Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

Tucker’s friend Henry had TWO Christmas trees, so Tucker begged to get a table tree.  Austin and Tucker went into the woods and found a little evergreen to cut down to fill the need, and Tucker decorated it just perfectly.  I didn’t have a stand so I taped a mason jar to a square of cardboard, and tried to wedge it into the mason jar so it wouldn’t tip over.  I need to work on my wedging skills next year (actually, next year I’d pack it into the mason jar with gravel). 

O Christmas Tree

We made our annual pilgrimage to the best Christmas tree farm ever. The only problem with it is that it takes much too little time to pick out a tree if you're trying to make it a family outing. We tried to be REALLY picky this year, but still was out of there in 25 minutes, including loading/unloading kids and tree. The highlight this year was when the tree almost fell over on Tucker, which the video actually captured!

Tucker's Christmas Concert

Tucker's preschool had a Christmas concert on Thursday night that was highly entertaining. Tucker was in the second row behind a little girl in pink so it's hard to see him (he's wearing a green and red stiped polo shirt). I wasn't sure if he'd sing or not, and was surprised by how excited he was and how into it he was. By the end of the concert I think he was the only boy left in his class still actually singing!

He looked forward to the concert all day, and took a bath and picked out Christmas clothes all by himself with no prompting besides asking him to at the dinner table. Wow! He did have a moment of stage fright when we were walking to the concert hall (the local middle school auditorium) when Austin told him this was where the big boys went to school. It took a lot of reassurance to convince him that it was, in fact, just his preschool friends that were going to be there that night.

Besides seeing my little man sing, the other highlight was the youngest class--the two and three year-olds--that had two boys who stole the show. Someone had taught one boy how to bow low, and he spent the first half of the concert continually bowing low. Another little boy in that class had the only solo of the night when he started "This Little Light of Mine" about 10 seconds before everything else--yelling. I think throughout the concert he was as loud as almost all the other kids put together.

Quote of the Day

“Heavenly hosts sing wa-wa-woo-wa!” –Tucker, telling me the words to Silent Night

At church this week, Tucker really got into the Advent singing.  He sang with real pleasure and definite gusto—Austin and I had to restrain our giggles and smiles because Tucker can get quite self conscious these days. 

I wasn’t sure how many other people could hear him, but it turns out his voice carried from the altar to the back row because we had people from both places commenting on his singing.  In fact, Fr. Glenn said that he heard Tucker and his first impulse was to laugh and then his next impulse was to cry it was so beautiful.  “That is how it’s supposed to be done!” he told us after the service.

Gingerbread Fun

 

Helen treated us to another Gingerbread workshop.  We were more prepared for the rigors of house decorating this year, and Tucker was even better prepared for the amount of candy that was going to be available. 

 

 

 

Santa was there and waved a bell over Tucker’s head to determine if he has been naughty or nice.  The bell indicated nice… I wonder then why he has lost TV privileges and dessert privileges this week?  I must be confused.  :)

 

Incidentally, Santa was also very scary.  Tucker made sure to look away and cover his ears when Santa addressed him.  His awe of Santa made it too much to take in at once.

My son is a complete pack rat and insisted in collecting every scrap of leftover candy to take home.  It wasn’t just about the candy either, he collects tiny pieces of everything that anyone else in the world would throw away.  It makes craft time with him challenging, and I frequently have to raid his art area to throw away the detritus.  One of his favorite things right now is cutting paper into miniscule bits and calling it “wrapping paper” and then insisting these scraps are all treasures.  Hmmm.  At least in this candy case we convinced him that 1/3 of it needed to go to Henny and a 1/3 of it needed to go to Luisa, so we only got 1/3 of the leftover candy junk.

Molly's Accomplishments

Molly is taking off right now and I am running behind, trying to keep up. She has been scooching around a bit for several weeks, but yesterday she perfected a true let's-chase-a-ball-across-the-room crawl. A few days ago she also learned how to pull herself up. Yesterday I watched my little baby crawl over to her brother playing at the train table and pull herself up next to him to play with him. How can she possibly be that big already? It is amazing.

I've spent today trying to make our house a little bit more safe for her now that she has access to everything knee height and below. It's a challenge with Tucker around too. I sequestered all his tiny toys and removed the balloons Tucker loves to play with (choking hazard if they pop), and then vacuumed everything is sight, especially the bugs that somehow come into our house and die on the floor. Molly apparently finds them fascinating and tasty.

It's so fun watching her enjoy her new abilities, but it is a tough stage for me. She pulls up, but she has no sense to hang on. She pulls up but she's wobbly and falls backwards or forwards. And she has radar for little shiny objects like coins.

Her other amazing accomplishment is four new teeth that have poked through in the past week, all at once. She is celebrating this accomplishment with no longer wanting baby food. Her skills at regular food are a bit lacking at this point, so mealtimes consist of her yelling at us, not wanting to be in her high chair, and then trying to grab our food and fling it onto the floor when we hold her.

Wishing you a belated Happy Fourth of July! Here are pics from the neighborhood parade that Tucker and Molly marched in in Annapolis.

Catching Up

I got into a great posting groove a couple weeks ago and impressed even myself with my consistency through Christmas craziness. New Year's craziness did me in, though, and I know at least my mom is complaining of being blog-deprived.

Since my last post we had a fabulous long weekend in DC with my mom celebrating Christmas after our canceled trip to Vermont (note to self: never fly through Philly in the winter).

We hit a lot of major DC attractions, but Tucker told me on the way home that his favorite part of the trip (after GoGo's Christmas presents) was the hotel's swimming pool, complimentary breakfast and the picnic he had on the floor of our room one night. He did have some epic breakfasts--one day he ate three pancakes, four sausage links, cereal and two cups of juice. The next day he finagled FIVE sausage links from me and a chocolate doughnut. The day that we went to the Air and Space museum, he was almost too distracted to enjoy the museum because he knew we had a cup of Fruit Loops in the stroller (which we only took out of breakfast that morning so that the kid would agree to leave his hour-long feast!).

Tucker loved seeing the dinosaur bones at the Natural History Museum--I think it cemented in his mind what dinosaurs are, and how big they are (he watches Dinosaur Train on PBS so he is beginning to really like dinosaurs). His favorite out-of-the-hotel activity was riding the carousel on the national mall, though.



Tucker has aged well in the past couple weeks and developed facial hair.

Enjoying Christmas with my mom.






But that is only part one of our recent adventures. We've been planning on getting a new car by the Spring, but the trip to DC made me get very serious about replacing my Civic with something bigger. With a stroller, a pack-n-play, two kids, a husband, all our bags and Christmas presents, we were simply busting out of the car. And that is without trying to fit the dog! Our criteria for a car was pretty simple: good mileage (over 20 mpg), three rows of seats, AWD, not a minivan, and (preferably) blue, red or green. Unfortunately, there is only one car that meets all those requirements in our price range (or at least what we wanted to spend): the Ford Freestyle.

As I was looking at Freestyles online, I found a low-mileage Freestyle (only 15,000 miles) in Annapolis. Our area of Virginia suffers from a severe dearth of Freestyles, so neither of us had actually even looked inside a Freestyle much less driven it when we trudged up to Annapolis to potentially buy the car. But it was the perfect car on paper, so it was worth a try.

While Molly gazed adoringly at Tucker at Austin's parents' house in Annapolis (see below) we went out to brave the used car lot. After getting worked up all week about the bargaining process, it was actually splendidly simple. A family friend who knows cars better than us checked it out with us, he declared it a great car. Then we told the guy inside the empty dealership we liked it and what could he do for us? He said he could do $1100 off the list price. We were just about speechless as the list price was already really good and we would've paid full price if necessary. So Austin stammered something about replacing the two back tires which are showing a little wear. The salesman said no. So Austin said he'd pay him cash right now if he would do $1300 off. And it was done. It took approximately two minutes.



Our new car


Bonus pictures of Molly

Merry Christmas

Christmas was quite a blur in our household this year. Austin was really sick for the whole week before and several days after (today is the first day he's getting better!), and our trip to Vermont got canceled amid the recent East-Coast snowstorm. Even though where we live and where we were going only got about 2 inches of snow each, it was nearly impossible to get from one place to another without passing through an immobilized airport or driving on a potentially sketchy road. There were definitely a lot of highlights, like Tucker's enthusiasm and Molly's adorable presence, and getting to see cousin Emery. So it wasn't all lemons, but it was definitely crazy and stressful at several points!













I think Molly looks like a little candy cane in this outfit.

Christmas dilemmas

These days I can’t seem to complete a trip to the gym without nursing Molly in the childcare room. This makes trips to the gym inevitably longer than expected, but what doesn’t take longer than expected these days?

The women who work in the childcare room are across the board fun and welcoming. I enjoy our few minutes of adult conversation while I’m marooned in a nursing chair. Today the topic was Christmas.

One lady shared her three Christmas dilemmas. The first is trying to convince her three year-old son that Santa will be able to come down the chimney even though the couch is pushed up against the fireplace (to prevent their one year-old from repeatedly climbing into the fireplace.) Apparently the son is still not convinced so their furniture will be rearranged on Christmas Eve.

Secondly, she has put all the presents under lock and key in interesting hiding places to prevent said three year-old from wreaking havoc. I have never met this little boy but he sounds a bit like a terror—she describes him as “high energy”—and has shamelessly been opening any package he can find, even if she is in the same room.

Her third dilemma, the one that has her really stumped, is how to properly convey to her son that there isn’t a religious meaning for Christmas. “We’re not religious people,” she said, “So I’ve tried to tell him that Christmas could be any day. That people just picked that day to celebrate Christmas for political reasons. It’s just an arbitrary day; it doesn’t have any meaning.” This apparently leaves her son in a muddle, muttering confused statements about which days are which. Her husband tells her she is using two many words and trying to explain too much. But she is concerned. After all, his grandparents are religious—the boy might figure out that under the hubbub of presents and wrapping and sugary treats that the holiday is actually celebrating something more than Santa Claus and a mystical idea of generosity and love.

O Christmas Tree

We decorated our Christmas tree on Sunday, earlier than usual this year because we're going up to Vermont the day after Christmas to see my family. This is the second year that we've cut our own from a place an hour south of us that has trees so perfect it almost defeats the purpose of the holiday excursion. Last year we literally got out of the car and selected just about the first one we saw because they were all perfect. This year we decided to walk a little farther, just to make an excursion of it. The result, of course, was the same: a beautiful tree.

It's possible to select a huge one but I try to be restrained and pick a normal sized one... it's just so much easier to decorate and set up and haul around. I don't think I enjoy the epic ones any better anyway. Here's our photo journal of the tree trimming process....

Watch out for the pole vaulting mad man! (I don't think Tucker realized the long stick was to measure the tree with instead of jousting down the long tree aisles.)

Little Molly, you were a trooper in the cold.



Molly intently watched the decorating process with her adorable church clothes still on.


Christmas decorating is not complete without attacking Daddy!

A little boy's dream come true

Helen took Tucker and I to decorate a gingerbread house the weekend after Thanksgiving. This was unlike any gingerbread decorating I had ever encountered before... they had taken out all the hard parts--all you had to do was come and select the candy you wanted from a lavish spread and apply it to a pre-constructed house with bags of icing all laid out.

When we walked around selecting our candy, Tucker's eyes were unbelievably big. He was like little Charlie entering Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. It took him half an hour before he realized he was allowed to eat the candy, not just decorate the house. (He quickly made up for lost time after that!)

The other highlight of our gingerbread house adventure was Santa and Mrs. Claus wandering around the room to talk to the kids. Tucker was mostly frightened of Santa, but in an awe-struck sort of way.