Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

There are many, many things that I enjoy about living abroad.  One of them is the fact that, without Thanksgiving to 'hinder' Christmas, people here decorate in September or October.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love, LOVE, LOVE Christmas?  So I try, to the best of my ability, to make sure not to start decorating too soon.  However, this weekend, I had a great time setting up the tree with the kids.  I have a few war wounds (apparently having a great big belly made of tissue paper instead of normal skin can be hazardous when assembling a metal tree) but there was no shouting, no screaming, and best of all, the kids seemed to genuinely enjoy the entire process!  

Em has caught on to the nostalgia that I get when unpacking all the ornaments.  She asked who gave us the tree, so I told her.  She asked about each ornament, so again, I told her.  About one quarter of all our ornaments are from my former students, and I have each child's name and year written so I will never forget.  The older two both couldn't believe how small their handprint ornaments from two years ago were.  And, of course, they liked to compare who had more ornaments than anyone else.  

 The kids were tickled that they could "make" a tree and loved the fluffing of each branch.  Em, as usual, took it very seriously.  Cooper (I'm sad to say I couldn't get a picture of it all because he was too fast) decided, having never watching the movie, that he needed to reenact the light saber battle from Star Wars to see if it might have been better with tree branches... and his sister.  Nope, the original still holds- whew, cause I was nervous.  

 Harper got one single branch half fluffed and then proceeded to beat each piece of furniture in the entire house.  So much for not having to vacuum a fake tree.

 But we had a great time and I have a feeling that future tree decorating events will have a very similar flow to them as well.  Glad we could establish roles early on in our family, no need to fight over who does what in a few years :)

 Em felt it was her calling, and duty really, to "save" all the fallen ornaments Harper put on but "just wouldn't stay up Mummy."

And blessings on this boy of mine.  The one who was only allowed to touch the felted or cloth ornaments... EVER.  May he find a careful and laid-back person to help him decorate when he gets bigger, because I'm taking bets that "growing up" may not be in the cards for him for a long, long, LONG time.

Church Dresses and Reptiles

This morning was one of "those" mornings where I was fed up by 8am.  The biggest issue (I think) is that the kids are rather manic the first bit when Todd is away.  He left for an overnight camping/rock climbing adventure with a friend.  I wish I could have gone, but with the belly being as big as it is, I doubt I'd be able to fit into a harness, let alone climb up a rock face!  So the kids and I decided to part ways and stick around the house for the weekend.  Thus, a morning where the kids were "just checking" to make sure Mommy could "handle" things on her own.  Thanks guys, always appreciate the votes of confidence :)  

So when the morning finally started to look up (as in, no one was trying to see how far they could dribble and drool their yogurt in the direction of their belly button) I got everyone dressed and headed out the back door so that I could tackle breakfast.  Harper is currently in between all her pants/shorts and t-shirts, so her only option at the moment is to wear dresses.  Many of them are too short, but she's got those pudgy little legs and bloomer-type covers, so I'm fine with it.  The problem lies in Em.  She doesn't think it's fair that Harper gets to wear "church clothes" and she isn't allowed to.  Thus, the girls got dresses and Cooper declared that he couldn't be their prince in a t-shirt.  I wish I was making this up, but who could possibly think of that kind of logic that early in the morning?!?  Fine.  Harper in a dress.  Em in a dress. Cooper in a polo and all to play in the muddy backyard.  Wonderful.  It was the squeals of delight from all three kids that brought me away from the yogurt-paste I'd been scrapping away at.  Normally, they don't go all-in, all at once, over anything so this was cause for investigation.  Upon arrival outside, it turned out that the kids had found a number of interesting bugs and what-not and were thrilled by their discovery.  I started to engage the conversation by asking questions when I saw something odd on Em's shoulder blade.  I popped into the house, grabbed the camera, and went back out.  Em was more than willing to have her picture taken, especially in her "church dress on a Saturday."

 Note, no signs of fear, worry or concern on her face... just her goofy I'm-posing-for-a-school-picture face she gets these days whenever a camera appears.  Also note the reptile on her arm which had moved from her shoulder blade onto her shoulder, and then down towards her elbow at a leisurely pace.

 I turned her arm to get one of the lizard I'd seen earlier and less than one second after this picture was taken (and Em looked at her arm), she FLIPPED OUT screaming like only a four-year-old-girl who has been startled by a reptile can.  The commotion caused the placid lizard, who had been perfectly content throughout this whole time (at least 5 minutes) to go racing around Em's neck and down her leg.

 It settled on her shoe just long enough for me to get Em to calm down and realize she wasn't going to die, which then brought another round of shouts and screams about how "mean" I was for not telling Em sooner, at which point I lost it laughing.  Nothing gets by this girl... except, apparently, a lizard on her arm  :D

Then Cooper pitched a minor fit because he hadn't been in any picture and he was in his "prince" shirt.  The three of them decided to make a train on the slide so Mommy could get pictures of them all together.  I think this means that we (officially) force them into too many family pictures when they know how to set up the shot all on their own.  That said, they were so cute and the pictures were adorable, so I'm not about ready to complain!

Mini Me

I've never really been able to see how kids, particularly babies, can look "just like" a particular parent.  Maybe I'm blind, but even with my own kids I was unable to see it.  All that changed however when I found a packet of dresses and some pictures of me when I was Harper's age in the organizing frenzy of this week.  It wasn't even similar, it was the same child just three decades difference.  I told Todd to leaf through the pictures and all I could hear was, "Oh WOW!"  Doubt this is a good thing, since she has the same facial expressions and all, but like it or not, Mini-Me is here to stay. 

 

 Who wants this hair?  Oh wait, NO ONE!  And I, and I alone have gifted it to my second daughter.  Sweetheart, I'm publicly declaring how very sorry I truly am.  

Anyone from church will recognize this face.  Not my grandparents, but that face and those screams, yep, that's my girl.

 In the packet, I also uncovered this dress.  It was one of my old dresses.  I wish I had found it when Em was about this age, but alas, no such luck.  I think my mom has a few pictures of me in this one, but I also had a Laura-Ingalls-Wilder bonnet on.  No bonnet but Mom, same face? 

The Caterpillar and the Watermelon

The other day, Harper was walking to the slide when she spontaneously imploded, complete with screaming that I imagine would accompany a jellyfish sting or something equally painful.  I went to investigate and upon arrival at her location, realized she wasn't stung by anything at all.  She wasn't even hurt!  She had been frightened when she stepped on a small little caterpillar!!!  It took a few minutes for my heart rate to return to normal.  The thing is, Girlfriend can (and frequently does) scare and terrorize kids three times her age, and here she is in a panic attack over a fuzzy little caterpillar.  Fabulous.

So we had a long chat about small animals in the garden, completed by observing the caterpillar and other insects and bugs.  Em loved it since she's studying life cycles at school and they're currently raising silk worms.  She's been begging to bring some home but I keep telling her that Mommy has a hard enough time remembering to keep the humans in this house alive without adding some animal to the chaos.  (She doesn't like that answer)

Last night, we ate dinner outside and as we were cleaning up, I spotted this little guy.  Rather than let Harper freak out on me again, I pointed it out to the kiddos.  All three proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes inching along in-step with the caterpillar.  Em decided it was a girl and tried to name "her" amongst adamant protests from Cooper that it was a boy.  Then someone remembered that caterpillars eat leaves.  Thank you Eric Carle for your informative book.

That meant Todd and I had a battle on our hands to keep our trees and bushes from getting stripped bare.  Harper decided that since the caterpillar didn't seem interested at all in the leaves, she'd share her watermelon rind.  And when the caterpillar didn't seem to like that, she decided to beat the poor thing into submission.  At that point, interventions occurred on behalf of the bug and I vaguely remember hearing Todd mutter something to the effect of, "I'm not paying for counseling of that thing.  HE wandered into our yard, complete with OUR kids so he knew what he was getting into!"  Never a dull moment around here :)

At some point, feeding the new "pet" became boring and Coop and Harp realized that if they put their hands close, but didn't touch, they could actually 'steer' the caterpillar where they wanted it to go.  Early manipulation skills.  Awesome.  Another reason why we can't have animals in this house :)

Entertainment Sans Internet

There was a storm Monday morning that knocked out the power for a short while.  I didn't think too much about it until the internet stopped working... even when the power came back on... and kept not working until late last night.  Needless to say, I was a bit sad.  I like showing the kids pictures of their American friends and family on Facebook, or finding a new recipe for Em and I to test while the other two are still napping.  I kept forgetting about the internet until after I'd already sat down, which meant the kids were already huddled around waiting for some new snapshot or some-such.  So in an effort to appease them, we started to go through old pictures.  Along the way, I realized there were a fair amount of short home videos.  It became a sort of game to hunt for another video of them when they were little(er).  Em had a hard time not calling herself Harper in many of the clips, but she eventually caught on.  Here are a few of my favorites from back when.

Coop was somewhere between 18-24 months in this and he'd just discovered frogs.  This is his rendition of what a frog looks and sounds like.  (It makes me giggle every time!)

This was a little over a year ago.  Still can't believe how big Harper has gotten in such a short time.

My baby girl, right around 2 1/2 with one of her first Bible verses.  I love this girl so much :)

Thievery... and Other Crafting Adventures

I'm a crafty sort of person.  What I mean by that isn't that I'm artistic, that title goes to my husband.  He can create something out of nothing.  I, on the other hand, am good at stealing ideas from other people.  That, and I have a personal affinity towards the mundane and monotonous.  Honestly, usually find tedious tasks very cathartic.  Anyways, a few weeks ago, I was walking through a garden center and found some boards for really cheap.  So, I bought a few and some wooden cut outs, brought them home and started searching the internet because these boards, I knew, would be the perfect venue to complete a project that's been stewing for nearly 5 years.

You see, when we choose names for our kids, I have personal criteria.  Most people pick something they like the sound of, or maybe a family name.  A few even find out what a name means and pick based on that.  I wish I had something so simple, but I don't.  I have three rules.  1.  It must yell from the bottom of the stairs well- full name, middle and all, otherwise, it's out.  2.  It must be after an American author because there are some things which I dearly love, and books rank extremely high.  3.  It must be a last name.  Every time I walk into a place (like the doctors office) and have to give my surname, I'm always asked to repeat myself because inevitably the little girl asking the question thinks I don't understand what a "surname" is.  This happens in every country I've been to with my married name.  I figure, this way, at least it will make sense when there's confusion :)

Anyways, because each of the kids have an author behind their names, I made a point to pick authors I personally love, whose books I've read and enjoyed, and who have rather profound statements.  When we were dedicating Emmerson, our pastor encouraged us to find a verse for her, a "life verse" if you will, and as we were going through that process, I also went ahead and picked quotes as well.  As a result, for a number of years now, I've been holding on to these quotes, wanting to put them on display around our house, but not sure how to get writing on the walls (without Todd freaking out on me).  Enter stage left:  The boards.

The first thing I did was lay out Em's quote, to make sure it would fit the board I'd bought.  Then I grabbed the wooden cut out, and after searching the internet for ideas and inspiration, I figured I'd wrap the thing in yarn and see how that looked.  LOVE how it looked, hated the connected wooden parts!  After a few hours of wrapping, it came time to write the quote and hang it above the entrance to my kitchen.  I know grey seems rather dull, but the whole house is now this beautiful robins' egg blue and grey so it looks really nice with everything else.

Finally, it came time to write the quote and hang it above the entrance to my kitchen.  I know grey seems rather dull, but the whole house is now this beautiful robins' egg blue and grey so it looks really nice with everything else.

Em is blessed with a writer who has an abundance of wonderful things to say, so I actually wrote in chalk so that if we ever want to, we can change out the quote.  I thought I was so clever.

The second board was going to be for Cooper's room.  I wanted a "surf" themed nursery before Em was born, when we didn't know if we were having a boy or girl, and I've kept that dream alive over the years.  Now that Em is thoroughly entrenched in a love of all things pink and purple, I've given up on her and focused on Coop.  When we were still living in the States, Todd had a work trip down to Florida and he brought back a number of shells, so I wanted to somehow use those on Cooper's board.  Since I want all the authors' quotes in the main living space, I decided to use his verse, but unfortunately for me, the verse we chose for him  is long.  I only used the second half, but I still love the way it turned out and Cooper loves his crab down in the bottom corner.  Win-win!

And then at MOPS this week, we made "Celebration" plates.  The idea is that any time someone is celebrating something (first day of kindergarten, birthday, promotion, etc) they get to eat off the Celebration Plate... or if they need a pick-me-up, which with my two girls might come in handy sooner rather than later.  Anyways, we had to decorate this big, white plate.  Right.  But then I remembered that Dr. Seuss is really easy to copy and decided to go with my favorite, Oh the Places You'll Go.  I still remember my high school Econ teacher reading it to my class and thinking it was such a treasure trove of wisdom... and so easy to remember.  Needless to say, I didn't finish in the hour we had at MOPS and ended up taking the plate home.  Todd's been having Regional-something-or-other meetings all week and has been getting home rather late.  Which means instead of folding laundry or washing dishes after the kids are in bed, I've been finishing this little gem, and tonight, I finally got it done!

It's been one of those weeks where I feel like I'm slightly more than invisible, but slightly less than productive... you know what I mean?  When nothing seems to go right, but nothing seems to go terribly wrong either?  So as soon as I finished my plate, I thought that at least I could look at all the hours I've spent stealing ideas from other, slightly more inventive and creative people, and realize I'm not half bad at thievery, which has to count for something, right?  And something is much better than nothing! :)

Happy Birthday Buddy!

Monday was Cooper's actual birthday.  We did our traditional celebrate-on-the-actual-day-as-a-family and had cupcakes with brown and orange sprinkles (thank you Grammy!).  Cooper was really happy to have a candle and frosting... the cake part seemed rather superfluous.  

 The party, which needed a chocolate T-rex Buddy cake (from the Dinosaur Train PBS show), was held on Friday.  Seriously, dinosaurs and trains in one show- GENIUS!  Anyway, the weather all week has been so lovely, and then around 4pm as I'm setting up the tables outside with food and drinks, I could feel the wind switch and knew rain was coming.  Great.  We had 9 adults and 9 kiddos coming over for an outdoor party.  9 kids aged 6 and under....  but the kids didn't seem to mind the change in venue, and Cooper loved the cake so the only complaining was from the parents trying to keep their children using "inside voices."  Not one of us won that battle, which was rather nice when all was said and done.

 A family just moved into the neighborhood with three kiddos.  We've been talking about their coming to the kids for a few weeks now and Cooper was desperate for the "new friends" to be at the party.  They arrived in town on Thursday from the US, so the kids were jet lagging, exhausted, and had no idea how to sing "Happy Birthday" using the South African words.  The whole thing made me laugh because between the singing and trying to keep Harper away from the massive thing of orange frosting on a very shinny plate for the last few hours, I just wanted it all to be over so the cake could be eaten!

 And in the middle of it all was my boy, complete (as only a boy's birthday could be), with a rather massive bruise across his forehead.  It just wouldn't be a birthday celebration without some bruising and in true Cooper fashion, he held to tradition- four years running, an impressive record for one so small.

At the end of it, with so little room and no where to play, we turned on a Dinosaur Train episode so that the adults could catch a little more time chatting... I mean, so that the kids could have more time before bed!