Life at the (Big) Top

A new year, an updated circus.

1) Our little Miss K has picked up enough tidbits from our attempts to potty train her big brother, and has taken the matter into her own hands. She approached us New Year's Eve and said "Potty?" several times, getting more and more insistent. Z and I figured, okay, we'll give this a shot ~ and lo and behold, if the little booger didn't go pee in the potty when we parked her on it. We've had decent consistency ever since, including at church and at A's therapy sessions. No pushing it, just when she comes to us and asks then we'll go. She just turned 22 months on the 22nd of Jan., so I consider this God's blessing to us after the sturm und drang with her older brother.

2) We finally got our second snow of the season ~ nice fluffy stuff, for the day and a half it lasted. Here's some bushes in my flowerbed, for those who are snow-less:



3) A is restarting his ABA therapy this week, after a (very) long break due to his provider's medical needs; last week we were out due to the snow. Here's hoping it goes well, for both A and Miss Jennie. He's been having some issues with school being out for the holiday break, then back in, then out due to snow, then he was out because he was sick, then we had more days off due to parent teacher conferences...then he was back today...
Let's just say he's not enjoying the fluctuation in his normal routine, and we're consequently also not enjoying the fluctuation in his normal routine. It's a lot louder, with tears sometimes (to be fair, on both his part and his parents').

4) K, in true girly fashion, tries to dress up in everything ~ even her old, too small clothing that was put in a box to ship to younger cousins. If this is Erykah Badu:



Is this Erykah Ba-don't? (Even if she is cute?):



Yeah, I know. "Thanks, Mom. You just don't understand."



5) We have a house! Finally! Not the one we were in contract on throughout the fall and end of December, but a different one, and this one is actually going to go through. This house is even closer to our church, is in a very nice small community, and is only 10 minutes from pretty much any amenities we could want. And we're a minute from our friend Melody's house, which is in itself a cool advantage to the new digs. We also got this house for much less (much much less) than our previous possibility (which gives us some breathing room), and have a better fixed interest rate to boot than the previous agreement. God is certainly good. We have been wading through contract stuff for the last two weeks, but everything was official on Tuesday, we are moving at the beginning of March. Happy Anniversary, we just bought a house. That'll be hard to top in later years. ; )



This house is definitely not "only 5 years old" like the previous one (this was built in 1960) but it has plenty of room and a great yard. I can't wait until I can paint the walls in some color! I am so tired of white everything ~ I grew up that way, and aside from living in an old house with some scary vintage wallpaper for a couple of post-collegiate years, my walls have been conspicuously bare. I think I'm going to enjoy this new way to stretch my artistic mettle.

Elephants Never Forget

But, alas, I'm not a pachyderm.

I forgot to mention that we had people over to eat Christmas dinner with us, friends from church no less ~ one couple, and a single guy who needed a place to be fed and welcomed.

We played some Wii sports, yakked, and ate lots, and had a good time in general. Our K took to Nevin (I think she was fascinated by his beard), and she had a good time going back and forth between John and Missy.

At the end of the evening, Z and I proved just how far over to the "dork side" we really are by flubbing a toast and the after-clink. OH, well, after the fourth try we got it ~ and it was just sparkling cider, nothing alcoholic to throw us off, either! Better luck next year....

Holiday Recap 2007

Happy New Year, everyone!

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's ourselves this year.

This is the first year either A or K have "gotten" the whole present-opening thing. A has had zero interest in pulling paper off anything for the last four years; paper doesn't have wheels or bounce, you know. And Miss K ~ well, this time last year she was only 9 months old and was supremely interested in eating all those shiny bows, but that was about as far as it went. Part of the problem may have been that we didn't actually have anything to open here; we saved up enough gas money to drive to Florida to visit family instead. (Thanks to some friends, we were able to stop at a hotel halfway instead of driving the entire 991 miles at once). The kids had gifts from both sets of grandparents and cousins when we got there, though (hence K's fascination with bows).

I'd like to say I'm completely non-materialistic, but this is not true by a long shot. To be honest, it really bothered me that we couldn't do anything material for them last year. I couldn't even make them anything. I know there are a lot of crafty people out there, but I'm afraid I lack in certain areas. (I'm creative, yes; but I was also banned from Home Ec in 7th grade for breaking two sewing machines. I had to make my final project, an apron, by hand. Woodworking is also really not an option.) What do you make for a new 3-yr-old who was still completely non-verbal and focused only on the wheels of one particular truck rolling back and forth, and for his baby sister? I'm afraid my creativity hit a block, because after racking my brains I couldn't come up with a darned thing to do with the slim materials I had on hand.

Yes, I know the point of Christmas is not giving people things, it's not even "things"! Nevertheless, my Mommy heart was a little heavy on Christmas morning last year. But we did take them to see family who we get to see about every 18 months to two years or so, when we drive down there ~ and as young as the kids were, they really didn't care or understand the whole gift-giving process anyway. They had plenty of toys once we got there ~ we couldn't fit it all in the trunk with our luggage, and had to mail some of it home! (Thanks Uncle Rob, who gave us the ginormous MegaBloks Firetruck...)

This year, however, is a whole other ball of wax. We had an obscene amount of presents ~ seven each for A and K! This was combined from Mommy and Daddy, cousins, and both sets of grandparents of course, but our tree was stuffed underneath for the first time ever. Well, this was an obscene amount of "loot" for us, anyway. Observations on Wednesday morning when other families were piling boxes of rubbish by the curb suggests that perhaps what we consider extravagant, others would consider modest at best. But Z and I are pleased with our Christmas, and that's all that matters.

A was a bit overwhelmed, and had to take a couple of breaks and go upstairs for a while, then come back down to open another one. He did enjoy the process, though, and understood that there were toys inside.

K, on the other hand, breezed through all of them without stopping. She was shrieking with laughter because she could rip paper without getting into trouble, and there were things under the paper to play with! She did decide that simply unwrapping the presents wasn't enough, however, and that making holiday confetti seemed like a fantastic idea.

I'm still finding little bits of wrapping paper here and there, and we've vacuumed a couple of times since Christmas. I figure I'll find and throw away the last bits just in time for "Present Smackdown 2008".

Our New Year's was quiet in some parts, and raucous in others. New Year's Eve, Z and I pretty much passed out from exhaustion after 11 p.m. We crashed with the lights on and the TV still blaring. I guess that means we're getting old, or something! :) We roused up enough to turn everything off and give each other a drowsy smooch before fading back into oblivion. Just in time for one of Z's co-workers to call us, from Times Square in NY. This guy couldn't hear us, so he was screaming into his cell phone, "Happy New Year's! Hey, I can't hear you, so I'll call you later! Happy New Year's!" *click* Did you know that five minutes is all it takes to slide right back under into sleep when you're really tired? I know this for a fact, because that's when my brother called and I had already crashed again. We are blessed with good family and friends, I will say that.

At 12:30 in the morning, right after Z and I had re-crashed following my brother's call, our neighbors in the next building over had a drunken brawl in their front yard. We had not one, not two, not three, but four police vehicles in our little court. And it took an hour for everything to quiet down completely.

Happy New Year.

Blessedly, the rest of the night was uneventful, and Z and I had recovered enough by the next morning to enjoy the Rose Bowl parade and set out to brave some annoying cacophony of our own choosing: we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's. K had never been to one, and A has only been twice (once for a party, once just because with some friends). Thankfully, there weren't very many people there (which we were really hoping would be the case), and we only stayed for an hour and 15 minutes, but it was enough time to eat some pizza and play some games. A actually enjoyed the DinoDash and Fishing games! He totally got the concept and really played them. That was fun to see. Miss Thang was in hawg heaven. Music, lights, pizza, and things to climb on? She loved (almost) every minute of it. The only thing she didn't particularly enjoy was when Daddy took her over to meet Chuck, although I can't really blame her. I'd probably freak out a little too if I was confronted by a 6-ft tall rodent, let alone one that talked...

In short, Holiday Season '07 was a good ending, and a good beginning.

Around the House

Christmas Eve:




The obligatory Christmas cinnamon roll munch-fest:




Before:



After:



Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

Pitters and No-men

Even though she's tiny, (she'll be 21 months on Saturday and still fits in 12-18 months clothing. Comfortably.) our K is still getting to be quite the big girl.

She identifies everything she sees, and if we don't repeat the name of the object and say, "Yes! That's a (insert object here)!" she will keep saying it over and over and over until we do. As Z so aptly says, we couldn't wait for her to start talking; now we can't wait for her to shut up!

She has a tendency to say only the last part of multi-syllabic words. For example, "caterpillar" becomes "pitter"; "butterfly" is "fwy"; "grasshopper" is "hopper", and so on. But, oddly, she says "bumblebee" in its entirety, and correctly.

She also has a hysterical term for a classic holiday movie at our house: "Farty the No-Man". I guess "Frosty" is just a bit too hard to say....

We also have enough hair for (drum roll, please) Hair Goodies!

To You and Yours

I Wish You Great



This Season!

Got Snow?

The last week, true to form, has been crazybusy (aren't they always?).

First of all, A had his annual review for his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) on Wednesday, the 5th. He was approved for the extended school year program (over the summer), and more attention is going to be paid to engaging with other students rather than just the teacher or one of the aides. The board had to make a bunch of changes, because of the advancements he's made in the last year. This is a good thing!

The bad thing was, this meeting was on the first snow day of the year. What was supposed to be rain, according to the weatherman, then freezing rain, then maybe a possibility of a dusting of snow, turned into this:



The official depth was just over 5" for where we live, but we're on a ridge top, so this is what we got. A's meeting was in the morning, and they cancelled school while we were still there, so no afternoon session for him. He also had no school on Thursday, so everyone could dig out. Then it rained on Friday and all the pretty snow went bye-bye. But while it was here, this is what the kids did with it:




A decided he wanted to take off his mittens to play basketball. A kid after his dad's own heart. He opened up the shed and dug for the ball!



And then he was cold, so he decided to head inside.



After the play in the snow, we changed into jammies and watched, appropriately enough, Frosty the Snowman before going to bed.



In other news, our attempts to be normal have put A into a funk, and it's just today (Thursday the 13th) that he's acting his usual self again. The infractions? We had 3 people over at our house to eat dinner on Saturday, and we moved the desk in the living room and put up the Christmas tree. It doesn't sound like much, but any variance in his routine sends him into tantrum and hand-flapping grand central.

In positive news, though, while we were at the grocery store on Tuesday and were walking by a holiday display of Hershey's kisses and the like, A turned to me and said very clearly, "I love candy." And he kept walking.

!

This morning, while we were watching Clifford the Big Red Dog, he turned to me and said, "Chocolate chips are yummy." This was completely unrelated to the show we were watching. I'm noticing a trend....hmmmm....my son may just be a chocoholic! :)

Entire, coherent sentences; what a great Christmas present!