And That's Why We Have Turkey at Christmas

This is Doug's Nativity set. My mother gave it to him last year to keep him from playing with my nice set and much to my delight, it's kept him from trying to get to mine and he loves to play with it. It's become a nice learning tool for Christmas.

However, it has become a bit unconventional. Most of the things that came with the set are further back in the manger. Doug has been adding other toy animals to this set, as you can see. I'll admit that I placed them more strategically for this photo, Doug usually just lumps them all in there.

Doug's assortment of creatures helps answer some questions while bringing up other important issues. For starters, you can clearly see that in Jesus' time people were concerned about the environment. Case in point, the wise man opted for a compact camel. You will also undoubtedly notice the dinosaur present. Many people are very confused about evolution, Jesus, and dinosaurs. You can clearly see that there was a dinosaur present at his birth. The writers of the gospels left them out, probably because dinosaurs were so prevalent in those times that they were easily forgettable. Another item of note is the ginormous squirrel. Either there was some serious exposure to radioactivity in those times or evolution has made squirrels smaller. I'm afraid that one poses more questions than answers. You have probably also noticed the dolphin. The birth of Jesus was evidently so momentous that sea creatures were drawn out of the oceans and into the desert. I don't imagine the dolphin lasted long once he got there. And lastly, this scene finally answers the age old question, "Why do we have turkey at Christmas when we just had it at Thanksgiving?". The answer is simple: because there was a turkey present at the first Christmas. As you may be able to see, the turkey is standing very close to the cook fire. It may have been intentional to make turkey for dinner that night or perhaps the turkey was accidentally pushed into the fire. We may never know for sure.

The Man

Meet Charlie, our elf. He came to us from the North Pole (Target) to keep an eye on Doug for Santa (Mommy & Daddy).

I had seen these elves in the stores for a while now and I was hesitant about getting one. Other people's children either loved them or feared them. But after three time-outs on Friday night, I decided it was worth a try.

Doug was interested from the beginning. Saturday night he came out of his bath to find Charlie perched on top of the entertainment center. We read the story that came with him and reiterated several times that Charlie will see if you're being naughty or nice and tell Santa Claus, who will in turn bring you more or less presents. You can't tell Doug that Santa will bring him coal. He loves coal. He has a collection of coal he has found while watching trains with Grandpa. So rather than a threat, he'd be over the moon to get some more .

There have been several times when Doug's not doing what we told him (cleaning up, sitting down to dinner, etc) and we've said to him, "Charlie is watching you!". At which point he usually jumps up and goes and does whatever it is we've asked him to do. The other night we were having dinner at my mom's house and Doug was having no part of sitting down to dinner. Desperately, I showed him a large snowman salt shaker and told Doug that the snowman knew Charlie and would report back. Doug was not impressed. I've also told him that Charlie has friends in stores who can report back to him. This keeps him from running around the store like a maniac and heads off the issue of running into a whole display of elves (Charlie's friends. They're watching you!). I also make a point to tell Charlie how well Doug did something, so that Charlie doesn't become 'The Man' (Elf) and Doug won't resent him.

I have to say, so far I'm pleased with this new tradition. Doug's begun to clean up hos toys without much fuss from me. I think we may modify St. Nicholas Day to say that St. Nick sent the gifts via Charlie, who's seen Doug being good (hopefully) to help reinforce the message that Charlie reports back to the bog boss. Hopefully this will continue to work right up until Christmas.

The Sanctity of Tuesday

You know the opening scene in 'The Emperor's New Groove', where the old man gets in the way of the song and dance number and Emperor Kuzco throws a hissy because his 'groove' was thrown off?

That was me last week. Except I wasn't yelling at a little old man, but at the government.* You see, doing nothing on Tuesdays is totally a thing around here. Going to vote is definitely a thing. A thing that totally threw me off my groove. Voting is something that involves me not wearing my PJs and dragging Doug with me and standing in a looooong line. All things I hate doing (except the being with Doug part). I did try to vote early, but believe it or not, the line was worse. At any rate, I was able to drop Doug off at my parents' house and then go vote. Missions exasperatedly accomplished.

I take Tuesdays off, they are my crash days. I take this very seriously. Well, as seriously as you can take something when you sit around in your PJs for most of the day. Let me explain the origin of the 'Crash Day'. Having a few chronic illnesses makes me a tired person. Most people who know me well, will hear my say "I'm tired" about 673 times a day. Doug even knows this. He'll look at me and say, "Mommy's tired."** At any rate, when the fatigue starts to build up, the pain will too. Such that when I know I've over done it, my muscles will begin to twitch as sort of an early warning system (which is occasionally too late to do anything about it). I have found through experience that if I ignore these sign and keep on going about my business during the week, I crash unexpectedly. By setting aside one day a week in which I don't need to leave the house, let alone get dressed, I save a lot of energy and restore myself. Its kind of like when firefighters are fighting a forest fire and they set their own fires to prevent the blaze from spreading. By intentionally taking it easy once a week, I prevent most other fatigue crashes. It's brilliant.

Monday was  my day to crash for a while. We're usually busy on weekends, running errands, fun outings and going to church. Mondays I was tired, so it was a natural day for me to take it easy. Then Doug's story time at the library moved from Wednesday to Monday. I realized I could hold off my crash day for one more day and the Tuesday Crash day was born.

Crash day is a wonderful thing. I do look forward to it every week. On Tuesday morning, I permit myself the luxury of letting Doug watch a DVD, by himself. Doug will wake up, and then I'll change him and dress him and fix him something easy and non-messy for breakfast. He'll usually have dry cereal (for whatever reason, he's not big on milk in his cereal), toast or a cereal bar and some milk. I will then turn on a DVD of his choice, usually Olivia or Thomas, and then go back to my room, leave the door partially open, and then lay down for about an hour. Occasionally Doug decides to be the world's most persistent snooze alarm, and come in about every twenty minutes or so. Sometimes he comes in because he wants something, or he needs a snuggle or he just wants to check in. Either way, I'm totally fine with that. Then I'll get up, Doug and I will hang out, I'll make him some lunch, and then it's nap-time for him and more relax time for me. He'll usually nap until the second shift, Jeff, gets home. I usually have something quick ready for dinner on Tuesdays, or Jeff will make something. It's really amazing what a difference taking it easy once a week can make!




*In my defense, albeit for different reasons, I probably wasn't the only one yelling at the government last week.  

**Over the summer when I had a bad flare up, he looked at me and said that, and then told me to go lay down. How can I argue with that? 

You'll Thank Me When You're Literate

I've been debating for a while about when I should more formally introduce the alphabet to Doug. In my b.c. life (before children) I used to teach children to read.  Additionally, I love to read myself, so literacy is something that is near and dear to me. I put it off for a while to get potty training off the ground (still very much a work in progress). But Doug is now very interested in letters and mostly can sing the ABC song.*

Last week I was inspired by Jeff's cousin's blog. Alli is doing a theme every month and starting the theme with a box with items in that theme. That really sounded like fun and got my creative juices flowing. I decided that I would introduce a letter by putting items that began with that letter in a box, along with a coloring page, courtesy of  Sesame Street printables and a large foam letter (left over from our large alphabet mat. What a pain in the butt that was).

I have various other actives and crafts planned to go along with this. After we looked in the 'A' box this morning, there was a letter 'A' hunt. I had printed out twelve large and differently colored 'A's and stuck them around the basement for Doug to hunt for. When he came down the stairs and saw the first one, he proclaimed, "That's letter A!" (thanks you, Sesame Street). I thought each day we'd do a 15-20 minute activity involving the letter and spend a week or two on each letter. He's grasped 'A' rather quickly, so I think we may only spend one week on it. In addition to learning the symbol (I'm only showing him the capital letter right now) we're also learning the short vowel sound for the vowels. If he only comes out of this with a knowledge of the letter names, however, I'll be happy. I mean, he's only two and a half. So far so good with the short 'A' sound though. I've also decided to use Sesame Street videos about various letter skits (today it's 'A's Anatomy'). It's actually letter 'A' week on their website!

Here's some pics of learning in action:

I decided, just for the first time, I'd gift wrap the box (I'm awful at wrapping. If you get something from us that's nicely wrapped, Jeff did it.). Initially, I thought Doug would be mighty pissed off unwrapping a box of his own toys, but he was quite excited.

 And yes, we're still totally in our pjs. It's a rainy Tuesday morning.

Here Doug is examining the contents of his 'A' box.

Doug has found his first letter 'A' on his 'A' hunt! He totally loved this activity. 

So far so good :)



*As an educator, one of my biggest pet peeves is when an adult proclaims a child "knows their ABCs", when what they actually know is the song, not the sound to symbol relationship, which is far, far more important.  End of rant.

Reset

The summer has just flown by! I have to say, I'm glad it's done and almost fall. Summer is always a bit tough, I seem to be more prone to fibro flare ups, and indeed I had a nasty one in July. Just as I got over that, my thyroid decided to join in the fun too! I was worried about our trip, but my doctor was able to diagnose my low thyroid just in time! We went out to Kansas City for the last week of the summer. It was nice to visit with my in-laws and Doug always loves seeing them. I feel that we were really able to get potty training well under way while we were there, with four adults watching Doug, he was taken to the bathroom quite a bit. But we got to relax and more importantly get out of the rut that my illness had set us into. It was very cleansing. I think I'm back on track and I'm totally ready to enjoy my favorite season of the year: Fall!

Until next time, here are some pictures of our Kansas City fun!


This first set of pictures are from Lego Land. Doug asked to go back there just about every day.

In this picture he's helping his Pop-pop make a house out of tissue box sized rubber Legos.


There were small wading pool sized tubs of Legos and Duplos everywhere! They had some farm animals that Doug absolutely loved. However, they didn't have them for sale in the store!


They also had some cute Duplo cupcakes. They only came in pink however, Doug loved them regardless.



After going to Lego Land, my brother-in-law recommend this place for lunch, I think it was called 'Fritz's'. You meal was delivered via train and a basket. Both Doug and Uncle Matt were very excited about this!

Here's a shot of Doug looking at the trolley that went by our table.


Here comes our food on the train!



Doug's great grandmother, Nan, came over from St. Louis to visit with us for a few days. On one nice day, we went fishing. After about 15 minutes, Doug caught a fish. And then he was done.


Unfortunately, this cool park was right by the water, and after he caught his fish, Doug wanted to go slide and play.



The last two days we were there, the remnants of hurricane Isaac caught up to us. There was lots and lots of rain to play in!



The second rainy day we headed up to the mall to wear Doug out before we got him in the car the next day. The mall has this fairly unique two level carrousel.


We all had a good deal of bbq and fun in Kansas City!

It's Friday!

It's finally Friday! I don't know what it's like else where, but here in the D.C. metro, it's been raining on and off all day. I was alerted to the rain a little before 8 this morning. Doug came into my room and announced, "It's RAINING Mommy!!!". It was a little more excitement that I can deal with at that hour of the morning, but I didn't want to rain on his parade, as it was.

It has been a loooong two weeks. A little over two weeks ago, I rolled my foot/ankle coming down our deck steps while carrying a chair. That minor injury sent my fibro into a tailspin and I've been stuck in a lovely little fibro flare up since then. Today is the first day in a while that I was able to promptly get out of bed in the morning. Due to that and the rain, I decided that Doug and I shall bake!

The most serious mind, baking takes. Also country music.

We got off to a bit of a dangerous start. I had left the chocolate morsels on the counter and pushed Doug's chair up to it. I turned my back for a fraction of a second, only to turn around to catch him using the paring knife to open the bag of chocolate! I freaked out a bit checking his hand for cuts, which upset him. I usually let him sample some of the chocolates, but because he was upset I let him sample more than was practical for making chocolate chip cookies. I ended up opening a bag of peanut butter chips and making chocolate and peanut butter cookies instead. They turned out to be quite delicious! I attempted to get a picture of Doug eating the cookies, but no dice. But believe me he's enjoying them while watching Cars.

It's the perfect day to cuddle up on the couch with some cookies and a movie! Happy Friday!

Summer Time!

This summer kind of feels like a manual car being driven by some one who has no idea how to drive stick (like me). It goes on quite well for a while, and then stalls out. We started out the summer with a cold that Doug brought us and that took me forever to get over. Then we had a fantastic time at the wedding of one of Jeff's frat brothers in North Carolina. Then we got slammed by the Great Land Hurricane of '12 and lost power for nearly 6 days. We've been playing around with my fibro medication as well, which has given me mixed results. We're very excited about going out to Kansas City at the end of the summer.

Due to a lack of energy and a lot of time to make up for, here's a ton of pictures of our summer so far, one picture being worth a thousand words and what not.

This is a picture of the sign that hung in every stall in the bathroom of the wedding reception we went to. The reception was on a lovely pier that is evidently trying to be as environmentally friendly as possible. For example, the toilets used 'reclaimed' water, so they thought this sign was necessary:

So you know, stay out of the toilet because of the reclaimed water, not because it's a toilet. Funny side note, you couldn't go into the bathroom without hearing people snapping pictures of this sign.


This is a picture of Jeff and me at the reception. We had a great time, it was our first trip away without Doug (just two nights). Initially I was a little apprehensive about going to the wedding of one of the frat brothers, but due to the heavy presence of the wives, all the guys were on their best behavior and I didn't see anymore of them then most people (no odd nudity).




Here's some random pictures of backyard fun:

Catching lightning bugs!

Hanging out in our inflatable pool.

In June we were supposed to go to the baptism of my friend's son. I lost the invitation and we wound up at the wrong church and completely missed the event. The reception was to be held at a park, and the whole time Doug kept asking from the backseat "Park? Park?". We finally decided to head home, get changed and head out to Wheaton Park. Why not make some lemonade? Doug had a blast but kept on asking about seeing his friend Nora (the big sister of the baptized). I had to keep telling him that mommy was the flake and not Nora. Doug managed to have a pretty good time anyway.

The train ride is very serious business!

The 4th of July turned out to be another one of those happy accidents. We'd left my Uncle's house early because Doug was getting cranky and we knew he wouldn't sleep there. We drove my Grandma back to her place and Doug slept the whole time. He got about an hour and a half worth of sleep in the car. When we pulled into our drive way I realized that the city's fireworks were about to start in 40 minutes. We hurried up, ran into the house and re-provisioned and headed out to find a spot to watch the fireworks. We ended up in a parking lot across the lake, the perfect distance to see the fireworks without them being too loud. We were also at an easy exit to go home without fighting too much traffic. If we had planned it we couldn't have done a better job!


Doug was enthralled with the fireworks. He can be iffy about loud noises, so we were prepared to leave if we needed to. He only cried when they were over, he wanted more!

The weekend before last was supposed to be gorgeous, no rain and in the low 80's.We took Doug on his first trip downtown and on his first Metro trip. Of course it misted on us all day, but I'll take that over 100 degrees.

Our first stop was the American History Museum, the transportation section. Here Doug is rather excitedly pointing to a truck.



We also saw the dinosaurs at Natural History. Here is one very tired little boy passed out on the Metro ride home:



Til next time!