My Son's Teacher

One of the things we've been most thankful for this year is Toby's Kindergarten teacher. She is warm and caring, and always greets us with a smile. She makes Toby feel right at home in his classroom and has such a welcoming attitude and excitement about learning. We are so grateful for her presence in Toby's life, and I definitely don't mind that he calls me Mrs. Young from time to time!
Last Friday all the kids got to make gingerbread houses so I went in to help. There were several parents and family members that also came (I left Norah at home to "help" BJ grade, but I've brought her with me before and his teacher is so welcoming to Norah too). We all got covered in frosting, ate way too much candy, and each student was able to bring home a wonderful gingerbread house. Somehow Mrs. Young found the time to take pictures of each student and then she emailed this one to me at the end of the day. He's so proud of his house, and I'm so proud of him!

My Advent

Yesterday BJ and I spent time at a retreat/prayer house in a little town by the sea called Madison.  It was originally a school for nuns and they now hold retreats and classes and days like yesterday--a little prayer, a little contemplation, a simple shared meal, and quiet time to reflect.
We walked along the beach (it was pretty chilly--we took just long enough to pick out shells for the kids and marvel at how calm the water was before the cold pushed us back inside).  We sat by the windows and watched the clouds roll in from the ocean.  We read a beautiful poem by Madeleine L'Engle.  We had lunch with a small group of people from all walks of life who were all there to take time out from a busy season to anticipate Christmas.
It was a beautiful afternoon for us to reflect back on a wonderful year and to calm down enough to really enjoy the last few weeks of it.

My Contemplation Leads to a Serious Question

Our Christmas shopping is done--a week early!
I was thinking about this on our way to the library this afternoon, which led me to the obvious conclusion that there are only two weeks left in the year.  I said something like this out loud (more to myself than anything) and I hear Toby say from the back seat, "No, there's only one week left."  I told him that there's one week left until Christmas (clearly this is what he's concerned with) but there's another week after that and then the year ends.  I was totally unprepared for his return question: "And then we all die?"
I couldn't believe where his five-year-old mind went!  We haven't ever mentioned the concept of the calendar changing the year and date, so he was caught off guard by the idea of the year ending.
I quickly reassured him that we weren't going to die--it just meant a new year was starting.  I apologized to him for scaring him with my out-of-context thoughts.  He seemed to be okay, but I think we'll have to do a little at-home mini lesson on what calendars mean.

On the way home from the library the calendar conversation was completely forgotten.  While listening to a Frank Sinatra song Norah asked, "Who is this?"  I told her who it was and she said "He's singing about jingle bells!  Can I sing with him?"  Of course I agreed, and for the last 5 minutes of the ride home we sang along (to Frank Sinatra's Christmas Dreams)--but the Christmas songs my kids know turned into a mish-mash of "Jingle bells coming to town on Frosty the reindeer in a silent night."

Here's a sideways video of Norah saying Merry Christmas and then showing off her lunch.  Enjoy.

My Submarine Santa

Santa arrived by submarine this year.
We've been waiting for this boat to arrive for a while, and the kids were very excited to watch it come in. We waited on the banks of the Thames this morning and got to cheer the sub as it came up the river. We happen to know someone on this boat in particular, but with the naval sub base right down the road these types of arrivals happen pretty frequently.  This one was doubly special: our friend is coming home after a long time away, and he brought Santa with him!

My Temporary Pet

 We're pet sitting for the holidays.  We have a tiny hamster named Peppy in our living room for the next three weeks.  The kids are overjoyed, although they've only seen her come out twice since she arrived.  I told Toby that it's a dwarf hamster, so it's smaller than other typical hamsters, that it doesn't eat very much, and usually will only come out at night.  So Toby's taken to calling it an elf hamster; he told his class all about her.

Yesterday we fed her lettuce, so she came out of hiding long enough to nibble some leaves.  The kids both said "We love lettuce too!"  Maybe this will be a good way to get them to eat salads.  I can't help but think of all the ways that a hamster can be a good tool for teaching lessons about things in their life.  See, kids, she eats her lettuce so you should eat your salad.  See, Norah, she goes potty in the sand box, so you should go potty in your potty.  OK, maybe using the hamster to get Norah interested in potty training is a bit far-fetched.

But I think that the kids are going to do a great job being responsible for this little pet, and thankfully so, because for the next 1/18th of her life she'll be spending it with us.  (They apparently only live about 18-24 months, so here's to hoping that it doesn't die of old age in our care, even though she's only 7 months old!)  However, I figure that 3 weeks is just long enough for them to be interested in the new pet without realizing that mommy's not going to get them one of their own--because guess who will be the one emptying the sand box?

My Little Scholars

I wish I could have had someone with me on my drive with Norah today.  Or at least a black box-type device to record what she was doing.  And believe me when I say not all drives are as pleasant as today's.
I was taking her out to do some errands, and I was listening quietly to the news on NPR.  I notice that she's saying letters.  Not in ABC order, but just letters.  I listen more closely.
"a...n....d...e.....r....s...o...n...."
"Norah! You're spelling the letters on that truck!"
"o...i...l....c...o."
While I was zoning out to the radio my daughter was displaying the ability to read the letters painted onto the oil truck in front of us.  She continued to read letters and numbers on other trucks when we got on the highway.  Although she said "truck!" whenever she finished saying a stream of letters and/or numbers, she was reading them with about 90% accuracy.  (Not that I was taking a running record or anything!)

And on that note, yesterday we went to our friends' house for dinner, after which Toby and their oldest (a first grader) disappeared upstairs.  BJ went to check on them and delivered this news: "They are... doing math.  We knew this day would come, but we didn't expect it so soon."


And lastly, a little thing that Norah does that has nothing to do with scholarly activities, but rather more to do with the season of shopping: she plans our errands around the color of the cart that she rides in or the color of the sign on the building.  Target is the "red cart" store, for example.  There's a blue store, a green store, and a grey store.  You can just see her little brain trying to work it out when we go into a store that has no carts. The buildings are sometimes named according to a characteristic toy: there's a train library and a giraffe library.  We ran into the librarian from the "train library" in line at the post office today.  She knew Norah's name (I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember hers) and said hello.  I told Norah to say hi to the librarian from the train library.  The librarian looked confused, but when I explained that we differentiated between locales by their toys she understood perfectly (and the other library has a 10-foot-tall giraffe in the children's section that's been there since I was a kid, so everyone calls it the giraffe library.).

My Christmas Tree

We are setting up a Christmas tree for the first time since we moved here. Our fake tree from our old house is 7.5 feet tall, and is therefore too tall for our ceilings here. Thank goodness for Target. We picked up a 6 foot tree for $20 over Thanksgiving weekend and then took two days to light it and decorate it. The kids have really taken ownership in the tree and are having so much fun checking out the ornaments and other Christmas decorations we've set out. In addition to the long weekend of decorating, every day we open our advent calendar and read a short story about Christmas. They have fun with this, too, but Norah keeps wanting to skip right to the 24th, since it's the biggest.
'Tis the season for happy memories!

My Delay

I simply refuse to believe that it's already December (despite the fact that our house is decorated for Christmas and has been for a week).  I haven't even uploaded pictures of the family from OCTOBER yet.
So here are a few videos to distract you from my procrastination.  (By way of explanation, Norah is being literal, and Toby knows football plays but not teams, exactly.)

 

(Edit: October pictures are scrolling at the top of the blog.  Don't forget--click on the pictures to see them bigger!)

My Memories of Fluff

Some unknown power caused me to buy Fluff last week at the grocery store.  I had it in my head to make a new dessert recipe for Thanksgiving, and the one I chose required Fluff.  This is where I diverged from common sense.
For those of you who have never tried Fluff, or even seen it, you might want to take a peek at it the next time you're in the peanut butter aisle at the grocery store.  It's basically marshmallows and sugar congealed into this spreadable consistency.  It's something that I remember being in my house growing up, but I don't recall anyone except my little sister eating it (in what's referred to cutely as a "fluffer-nutter" sandwich: peanut butter and Fluff).  Sometime around high school the jar stopped appearing in our pantry.  (Note: this could have been the result of the cross-country move where no store in Colorado stocks Fluff, it could have been that the taste buds matured, or it could have been because my parents finally decided to stop buying the junk.)
Fast forward twenty years, and I find myself at the grocery store last week with Norah buying a 16 ounce tub of Fluff.  I head home, break open the seal, and prepare Norah and Toby for the "joy" of fluffer-nutters for lunch.  Toby, game for any combination involving peanut butter, ate one bite and said "No thank you."  Now, I'm not kidding here, this kid actually ate a peanut butter and pepperoni sandwich one time.  And he said no to the combo.  That speaks volumes.  Norah watched Toby eat his bite, get his mouth unstuck long enough to decline any other bites, and then wouldn't even touch her plate for the rest of the meal.  I promptly made the kids alternate sandwiches, and we settled our experiences with Fluff for the next decade (or until they have kids and decide to expose them to the delights of marshmallow fluff smeared on bread).
Needless to say, the recipe was not a hit and would not become a repeat guest at future Thanksgivings.  Now I've got an almost-full jar of Fluff sitting in my pantry that I can't even send off to a soup kitchen.  I've noticed two things about the stuff (which I am going to throw away after I publish this post, despite my guilt over wastefulness--all $1.69 of it).  First, I used about 1/2 of a cup of the stuff in the recipe, but I think it expands once you open the tub; it doesn't look like I've used any of it.  And second, I'm almost positive that the stuff that walks off John Cusack's plate in the 80's movie Better off Dead was made of green Fluff.  This stuff has a life of its own.

My Tidbits

There are some long work days when BJ will go all day without seeing the kids, or he'll say goodbye to them in the morning and then won't be back until after they're in bed.  On these days I try to remember a few funny or cute things that the kids do in order to share a bit of our day with him.  Here are a few highlights.
--So for example, the other night Norah was distributing some play money to each of us from her cash register to buy some things from her food store.  Toby, while playing with Legos, misplaced his money and could be heard shouting throughout the house "Where's my cash money???!!!!"  (We later found the money under his Lego box.)
--And yesterday I spent all day on the couch with a stomach bug and nurse Norah at my side.  We played Go Fish over and over and over again.  The only thing that got me through it was Norah's mannerisms while she played.  She called the periwinkle flower a "pinkwy fower."  So cute.
--After Toby got home from school today we printed off some mazes and he sat right in the middle of the living room to do them.  He looked up at me from his first maze and said, "Mom, you're the best maze-printer-outer ever."
--Speaking of computers, one time I asked Toby if he new his address and he said, "Sure!  It's 930 Shennecossett dot com!"  (Toby does not surf the web, but he does know all about pbskids.com, which is where he got the idea that addresses end in dot com.)

My AF Cheering Crew

BJ and I met up with his parents and some extended family friends at the Army-Air Force game the first weekend in November. We drove to the West Point area in time for dinner on Friday night, played in the hotel pool before bedtime, and crashed into bed at 10:30 pm! Then we drove to West Point Saturday morning for the game. The traffic and parking was unbelievably bad, but the campus is really pretty. The game was very crowded, and for almost the entire first quarter Toby claimed he was bored and wanted to go home. He even said "I'm so bored I want to go sit in traffic!" at one point. Man, he couldn't have been more clear about just how bored he was! But we learned that when the kids get bored the parents (and grandparents) hit the snack bar. We consumed mass amounts of hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels, and sodas. That kept us busy through halftime. By the third quarter the kids were getting interested in watching the people and the players, so mom and dad even got to watch some of the game too! And then both kids slept through the fourth quarter!  (Edit: in case you were wondering, the Falcons won.)
After the game we met up with everyone for a very fun dinner out. Everyone told great stories and had lots of good food and time to catch up among friends.  Toby and Norah played with Legos and colored throughout the dinner (I actually don't think they even ate anything), and were tucked snug into their beds at 10 that night.  
Sunday morning (after a little bit of pool time and a last lunch with Oma and Opa) we packed up and headed home.  The visit just seemed to fly by, but it was a great time for us to build memories of family football games with the kids!

The bus ride to the stadium.

Checking out the crowd.

Each kid got to hug the Falcon.

Warming up (with Little Dog) back in the hotel room.