One step further

Ruby has a drawer in my kitchen that she absolutely loves to empty. It is full of sippy cups and I don't really mind her making a mess of them. She has recently expanded her drawer-emptying-privilege to also include Ollie's pajama drawer. Most days she just stands at the drawer and throws the pajamas one at a time over her shoulder. On this day however she brought me each item out of the drawer and indicated that she wanted me to put it on her. I think she has at least five or six pajama tops and bottoms on her head not to mention the ones wrapped around her neck and waist. She was so pleased and left them on to play for quite a while. Funny girl.

Fun with friends

We invited our friends over to decorate gingerbread men on Friday. The kids loved it. They decorated their cookies and then promptly ate them. I had to laugh at Ruby because she found a particular marshmallow on Oliver's gingerbread man and decided to eat it. Every time he replaced it she would steal it off and pop it in her mouth, it didn't matter how many marshmallows I piled in front of her she only wanted the marshmallows from that particular spot. Fortunately Oliver didn't care as long as there was a ready supply of replacements.

After lunch the kids pushed all the chairs against the wall and made a train. Addie and Oliver took turns driving, I thought it was so cute that they came up with this game all on their own (the little girls just tagged along of course and were thrilled to be included!)
At the end of the play date the kids got out the last of their energy by demonstrating the tumbling skills they learn at Mrs. Karie's preschool. Ruby thought the somersaults looked like fun, this is her version.

Can't sleep

So, it is two o'clock in the morning, an hour which rarely finds me awake, let alone out of bed. But as it happens I couldn't sleep. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it had something with a hidden desire to sneak downstairs and finish off the last of the super-fattening and yummy apple dip in my fridge (which I did of course). When sleep still refused to catch up with me I entertained myself with reading past blog posts. I realized that I have gotten lazy when it comes to recording the happenings our our lives. My recent posts have contained little more than the captions under each picture. So, here is the rest of the stuff that I will be glad I wrote when I am up at 2:00 a.m. sometime next year!

1. Oliver informed me this past week that he wanted to be a tiger for Christmas. I guess he just isn't ready for Halloween to be over yet. He was absolutely insistent on putting on his costume but as we were headed out the door to view a live nativity I did not think it would be appropriate. Instead we had a talk about what he could be for Christmas and he decided that being a reindeer would suit him just as well. After a quick trip to Dollar Tree for a pair of antlers we were on our way. He wore the antlers all night and to breakfast the next morning. As to the live nativity, it was great but they ended up with one narrator too many as Oliver loudly explained the entire scene to the audience while perched atop my shoulders.

2. Ruby has reached the stage where she doesn't talk but still has no problem communicating what she wants. She has had the hang of shaking her head for no but this week she has branched out and now nods as well. I find it to be rather convenient. When she points to an area I just go over and hold up individual items until she nods. Her nod is so cute though, she doesn't just nod with her head, it is a body nod from the waste up.

3. Oliver loves to have his little friend Braden over to play. It is so fun for me to watch them because they have both left behind the days of parallel play and now use their imaginations and play together. Most of the time they are workers, building roads and picking up garbage but they like to imagine other things as well. Usually I am not allowed to be in the room with them (mostly because they want me to take Ruby away so she doesn't wreck their towers and stuff). Ruby loves to do anything that her brother is doing; the other day I had a vision of her in the future tagging along behind her big brother and his friends and driving them all crazy. I have no doubt that will one day be the case, but as for now they are great friends. They love to play together and no one can make Ruby laugh like Oliver can. They can of course get on each other's nerves as well, but I have noticed that they never act jealous of each other and are not at all territorial (unless we are talking about their respective pink and blue blankets to which they are both unashamedly attached).

4. I hate to say it, but I really hate Sunday's. I know that they are supposed to be a wonderful, spiritual and uplifting day meant to prepare us for the week ahead but for me they are sheer torture. To begin with our church starts at 1:00 p.m., exactly naptime at our house. I can't understand why I can have us all ready and the house picked up by 9:00 a.m. every other morning but am always rushing to get to church on time and leaving my house in a state of complete disarray. I guess I do know the answer to that riddle, the reason I don't get ready fast enough is because I am not motivated to go. Once I go to church it is all I can do to keep my kids entertained and contained within our pew. Even after my greatest efforts we only last a few minutes in there and then it is out to the hall. Oliver actually isn't so bad, he will play with his toys and is always excited to go to nursery. But Ruby is a wanderer and refuses to stay put. Once she is out Ollie thinks he should be as well. I have every bulletin board, relief society announcement and missionary plaque in our whole building memorized because I have stared at them all so much while wandering the halls. Unfortunately things don't improve after Sacrament meeting as Ruby has discovered where the piano is in the Sunday School and Relief Society room. She knows how to open the lid to the keyboard and makes a bee-line for it every time I go into the room. As she still has four months before she is old enough for nursery I don't plan on things improving much for a while. I don't know why I am venting about this on my blog, it almost brings tears of frustration just to write about it. I guess I am hoping that in twenty years I will be able to look back at this and sigh because I actually miss those insane Sundays when I learned nothing and hated everything. Maybe the reason I can't sleep is because my heart is filled with dread for the day ahead. Forget missions, the true test of a testimony is parenthood. I guess I have one because torturous as it is, I still go to church.

5. Sam turned on the Christmas music before the Halloween decorations were put away. After hearing them so many times Oliver has started to pick up on a lot of the lyrics and I often hear him singing little snippets. My favorite is when he dances around singing "Jingle bell time is a swell time!"

I just yawned, maybe that means sleep is on the way. I think I will head to bed and let it catch me!

Snow Day

We went out to play in the snow last week after the "big storm" that never really materialized. It was Ruby's first time in the snow and she thought it was great. Oliver spent a good hour making sure that there was no snow within a block of our house that was free of footprints. Ruby enjoyed just sticking her mittens in the snow and then wiping them off on my legs. As for me, I was on clothing patrol. Which I have decided is pretty much all snow play is for parents; refastening coats, tucking in snow pants and adjusting mittens.

As for the predicted Blizzard of 2010 - I want you to know that although it was nowhere near as fierce as predicted, our family would have been well cared for. When Sam was sent home early from work because of the approaching storm he made sure to stop off at the store to stock up on Oreos and other forms of chocolate. I keep teasing him because my sister told me that when her husband (who was also sent home early) arrived at home prior to the storm he checked their seventy-two hour kits, filled water bottles and purchased a space heater :) It would have all worked out in the end though, Sam's theory is that we should only stock chocolate in our food storage as that would give is the strongest kind of bargaining power in the event of a natural disaster. I might go with is theory if I though a storage room of chocolate would last more that a week with him around!

Turkey Day

At the conclusion of my mission I promised myself that as a reward for "surviving" I would never purchase any poultry that was not boneless and skinless (I won't got into the details as to why, but rest assured that I felt properly justified in this decision). Anyway, a Thanksgiving turkey most certainly does not meet these guidelines so I hope that I will always have a grandma, mother, or aunt to deal with the gizzards for me. The only kind of turkey I ever plan to make is the one pictured above. It is a cake, as requested by my grandma for Thanksgiving. After reading my earlier blog about wanting more practice she commissioned a "Thanksgiving cake." I felt that an apple pie would have been more festive (and much easier) but in the end I was glad I made the cake. It is all edible, the legs and wings are made of rice crispy treats.

The switch-a-roo that didn't take

I decided the other day that Oliver's blanket could not stand much more "love" from my little three-year-old. I had a back-up blanket that resembled his blanket in every way (minus the grime and holes) so I suggested that we get him a new one. He was really excited about how soft blue the new one was. He handled the switch really well, that is until naptime when after five minutes he came out crying and begging for his old blue blanket. I couldn't just take it away so now I am nervously watching the "old blue blanket" disintegrate before my eyes and wondering what I will do when it finally succumbs to the inevitable.

Why bother?

With Christmas quickly approaching I am of course shopping around for toys that I think my children will appreciate. Oliver this year requested "the coolest coolest toy that he has ever seen" upon further investigation we discovered that this means a tractor or a concrete mixing truck. The other day however, I started to wonder about the intelligence of spending money on toys when my children are every bit as entertained by an empty box or a drawer full of sippy cups. Oliver spent at least three hours carving pumpkins out of styrofoam the other day and has never been happier.