Christmas

I am a lazy blogger. So if you want to know about Christmas, you'll have to look at my sister's blog for great photos and commentary.

Art

A lovely picture by E of Ursula the sea witch and Ariel the mermaid.

For better or for worse, I let the girls check out The Little Mermaid from the library a while back. I thought it was too scary for them, but then they saw the scariest part at the doctor's office (curse that office staff) and seemed to be fine, so I figured most of the damage had been done. Except, of course, the virulent Disney-i-zation of their little minds. There's been a lot (A LOT!) of mermaid play ever since. And mermaid art. So here's a sampling of mermaid, mermaid-inspired, and even some non-mermaid art.

Note that you can click on each picture for a closeup so you can study all the nuances of each drawing.

Exhibit one:

A horse saying "neigh" by E. Note that the horse is wearing mermaid gear, i.e., "shells."

Exhibit 2: a lame attempt at a mermaid by Daddy. He was roundly criticized by the girls and told he would have to study some mermaid movies and books to get it right. They even re-colored the mermaid's hair red. Duh, Daddy.

Exhibit 3: a sea witch, by M. My favorite part is the imagination she has drawn. Imagination is indicated by the bubbles on top of her head and the bubble next to her with a baby sea witch in it. Note that the sea witch also wears shells.

Exhibit 4: a mermaid (perhaps Melody) by E. She's climbing a big rock.

Exhibit 5: our family, by M. We LOVE this one. We are all standing in front of the house. The little protuberance on the top is the roof.
Exhibit 6: by E. Even though this says "Ursula" it is really Ariel. Note the shell next to her that hold's the mermaid's voice.
Exhibit 6b: by E
Exhibit 7: by M. Again note the imagination. This time the mermaid is imagining the little fish, Flounder.

Christmas is coming

Yesterday was our church Christmas party. The girls got to be angels for the nativity play. They chose their own costumes and looked smashing. E wore a gauzy lacy thing and fairy wings, and M wore a purple dress with ladybug wings. M was deeply offended that she had to stand with the "babies" and not with E on the main part of the stage. 

At the party they handed out nativity sets printed on cardstock that the kids could color and cut out and tape together to make stand up. The girls thought that was the greatest. M sat at the table for a good 30 minutes saying " 'I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown' . . . I'll make my donkey brown!" and " 'I, said the cow, all white and red' . . . I need to make my cow all white and red." E worked hard on hers all day and decided to set it up in the front window. She announced to me that she had had to climb up and stand on the table (grrrrr) but had gotten it just right. Her "nactivity" set faces the window so everyone can see it from outside, and she taped a star to the window for the finishing touch.

M is in high excitement mode and plans on being Santa. She's been practicing for days. She takes a pillowcase and fills it with stuff and delivers "presents" to everyone. She keeps telling me, earnestly and urgently, that I need to make her a Santa suit, and she's going to stay up all night on Christmas eve and deliver presents to the whole family. She tried to practice staying up all night last night, as did E, but fortunately, despite all the "hard things" they kept doing to keep themselves awake (reading stories, tying ribbons, playing with toys in bed) they finally fell asleep. 

They might just explode before Christmas comes.

Christmas is coming

Yesterday was our church Christmas party. The girls got to be angels for the nativity play. They chose their own costumes and looked smashing. E wore a gauzy lacy thing and fairy wings, and M wore a purple dress with ladybug wings. M was deeply offended that she had to stand with the "babies" and not with E on the main part of the stage. 

At the party they handed out nativity sets printed on cardstock that the kids could color and cut out and tape together to make stand up. The girls thought that was the greatest. M sat at the table for a good 30 minutes saying " 'I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown' . . . I'll make my donkey brown!" and " 'I, said the cow, all white and red' . . . I need to make my cow all white and red." E worked hard on hers all day and decided to set it up in the front window. She announced to me that she had had to climb up and stand on the table (grrrrr) but had gotten it just right. Her "nactivity" set faces the window so everyone can see it from outside, and she taped a star to the window for the finishing touch.

M is in high excitement mode and plans on being Santa. She's been practicing for days. She takes a pillowcase and fills it with stuff and delivers "presents" to everyone. She keeps telling me, earnestly and urgently, that I need to make her a Santa suit, and she's going to stay up all night on Christmas eve and deliver presents to the whole family. She tried to practice staying up all night last night, as did E, but fortunately, despite all the "hard things" they kept doing to keep themselves awake (reading stories, tying ribbons, playing with toys in bed) they finally fell asleep. 

They might just explode before Christmas comes.

We Sneak Because We Care

We got a package of lovely, apparently imported chocolates from our favorite Iowa cousins today. The girls (and the boy, I might add, who has learned to say chocolate) went wild. I got down our special crystal bowl to put them in because when else are we going to use a special crystal bowl? Which of course I knew was a bad idea from the get-go. I passed by the front room once and saw E with her hand in the bowl. She jumped and said, a trifle too quickly and too loudly, "I'm just looking at these!" Moments later I spied her sneaking down the hallway with a suspiciously full bag. Once again she saw me, quickly tossed the bag into her room, slammed the door, and leaned innocently against the hall wall. Mom: "what's in the bag?" E: "What bag?" Mom: "The bag in your room." E: "um . . ." Mom: "I'll just take a look." E: "No! Wait! I'm going into the front room for a minute! Don't come in! Don't look at me!" So she went sneaking back to the front room, bag in hand. After a few rustling noises she came out with an empty bag. "See Mommy? Nothing in the bag." Then a third time I caught her and M red-handed, or rather chocolate-mouthed, and then banned them both from said chocolates (convenient to my purposes--more for me).

Daddy cut Tooie's hair again today. Tooie now looks like the world's smallest escaped convict with almost bare patches here and there on his head. Marmot Dad claims you just can't tell when a baby is going to throw his head around when you have clippers in hand. A convenient excuse, I say.

Honesty

A conversation on the way to preschool today:

E: I used to only like one grownup in our family. Just Daddy. I always wanted you to go away somewhere, Mommy. But now I like you AND Daddy.

M: Well, I like everyone in our family except you, E.

We have a child who eats

It's true. We have finally had a child who will actually eat food. Little Tooey will eat almost anything you put in front of him, and one of his favorite words is "cracker" ("kaa-kaa," said in a hopeful voice).

I made pumpkin pie last night, and when Marmot Dad said something about pie, Tooey's little eyes lit up. He came running into the kitchen saying "pie! pie! pie!" and pulled at my pants leg until I gave him a piece. Then we heard nothing more from him as he sat in his booster seat and quietly devoured two adult-sized pieces. We repeated the same routine at breakfast. He is a boy who is very serious about his pie.

Tonight I made mostaccioli for dinner. He wanted to watch every step of the process. And he bugged me until I fed him two bowls of sauce. Then two bowls of noodles. Then after we were sure he had eaten his fill and dinner was over, he caught sight of the finished dish and signed "more! more! more!" until I gave him two more bowls of baked mostaccioli. Then he stole two pieces of cauliflower from his father's salad and ate those. 

I tell you, it's an absolute miracle.

Here's what M has been up to. We went to DI yesterday to get Christmas mugs for the festive drinking of the festive hot chocolate. She chose a beautiful (to her, anyway) angel mug, but while waving it around to show her sister when we got home broke it immediately in two. Then she promptly broke her sister's mug. All within an hour of getting home. Fortunately we had gotten two backup mugs, but I had to almost make myself pass out by gluing the angel mug back together with some noxious glue.

She has also discovered her hidden talent of peeling carrots. It take her an eternity, but she finds it immensely satisfying. She peeled about six carrots for some soup I made a couple of weeks ago and was so triumphant by the time she had finished that she announced that "you will never have to peel carrots again, Mommy. I will always peel them for you. Just tell me if you have any carrots to peel. Is it OK if I left some of the peel on?" Fortunately I was making the soup in a crock pot and could just add a carrot every ten minutes or so as she finished. A few days later she insisted on carrying all the groceries in from the car, one item at a time. This just added to her feeling of omnipotence: "I can peel all your carrots and carry all of your groceries, Mommy. I am such a good helper."