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!

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.

Peach Picking

The cousins went peach picking together yesterday and had a fabulous time bouncing in the little red wagon.

Home Sweet Home

We arrived home Friday evening after our epic East Coast road trip. We were gone 12 days, stayed in 5 different places and spent 6 days in the car (well, 4 full days and 2 half days). It is so good to be home.

Molly celebrated by sleeping 18.5 hours yesterday.

The highlight of the trip was the time we spent at my mom's house in Vermont. We got to relax, see friends and play. The second week we also saw a lot of friends and my new nephew Dylan, but had to battle through several cold rainy days at camp in Maine, very little sleep, and then several grueling back-to-back days in the car. On our way home I spent a lot of time looking at the Virginia page of our atlas, noting all the fun vacation spots within a four hour driving radius. :)

Here are some pictures:

Where does milk come from?

Yesterday, on the second day of our drive to Vermont, we started passing a lot of dairy farms. I told Tucker that those cows give us the milk we buy.

Tucker: Where does the milk come from?
Me: People milk the cows....
Tucker [interrupting]: I think they put buckets under the cows and catch all their poop. Cows' poop is white, and that is how we get milk.

We have since cleared up the confusion. It turns out milk is NOT cow poop.

In other news, we arrived at my mom's house in Vermont yesterday afternoon after a relatively good (but long) car trip. We were concerned Molly might scream for hours on end like she did on the way to Chattanooga, but we thankfully managed to avoid endless screaming. Of course, she barely slept. What other 9 month old only naps for 40 minutes on a 8 hour car ride? That is a LONG time for her to entertain herself. I went to the thrift store last week and got a bag of items that she had never seen before so I could give her new things in rapid succession. The list included: my little pony, baby doll that talked, kaleidescope, bracelets, light up squishy ball, etc. It was well worth $6.93.

We spent the night at a Days Inn in New York on the way. We splurged on two rooms because there was no way anyone would sleep if all four of us plus the dog were in one. Plus, what in the world do you do when the baby needs to go to sleep at 6 pm but it's a wee bit early for the rest of the family to retire?

Tucker and Molly were thrilled by the hotel. Molly chased Tucker around the rooms, and Tucker wanted to go to bed right away (at 5:30 pm) because he was so excited about the bed. Tucker was also thrilled that he'd be in the same room as Molly. She went down a little after 6, and was quickly out like a light. We sent him in somewhat after 7:30 pm. For the first half hour he was totally silent and we thought he was asleep. But then the excitement got to him and he started making a bit more noise, and woke Molly up (she's a very light sleeper). Then he spent the next hour making faces and hamming it up for her while she sat up in her crib and grinned at each other. Silly kids.

Today is our first full day in Vermont and we had gorgeous weather this morning to pick a ton of blueberries and take a ferry on a 20 minute ride across Lake Champlain. I think I can get used to this vacation thing.

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.

Warrior Princess Shouting

Today we were pondering the meaning of names on our ride back from spending the Fourth of July in Annapolis. Molly spent most of the ride home yelling at us, loudly. That girl is feisty! At 8 months old she is starting to crawl, can go from lying down to sitting up, and is generally about ready to conquer the world. She likes to yell during mealtime, regardless of whether she likes what she's eating or wants to continue to eat. Austin was speculating in the car that maybe "Molly" means "little lion ready to devour daddy" or something like that. The actual meaning is "bitter" (or, if you want to be all positive on us, "of the sea"). I don't think our Molly is bitter, I think the meaning really should be "warrior princess emitting blood-curdling screams" or something like that.

As for the rest of us...

Tucker: Derived from the Old English verb "to torment", for someone who softens freshly woven cloth by beating and trampling it under water. Hmmm... I'm not sure what else to say.

Jacqueline (female version of Jacques, which is a version of Jacob): 1) May God protect or 2) Supplanter (ie Jacob supplanted Esau's birthright). So I guess I'm a protector and poser at the same time.

Austin: Great or Magnificent. Boring (not you, sweetie!).

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day! We are in Lookout Mountain, Georgia overlooking the grand city of Chattanooga, Tennessee where Liz and Matt live. This is our first trip down, and it has been a wonderfully relaxing weekend, at least after we arrived. Driving down was a bit dicey. A couple weeks ago Austin said he was nervous about Molly and the 8 hour-plus drive. I told him that Molly has never cried in the car and she'd do fine. Ha! Sometimes my husband is right.

Molly celebrated the trip by screaming. She is a feisty little thing and got it in her mind that she did not want to be in her car seat and did not want to sleep... and she expressed her opinion at top volume for most of the drive, just wailing. At one point Tucker was so sick of her crying that he decided to join in and hysterically screamed as well (sort of in jest, thankfully, but that only made the situation a little bit better). It was so ridiculous I ended up taking a few videos of the car ride just for posterity, which there is no need to share unless you enjoy the sound of a baby crying. A lot.

Ben came with us on the trip, and has been the highlight of the vacation for cousin Emery. She crawls around the house after him and says "da B" ("the Ben"). She is very respectful of him, almost in awe, but is totally, completely obsessed. She will need to come live with us in the summers as her parents say there is no dog in her future at home.

In other news about Ben, he is too old to jump into the back of the car, so we have to lift him up and down every time. He doesn't like this. The second morning we were here, he snookered someone into letting him outside to do his business and took off to explore the neighborhood. This was highly out of character as he hadn't even eaten his breakfast. I guess he is having as much fun here as we are.


Other highlights: a hike, a party yesterday (the girls wore matching dresses courtesy of Henny), and visiting downtown Chattanooga. Fun!!! You really need to check out the picture of Austin and the kids on the hike--wearing Molly in the front pack while having Tucker ride on his shoulders. Pretty impressive.