded with the following exchange:

Me: G, you’re silly. You are a silly goose.

G: Noooo!

Me: You are too. You are silly. Silly goose.

G: Noooo!

Me: Ok, if you are not a silly goose then, what are you?

G: A Fiffin!

And there you have it. He is a Fiffin.

When we moved G into his big boy room and his big boy bed, we put a gate on his door. We kid-proofed his room, but there was still lots we didn’t want him to have free roam of when we couldn’t pay attention (say at 3am in the morning while we’re sleeping).

And the gate had worked out great… until last week. Last week, you see, G discovered the foot-stool to the rocker in his room. To be more specific, he discovered that the stool 1) could be easily moved around, and 2) was light enough for HIM to move it around. He first tested this by turning on the lights in his room on off. It was only half a day later, when in the middle of nap-time, as I said on my bed, I heard the pitter-patter of toddler paws. They were accompanied by G’s grinning face, who was beaming at his accomplishment of getting out. What he had done was bring the foot stool up to the gate; climbed on the stool and then jumped over the gate.

So there went our toddler jail. For now we just removed the foot stool, but I know that him dragging the rocker itself is only days away. At this rate, we’re investigating just moving the gate to the bathroom door, where he can cause the most havoc and just call him the victor of the confinement battle.

I’m also learning that in addition to watching my language, I have to stop doing things I don’t want him to repeat. He is the epitome of Monkey-see-Monkey-do. The other night, I used a chair from the dining room to reach a Tupperware container from our cabinets. Yeah, yeah, I’m short. Whatever. I did this out of pure laziness to go and hunt down a ladder. G saw this, however, and guess how he gets in his seat for dinner now? That’s right: he brings a chair from his toddler activity table. I get bad mommy points. 100%.

This child amazes me every day in how his mind works.

I wanted to write this down because I know, this too, will stop and it’s too cute to forget.

A little while back, G started to want “in” on S and mine’s conversations. Whenever the two of us get babbling about our day, or a task at hand, if we don’t take a break to talk to G, we will end up with the following exchange:

G: No! Stop! My tuuhn. MY TUUHN!!!

Me (or S): Ok, buddy. Your turn. What do you want to say?

G: Hmn… Zeba (meaning “zebra”)

and then he grins.

It’s always “zebra”. Every time it’s his turn, he says “zebra”. And it’s stinkin’ cute every time he does it.

Today’s Foto Friday is brought to you by Augie Chang Photography. We did our maternity pics with him back in October, and it’s high time I share.

I miss my belly 🙁

See the full set here.

10.2010

10.22.2010

11.2010

11.2010

11.2010

11.2.2010

11.23.2010

11.24.2010

11.24.2010

12.3.2010

12.07.2010

One of G’s classmates brought her umbrella to school today. Practical? Sure. Also a bane in the existence of a parent whose child does NOT have an umbrella. Why? Because all G could talk about on the drive home was how HE wanted an umbrella of his own. A yellow one.

I’ll be honest, actually having an umbrella for him is, in fact, kind of practical. So I told him that I would look for one the next day. Except that after we got home, he went nuts. Apparently the concept of “tomorrow” doesn’t exist in a toddler’s vocabulary. Tomorrow meant today, and more specifically, NOW. Normally I’d deal with the tantrum that was brewing, but given that it was early enough in the evening, S2 had just been fed and was quietly napping, I decided to take G on a shopping spree and get him his yellow umbrella.

You’d think that finding an umbrella during rain season would be easy. Well… not so much. Ok, finding an umbrella itself isn’t difficult, but finding a YELLOW umbrella as it turns out, is. A yellow, CHILDREN-sized umbrella? Impossible. We went to two stores tonight (Safeway and Walgreens), which in the past have had these adorable ducky-handle umbrellas. I thought, they for sure would have what I need. Not so much. Not even anything in yellow.

So we came home empty handed. G was placated by me showing him Dad’s blue umbrella, but I know I am now on a mission tomorrow to get him the darn yellow one.

Now where do I find this golden goose?

A year ago, I scavenged my local parks for fall foliage. I was surprised just how many of my local parks have ever greens. It’s fall, dang it. I wanna see some colors. Well, I found one, and had a really fun time taking pics of G amongst the leaves. This year, I wanted to go back, now that G was older, and take more pictures. I had high hopes, and grandiose plans that we could have a great photo shoot, again amongst the leaves, with G frolicking and throwing them up in the air. Clearly I’d forgotten who I’m dealing with, because the only thing that interested G were the fallen branches off the trees. Any interaction he had with the fallen leaves was to stir them up with his sticks. Oh well… maybe next year? But fear not, I shall not leave you without G cuteness.

I love these pants. The rear view is just too cute.

The park is right on the edge of the CalTrain tracks, so when a train rode right by, G went crazy nuts excited.

Auntie P spent the week-end with us too. She read to G a bit

And hold S2 (she’s been sick the last few weeks, so this was their first snuggle session)

Speaking of S2, here’s Little Dude enjoying his crib mobile