Solstice Celebration

Saturday morning we had our family solstice celebration. We like to do it on a weekend day before we head to Ohio for the real Christmas. Last year, we were able to do the Santa tradition, because Alice just wasn't as aware of what is going on. But now she is a talkative four-year-old spending all day with other talkative four-year-olds, so I didn't think we'd be able to get away with having Santa visit our house nearly a week before everyone else without having to invent a lot of explanations and causing chaos in homes around Raleigh as kids reported to their parents that Santa visited Alice early. So, here we are. Life is complicated. These presents are just from Mom and Dad and Santa is going to come on Christmas.

We still managed to have fun.

 

 

I think the pictures pretty much tell the story, but let me see what I want to remember...

Alice actually behaved pretty well--we had been giving her lectures about not complaining, whining, or grabbing any of Simon's toys. And she did a good job.

Simon had trouble focusing on opening presents since he wanted to spend some time playing with each thing he opened. It was really fun how long he drew out the process.

Both Simon and Alice really loved the last minute dollar store crap I got them. A plastic mermaid for Alice and a plastic excavator truck for Simon. Simon also really liked the fake plastic LED candles I got him. Note to self for next year: Dollar store is good.

The kids each got a Pez dispenser in their stocking. Alice barely ate one candy and spit it out. Simon ate all of candies in one sitting, one after another. Later Alice gave him half of her candies, and he did the same thing.

Simon really loved his magnetic fishing pole. Technically it's a bath toy, but since we put the kids in the bath together, I'm afraid they'd fight over it and poke out someone's eye, so it's going to be a living room toy. It was fun to see how quickly he got the hang of it. At first, he would put the magnet on the fish's mouth with his hand, but soon he got the coordination to dangle to magnet in the right spot to catch a fish.

Alice seemed to like her things, but she spent a lot of the time packing them up and hoarding them, rather than playing with them.

We had eggs and cinnamon rolls for breakfast about half-way through. Simon ate all his eggs first (he loves scrambled eggs). He surprisingly only ate some of the cinnamon roll. Alice ate more than she has the last two years, so maybe there is hope for her after all.

The one-eyed catfish is a beloved hand-me-down from Pete and Donna.

I think, actually, my favorite moment was when the floor was nearly covered in torn wrapping paper and Simon found one little piece of it, said, "This is trash!" and took it up to the trash can in the kitchen. He came back and reported, "I did it! I clean upped!"

Friday Family Fun Night

Friday was a crazy day. It was my last day of work before the break. It was the kid's Christmas celebration at school. And we had planned to go out to eat and to the family fun night at the art museum with some of our daycare friends. Add on to this a last-minute morning doctor's appointment for Alice, who had been sick for a while, and was looking quite droopy and complaining of an earache.

Alice did great at the doctor's appointment. Her regular doctor was out on vacation, and the new doctor was young and was great with kids. The doctor said she thought Alice had an ear infection and maybe her eardrum had burst. She prescribed antibiotics, which always seems to be the case. But, she said Alice was fine to go to school, so I dropped her off just in time for the gift exchange, and headed on to work.

After work, I picked up the kids and their presents from the gift exchange, and headed to Guasaca, a nearby Venezuelen restaurant, to meet with Zac and two other couples who had kids that go to Alice and Simon's daycare. I did this with Alice last year, and the restaurant was nearly empty. But tonight for some reason it was packed. This was good, in that the kid's noise wasn't disturbing anyone, but it made it rather chaotic.

Alice had a breakdown while she was waiting for the food, but luckily once she got it and started eating, she powered up again and was fine. She sat between Anna and one of Anna's mom's and she later reported that he favorite part of the evening was "When Anna's mom said Anna needs to take bites like me." Alice is rarely held up as the role-model eater, so that must by why this made Alice so happy.

After we survived the meal, during which nearly every child cried at least once and a couple of kids made getaways, we headed over to the art museum. The parking was a nightmare, which foreshadowed that this too was going to be crowded and crazy. Trying to keep track of Alice and Anna was like a moving Where's Waldo game. The museum was swarming with little kids, making them hard to find in a crowd. Every time they took a few steps away, someone would cross my line of vision, and then it would seem the child had vanished. So the kids had a blast, but the adults were rather harried. We met Grayson's family there briefly, but then they had to go, so mostly it was just Alice and Anna. But seriously, just keeping track of those two was insane. Simon was pretty clingy and wanted to be held most of the time, so he at least was easy to keep track of. He did enjoy playing with the Velcro gingerbread house.

Back at home, we were barely in the door when Alice ripped open her present from the gift exchange at school. It must have been quite trying to wait all day to open it. She got some markers and this bath paint, that the kids had great fun playing with.

Finally, we got the kids to bed, and put the presents under the tree, for tomorrow we were continuing our weird (but quite pragmatic) tradition of opening presents on the weekend before Christmas.

Blue Jay Point

On Sunday, I was still in DC holding Laura's sweet 5-week-old baby, while my comparatively grown up kids went to play at Blue Jay Point County Park with Zac.

Arcaros all over the place

On Saturday morning, Zac and the kids dropped me off at the airport, where I would fly to DC for the weekend to visit my friend Laura.

After dropping me off, Zac dropped Alice off at Grayson's for a playdate.

Then Zac and Simon went to Godbold park, where Zac taught Simon how to throw rocks into the water properly.

I think everyone had a great day!

Pocket Loot

Every weekend, I have to wash Alice's coat because she gets it so dirty. This year's hand-me-down winter coat has zipper pockets, which Alice thinks is the best thing ever. The problem, from my perspective, is that she uses the zipper pockets to hoard things. So every weekend, before I wash her coat, I must carefully remove all the contents from her pockets.  Here are photos of hauls from two consecutive weeks:

Jingle Bells

The kids spontaneously decided to put on a Christmas choral performance for us. We could not have gotten them to do this if we had tried. It was pretty sweet.

Easy-Peasy

Sometimes, (rarely) our children will be as good as gold. They'll entertain themselves, not fight, not whine, and not need anything from us for a few minutes. It always feels miraculous when this happens.

Cary Ole Time Winter Festival

On Saturday, we met Grayson's family in downtown Cary for the Ole Time Winter Festival. We started in the community center gym where they had craft tables set up for the little ones, staffed by the Cary Teen Council. Alice and Grayson had a lot of fun running around doing the different activities. Simon was clingy, which meant he was hungry, so he and Zac sat on the floor and ate snacks most of the time (although he did get a tattoo).

Grayson wanted to sit on Santa's lap, and Alice went along with it. I would have been shocked if she had actually sat on Santa, and really, it was quite miraculous she even got this close. She did talk to him and tell him what she wanted though: A crown and wand. Grayson was not the least bit shy.

It continues to be impossible to get both kids to stand still, smile, and look at the camera. But we keep trying.

After we exhausted the arts and crafts, we headed out to the street festival. Simon liked investigating this statue holding a flag, and he seemed disappointed that he wasn't able to disconnect the flag to play with it.

Later, the kids got to go in a fire engine. 

 

Back at home, Alice decorated herself for Christmas!

Morning Story

Alice loves Dinotrux, so when she discovered I had gotten her a new Dinotrux book at the library, she asked Zac to read it to her first thing in the morning. Simon, not one to miss out, joined in.

Montessori Kid

Alice was, in her words, "bold and brave" and came all the way out to the living room by herself this morning when she woke up. She found this calendar that Zac had brought home, and did some "work." If you look closely, you'll see that for each number, she made that many lines in that box.