birthday cake

When it's your birthday, you get to have waffles and chocolate muffins for breakfast.

Which you will certainly follow up with presents.

After you get the wrapping paper off (finally), they must be played with.

And then, of course, there must be cake!

Thanks again to our friends, the Bakers, for letting us crash the New Year's Eve party with birthday cake!

And for a view of the proper way to eat cake:



Happy birthday, Caroline. We are so lucky to have you in our family!

oh right, the family picture

So I sent out most of our Christmas cards. Some are still waiting for addresses. Some are waiting for me to write in the addresses I've collected over the last week. If you haven't gotten one yet, hang tight. You may be getting a Valentine's card (that happens to say "Merry Christmas"). Because I've been dying to post these though, here were the best (or funniest) pictures that Kaitlyn so generously took for us one Sunday:

Some ideas sound better than they are. This was one of them.

This may be the only picture where all four of us look crazy at the same time.

This is my favorite. If only Caroline was facing the camera..

So we're a little fuzzy and Josh looks bald. It's not half bad, really!

This is the picture that made it on the card.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas, in pictures

Caroline was up almost two hours before anyone else.

Susan helping Caroline open a book.

Jonah's gift to me: a big red bow. Apparently he walked right into the store and told Josh. "I want to get Mommy a big red bow." Okay then! (He did the same thing with his gift to Josh--a Snickers bar.)

Caroline helps Daddy hold the knife.

..and then finally gets the hang of taking off wrapping paper.

"Woah!"

Trying out his cap gun with holster.

Later we did actually get dressed. Then, Caroline figured out her new toy.

We had tamales for lunch. They were amazing.

Then we finished the evening with a game of Ticket to Ride. Jonah even played. He waits his turn and then plays on every one and two-train slot he can get the cards for. Not bad for his first time!

when Santa comes

Jonah is pretty confused about Santa Claus. You see, we don't really "do" Santa here, but we don't not do Santa either. We just haven't made a big deal out of it. Some people think we're sucking the fun out of Christmas (yeah, I can see that). Other people think the whole Santa charade is a lot of work for a potentially huge let down in a few years. Neither Josh or I had that experience as kids, so we don't really worry about that. Mostly, I'm just really good at the everyday stuff and not so great at the big deal things. We're a very low-key family. Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Jonah knows about Santa sort of, but we've never really talked about him. He does know, though, that Santa comes on Christmas. First, Jonah was concerned that we'd moved the recliner in front of the fire place. "We'll need to move that so Santa can come down the chimney," he said this morning.

Then this evening, the following conversation took place:

Jonah: When do you think Santa is coming?
me: Some people say Santa comes while we're sleeping.
Jonah: I guess he'll just have to sleep on the couch then.
me: Yeah, I guess so.

See how I avoided making a decision about whether we're a Santa family or not? Right now I'm still holding on to hope for some snow in the morning (there's a teeeeny chance) since Jonah has been waiting expectantly all day. I don't know where he got the idea that it snows on Christmas morning, but he was quite put out when it rained all day instead.

dear me in 15 years

Someday, Jonah might make me cry. We might have a fight and I'll wonder if I've totally messed him up or if he loves me at all. When that happens, someone please remind me of this memory:

Tonight, we made sugar cookies. Jonah chose four shapes: a Christmas tree, a heart, a gingerbread boy, and a gingerbread woman. The tree he had just because it's Christmas after all (nevermind that Josh made a ghost and a chicken..why limit ourselves?). About the rest, he said, "This is me and you, mommy. The heart means I love you and you love me."

And then, when the future me tells the story and the future him gets embarrassed, I'll show him this picture to seal the deal.

The proper way to watch a movie is pantless, perched on the pass through, shoveling popcorn in two hands at a time.

add this to the list

No light sabers at the dinner table.

first (or third) word!

We officially have a word!* Caroline says, "dog!"

Jonah really wanted her first word to be his name, but Dixie won out in the end. When Josh and I were talking about this new development, Caroline repeated "dog" and crawled on turbo speed (the "there's something I want" crawl speed) to find Dixie.

*Other than "mama" and "dada" which may or may not mean us.

dream big!

We had a chaotic morning around here. The kids have been sick and no one was napping and everyone was crying and I was trying frantically to finish Christmas presents so I could mail them before I had to start paying for expedited shipping* and Josh and I were snipping at each other and it was all manner of grumpiness this morning.

Well just now I started forumalting my ideal evening plan. It went something like this:

-sit down to a relaxing, healthful dinner in a clean, quiet house
-children play quietly and happily while we clean up dinner
-children go to bed without a fight and stay asleep
-we cuddle on the couch and watch a movie by the Christmas tree
-fall asleep by 9pm

Can I just say that the best part of that plan is the sleeping at 9 part? So not going to happen, but a girl can dream!

*If you get a package that looks like it was pieced together with random cardboard scraps, it was. If you don't get a package or a card until after Christmas, just pretend it was on time, ok?

Jonah is so wise

This morning: "Mom, I love blueberry muffins more than you love hot showers." I do really love a super hot shower.

Then this evening, as I was trying to explain the concept of adoption to him: "Oh, yeah, I know what that is. It's like what Timon and Pumba do in Lion King."

fall leaves, a five-part story

Part 1: Dad prepares leaves

Part 2: Boy is not convinced

 

Part 3: Dad and boy go in together. Boy is still not convinced. Dog is terrified.

  Part 4: Dad makes the leap alone.

Part 5: Boy goes in!

Remember the terrified dog? Well, she remained wary of the leaf pile until later in the evening when I caught her napping on it.

house rules

I recently read an article about parenting rules the author did not expect to make. I've heard myself repeating a few odd ones myself recently:

1. Only one stick in the house at a time.
2. No climbing on the fridge door.
3. No kicking the fridge door.
4. No stabbing the fridge door.

kung fu laundry

Tonight: "Mom, I'm going to need you to wash these clothes while I sleep so I can wear them again tomorrow. Well, you don't have to wash this shirt because I can wear another kung fu shirt. But if I'm going to do kung fu, it's going to have to be a fighting shirt which is my shark shirt or my dragon shirt. But not the other shirts. Those are not fighting shirts."

sometimes I overcomplicate things

So Jonah is very interested in age and numbers. He wants to know what day on the calendar is such-and-such, how many pages on the calendar until his birthday, how many minutes I'll be on the phone, etc. He also wants to know how old he will be when ________ (lots of things). Generally, these are fun to try and answer.
Jonah: How old will we be when we die?
me: 117 or so.
Jonah: How old will he be when we get a cat?
me: Probably 35.

Today, though, he asked me a tricky one.
Jonah: How old are we when we get married?
me: Well..um...I was 20 and Daddy was 21. (Thinking, "wow, that was really young.") But you might be like 25 or 30. (Thinking, "wow, let's not freak out on the kid.") Or you might be a little younger. (Thinking, "wow, you really are having a hard time with this one.") So really, I don't know. Sometime around 20-something?

Did I mention he'd walked away before I made it through my first answer?

time spent well

Yesterday, I discovered that we have no stockings. Either they poofed in the tornado and we didn't use them last year, which I can't remember (blame the almost-born baby!), or I've managed to lose them. Either way, I was off to the fabric store to get some fabric to make them. Not ready to make the end-all stockings (who knows how many more times I'd have to struggle to find the fabric again?), I invited the boys to come with me. Big mistake. Jonah wants his stocking made out of fabric with ducks sitting in a lake and dogs in Santa hats. Josh's will be made out of olive green and brown fleece and lined with Alabama fleece covered in elephants. I don't care that the mantle will look crazy. I kind of liked my mom's pink lace stocking next to my brother's two-foot-long red knit stocking, next to my embroidered Nutcracker stocking as a kid. What I don't think Josh realizes when he tells me it doesn't matter if I like it because it's Jonah's stocking is this: I have no motivation to sew them now. The whole fun of sewing is making something beautiful and I'm just not feeling it. I think I'll start with mine and Caroline's.

Skip ahead to this morning when I read this article and it made me think of this interview* and this story.

I don't relish the thought of driving the kids everywhere. I know the time when we can just hang out at home will quickly end. (Jonah is already 4 1/2. How?) Looking at it this way, though, I will just have to look forward to the forced interaction with my sweethearts.

Now I'm off to eat popcorn for breakfast and watch Kung Fu Panda. Most days I'd feel guilty about it, but today I'm going to snuggle with my boy and dare anyone to tell me there's something better I could be doing with our time.

*The whole interview is great. The part I'm thinking of it where Sister Beck talks about driving her kids to piano and the work it was. She also outlawed ipods and cd players or whatever kids were listening to back then so that the drive to piano could be time to talk.

if Google had lips

I could kiss you gmail, for the following:

"You wrote 'I've attached' in your message, but there are no files attached. Send anyway?"

(looking at a picture of Jesus on the cross)

Jonah: What color do you think his regular clothes were?
me: Brown, probably.
Jonah: Or maybe he had blue pants and this part of his shirt (pointing to the hem of his sleeve) was brown and the rest of his shirt was green.

Well then.

sometimes, you don't know what to post on your blog

Like me right now.

I also don't know what to write in our Christmas letter. Should I even do a Christmas letter? Part of me loves to see what people are up to. I know that there are friends and family we don't talk to often that might be interested in our lives. The other part of me just likes to look at pictures and I definitely don't want whatever I write to sound like bragging or bore people to death. Thoughts?