To Friends, Family, and Santa

Lifetime quota for stuffed animals has been met. Thank you.

Lights at the Zoo

Plastic People

I had 4 people stop me in the grocery store to say that they thought this doll was a real baby.


Everyone was visibly relieved that they didn't have to call child services.

He Sees You When You're Sleeping...

Maya had a chance to meet Santa at a Christmas party this week. She was a little uncertain at first.

After hanging around his chair and watching him carefully for about an hour, Maya finally worked up the courage to take a candy cane and give Santa a high five.

The Shedding Is How You Know It's Real!

Typically, for Christmas we get one of those fur trees (I think that's what they're called) because they lose their needles at a much slower rate than the "classic" Christmas trees, the only downside is that I think they look a little fake. So we went to a tree farm to cut our own tree so we could have a cute, classic Christmas tree.

This is the result of my great idea:

It doesn't even look like a real tree and we filled that trash can to the brim with pine needles. And this was after the tree had been placed in one of those tree shaker thingies.*

*Pretty certain that's what they're called.

The House That Sugar Built

I have always wanted to make a gingerbread house. It's a house made out of baked goods and covered in candy, what's not to love? Unfortunately, I never seemed to get around to making one but last month Jason stumbled upon a cute and easy kit that we decided to bring with us on our visit to Tennessee. I was going to finally see what making a gingerbread house was all about and the kids could have fun decorating it. Well, apparently it's all about careful assembly and allowing the frosting to set overnight. Since our visit was so short this year, we weren't able to get to the decorating part so we had to take it back home with us. I hate that Aubrie and Jacob had to miss out on the decorating, but Maya still managed to have a great time. I'm pretty sure that for every piece of candy she placed on the house, at least two went in her mouth.

Looking Forward to Christmas

The Pajamas Are What Makes It Work

We made an abbreviated visit to Tennessee for Thanksgiving this year, so we had to cram as much fun as possible into just a few days. Luckily, Maya was up for the challenge.

We also celebrated Christmas with Jason's family since we won't see them in December. Thanks to this trip, Maya is now armed with everything she needs to be a ballerina princess.

Perseverance

Remember the ducklings from this summer? Well, one made it!

Improvements

Getting better at the whole "family picture" thing. I like how we all seem to have the same level of zombie smile going.

Trick or Treat

Little girl in search of goodies for sick Granny. Doctor believes candy (especially Snickers and Reece's Peanut Butter Cups), cookies, and cakes will cure what ails her poor Granny. If you choose to help, just leave the goodies by your door.

Wolves need not respond.

Fall Fun

Pumpkin Patch

Last week, Maya went on her first school field trip. I thought the highlight of her trip would be riding a school bus, or at the very least, honorable mention. She loves spotting school buses and talks about when she will finally be able to ride in one. It's such a big kid thing to do! So after picking her up, I asked her about the school bus. But she informed me that it wasn't a school bus. It was a bus, because it's white. Details.

The field trip took the kids to a local pumpkin patch where they each picked out a pumpkin of their very own. They also learned how you make pumpkin pie, which resulted in Maya shoving her pumpkin in my face and demanding I turn it into pie about every five minutes.

Granny and Papaw sent these pumpkin inserts last year for Halloween, and Maya had fun putting them to good use. An ideal gift for the carving-challenged.

Cat:
Pig:

All by Myself

Maya's favorite phrase for the past several months has been, "I can do it all by myself." Whether it's washing her hands, pouring the milk, or driving the car, Maya insists that she can do it "all by myself." It would be nice if instead of calling me into her room in the middle of the night because she no longer wants her blanket on her, she could just decide that she can do it all by herself. Or maybe learn to stop whining all by herself, or go to bed all by herself, or how about eat her vegetables all by herself? If only she was taking suggestions.

It's Flat Aubrie!

We were lucky to have another visit from Flat Aubrie this year. Maya's cousin, Aubrie, sent a flat version of herself for us to photograph and send back to her school. This time we made sure to take her around town, including the zoo. I really wanted to get a picture of her next to a gorilla, but when we checked out the exhibit, the gorillas were out of sight. We decided to check back later and I'm glad we did because one eventually came around and hung out for a while. The zoo was surprisingly busy for a Friday morning and all of the parents were scrambling to get their kids into position for a picture next to the gorilla. They were fast, but I was faster:

I was impressed with how everyone waited patiently as I took several pictures of the gorilla with Flat Aubrie. Not a single weird look or comment.

Search And Rescue

I don't know how it happened, but we had a pretty healthy summer. I didn't realize this until a few days before Maya was to go back to the cootie fest also known as school. Sure, you know everyone is going to eventually come down with whatever bug is going around, but still, you don't want it. It only took a week for Maya to come down with croup, that made for several worrisome nights. A couple of weeks later, she brought home a cold. At first you find yourself mad at whoever dared to allow their infected kid to go to school, but after a couple of days of whining that makes a Banshee's scream seem like a heavenly chorus, you toss them out at drop off with a smile and a wave and gun it.

So we've been congested. For a while.

The other day I was asking Maya to kindly remove her arm from the inside of her nose and she told me that "It's OK because I'm just getting my raisin."
"You put a raisin up your nose?"
"Uh huh."
This was a first, so I decided to turn her upside down to see if I could spot the raisin; I was armed with q-tips and a tweezer. Don't judge me. What would you have done? I determined that she was clear and we went about our day. It wasn't until two days later while Jason was playing with Maya that a raisin appeared on the floor. Maya was very excited. "Hey, there's my raisin! Look Daddy, my raisin came back!"

Sad Little Garden

Our apartment has a nice balcony where I decided to have a small container garden this year. This past spring I did a little research and bought everything I would need to grow tomatoes, green and red peppers, jalapeno peppers, cayenne peppers, and cherry tomatoes. Being the responsible adult that I am, I decided I would have an organic garden, it's so much better for your body and the environment! And so easy! You just water the plants and if you see any bugs you yell at them and if things start to die inexplicably you just yell harder.

My garden did not do well.

How Do I Look

I present to you a video of Maya singing a weird song that's dedicated to the fast food industry. It is basically a list of all the fast food restaurants accompanied with little hand gestures. For instance, the first place she mentions is Dairy Queen and she's pretending to milk a cow.

Last spring, the three year olds sang this song at the spring program. It didn't exactly go with the theme of the other songs, since they were either about God or having fun outdoors. I was going to reflect on all of that but instead I'm more interested in what she's doing with her hair:

I took this video several times but she always became preoccupied with her hair when she would come to the part about Burger King (seriously, this song is just odd). When asked why she wouldn't stop playing with her hair, she said, "I was just making it all pretty."

I had to show Jason this video as soon as he came home to verify that I do not do whatever it is that Maya is doing with her hair. I just wanted to be clear that it didn't come from me. However, I will be more aware of the faces I make whenever I look into the mirror seeing as how this would not be the first time I have been mocked by my toddler.

Birthday Boy

I found that I have no desire to make fun of my brother for getting older, like I do with so many others. It's different when the person is younger than you; you can't help but think, if he's already this old, then I'm. . . eek. It just doesn't end well.

But all of that doesn't mean I can't pull out old pictures to make fun of him for other reasons. Sure, he's a tall, hairy, twenty something that knocks people over whenever he pats them on the back, but for some reason I have him stuck in my head as an 8 year old. He may forever be that obnoxious little brother that always put the cats' lives in danger and wouldn't stop getting into trouble. However, there was much to learn from it.

There was that time he threw the kitten in the well and dad was all "Hmm, yeah, it's not going to make it. Did your mother make dinner?" It taught us that we must always go to mom if we want help fishing kittens out of wells. How else would we have learned that? Also, I never would have known that you could twirl a cat through the air like a lasso by holding onto its tail. Silly me, I always thought cats were for petting.



Dad would teach us that if you mess with the farm equipment you won't live to tell about it; but with a little brother you learn that you can flip a three wheeler, run a semi into a grain bin, and drive a truck into a barn (that's housing your dad's beloved sports car) and live to tell about it. Of course, you may not be able to talk about it while sitting, but you'll be able to talk about it.




It didn't take him long to teach us that, in his mind, pants are optional. Also, see all that grass? It doubles as a bathroom.

These are life lessons, people.

Happy Birthday Morgan

Tea Time

These are pictures from Maya's first official tea party. This is not the first time she played with her tea set, but it is the first time she put out her blanket, had stuffed guests, and successfully put together the tea party without any help from anyone.

Thanks to her months-long obsession with Goldilocks, tea was served first thing in the morning along with a bowl of porridge.

The tea and porridge were just right.

Not Yet Mantel Worthy

We found ourselves in an awkward situation this week when a request for a family photo was sent home with Maya from school. We don't have one. At least not one that's less than two years old. Sad, yes, but you just get busy and sometimes you would rather throw yourself into a shark tank then sit down with your best vacant smile. One. More. Time.

So we decided to take a bunch of pictures and hope that at least one turns out good enough that we can stand the idea of it hanging in her classroom all year. I tried taking a few candids of Maya but she always noticed and insisted on mugging for the camera. I guess she was giving me fair warning that this was going to take a while:


Gone are the days when I used to care about hair, makeup, and what I was wearing. Now I just want a picture that doesn't make people wonder if my kid has issues:

We called it a day on this one:

Back to School

Last week Maya went back to school and never has a child been so thrilled. She started asking to go to school a few weeks ago and would get so excited every time we drove past. So I started to get my hopes up about this year; that maybe, just maybe, she would not be the class mute. When we went in to meet her teachers and check out her room, she clung to me like never before. This year her best-friend-in-the-whole-world will not be in the same class and it was her teachers from last year who made the change in hopes of forcing her to talk instead of relying on someone else. I think they may have grown tired of the whole mute thing.

Thankfully, her new teachers are looking at Maya as a challenge. I told them about how shy she is and how she is potty trained (well technically, it's good enough for school, shut up) and that she sometimes needs a REALLY LONG TIME to adjust to people. And they just said, OK. By the end of the first day she had told them when she had to go to the bathroom and made several verbal requests thanks to a helpful nudge from her teachers. I'm so happy she has people around her that want to help her feel at ease. It's not easy being the shy kid.

Swim Buddy

I would like to take this moment to thank Nathan and Janelle who, I am told, are responsible for teaching Buddy that Golden Retrievers belong in the water. Everyone is so very grateful.

If you want to swim at my parents house but you don't like to swim alone, then you are in luck! You want to swim alone? And in peace? Too bad. Whenever Buddy sees anyone so much as put on a swimsuit, he goes nuts. You have to make a run for it to even get out the door. Make sure he doesn't catch up to you at the door while you're trying to squeeze your way out. He can jam his head at the bottom crack of the door and ram his way through, leaving you flat on your back, towel still in hand as he sits in the pool, waiting for you to get up. If you're smart enough to evade him, then he just goes from room to room whining, barking, and scratching at the doors. Really want to drive him nuts? Do a cannonball. The sound of splashing water that he cannot reach is torture to this poor animal. So eventually you give in and let him swim with you:

It's not too bad if you don't mind sharing your raft and smelling like wet dog.

CHARLIE!!!

Some highlights of our Florida trip:

Maya's first order of business was to find Charlie and harass him our entire visit. This provided bonding opportunities for Maya and her Aunt Bob since Charlie liked to hide in her room. Mission Accomplished.

Maya was taken to play her first round of mini golf and adored it! She paid attention and knew when it was her turn and became very impatient if anyone was holding her up. She did, however, play terribly. Her awful performance was second only to my own. In my defence, I was apparently playing the role of pack mule that day and was expected to carry everything. As for Maya, there isn't anything to justify that kind of play. Come on kid, you're 3, if you're going to have a Nike sponsorship by kindergarten you're going to have to step it up a notch.

She loved the water and playing in the sand. As soon as she got out of the water she sat down and started building her sandcastle like it was her job.

I'm about 75% sure those are screams of joy.

Best. Idea. Ever.

By the end of July, Maya had been thrown 4 birthday parties. And there was still one more to go. It's not as bad as it sounds, one was at school for all the summer birthdays, one was the giant banana split, and the other two were family parties in completely different states. So that just left a party for the friends. I was kind of over the whole party thing at this point. I was afraid that Maya was going to start expecting cake and presents every other week...or maybe I just didn't want to plan a party.

So I'm lazy. Luckily for my lazy self, Maya's Very Best Friend In The Whole World has a birthday a few weeks after hers and they suggested that we combine parties. Brilliant! By the end of it I didn't feel like I did a thing. I started to suspect that I hadn't actually done anything but I was told that I had, so I won't argue. I strongly encourage combining parties. It's cheaper, easier, and you have more fun. I never would have come up with having a pinata, or water guns:

It was the best way to break the ice with the kids. Maya would rather die than talk to people right away, but this had her running around, laughing, and squirting anyone in her way. By the end of it, all of the kids were soaked and most of the adults had wet shins.

Another perk was cool cupcake ideas, check it out:

It's the beach! You know you love it!

Maya attempting to remove every last bit of icing from her fingers.