MMMMMM butter

I got all the goods out to make oatmeal for us this morning.  While I got the water boiling for the quick oats, I gave the kids the spoons, butter, and napkins for setting the table.  I turned around from cooking the oats and Liam was tucked into the container of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, eating it with a spoon.  Everyone knows that margarine is a balanced breakfast!

Laneyism

Laney is quite a deep sleeper and I often tell her that she sleeps like a log.  This morning Oma asked her if she heard Sinterklaas arrive on his horse last night.  Her response? No Oma, I didn't hear it because I'm like a sleeping log!

Hello December...I'm back!

So it has been roughly 3 months since I have last blogged...sigh.  Where has the time gone?  There is so much to fill in between then and now, I am tempted just to skip it all.  So I will, for now.  Today is the first day of December, and there is mommy magic in the air!

As I have discovered in the last few years, my effort (or lack thereof) is directly proportional to how magical the Christmas season is in our house.  Of course Patrick helps out with the decorating and participates in the family events, but without me scheduling, planning, and executing all of the behind the scenes stuff, Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas for L&L.

When it was just P and I, we might have waited until mid-month to purchase a tree or hang our lights.  This year ours went up during Thanksgiving weekend.  It really is amazing how ordinary the string of lights on your house seems to you, but when a child is involved, they are spectacular.  L&L  just love to go outside and look at the lights on our house, and are in LOVE with the light up snowman gifted to them by their Sheshy on Thanksgiving.  What we might have once found tacky and possibly may have ridiculed neighbors for having, now proudly sits on our patio so we can gaze upon it night after December night.  Now, we have a new Christmas mission:  make the season as special as possible for the kids.  They probably won't remember all of the little things that we did during December to make it special for them, but they will remember how special the season felt.  That is what I remind myself as I stay up those few extra minutes posing HHB for the next day, or go the extra mile making notes from Santa and creating the wonderment that I remember feeling as a child at Christmas.

Tree lot:  1 out of 2 looking at the camera...not bad.

Laney helps us cut the netting off the tree.

We waited until Liam was up from his nap to decorate the tree.  Turns out he couldn't have cared less about decorating it, so Laney and I did it ourselves.   Laney hung her elephant ornament first on the tree :)

Today brought some extra excitement into the house as it began the advent calendar season.  We began our religious advent with the candle ring last Sunday, but this is the advent that the kids have been waiting for:  the one that involves chocolate.  I filled up our advent house with all kinds of Hershey Kisses, chocolate coins, and mini candy canes last night.  Laney loves opening the doors each day to see what surprise awaits them.  This year I added two DIY calendars for the kids to do, and mounted them to canvases so they could  pick them up and not worry about breaking them.  Laney gets to glue a cotton ball onto Santa, completing his beard on Christmas Eve, while Liam gets to put ornament stickers onto his tree.

One more bit of excitement today:  a letter from Santa arrived on the breakfast table.  The kids made their Santa lists yesterday and HHB delivered them to Santa last night.  He promptly sent a letter back to the kids,  thanking them for caring for HHB.  He sent them elf placemats, cups, and plates as a thank you gift.  He also reminded Laney that he would like her to stop whining and would like Liam to stop hitting his sister and having tantrums.  A mom can dream!  Thank goodness for Santa blackmail :)

Furthermore, HHB made his glorious return to Shadetree Drive last weekend.  Since then, he has been involved in several incidents of hi-jinks  including:  pulling the TP off the roll and decorating the bathroom with it, making a candy cane fishing pole and fishing into a bowl of goldfish with an elf friend from Laney's room, setting up a tea party with some of Liam's toys, coloring a picture of himself for the kids, and then we found this today.  He has a packet of magic seeds (red sprinkles) that we are to plant in a bowl of sugar.  The seed packet says that a surprise will be there in the morning.  I will remove the seeds, bake slice-and-bake reindeer cookies and stick them on lollipop sticks so it looks like they grew out of the sugar.  That is, if all goes as planned!  You know me and baking...

Well, we are off to visit Santa for the second time this season.  The first time Liam just did a whole lot of crying.  Let's hope we don't get kicked out of the Helen Woodward Animal Center event today after her spies jolly old St. Nick!

First day of preschool 2012

Today was the first day of preschool for both of the kids.  Laney was off to the 4 year old 9-2pm class, and Liam and I attended the 9:30-11:30am Parent/Toddler class.  Laney has been apprehensive about this day, nervously discussing it with us for the past few weeks in a tiny voice.  I am happy to report that the day went very well and everyone had a good time.  Laney didn't shed a single tear, nor did she need to take her lovey out at all today.  She went right into her classroom, put her backpack into her cubby, and got to work making pictures for mommy at the writing table with Margo and Shane (friends from last year.)  She gave Liam and I hugs and kisses goodbye, and never looked back.  She announced to me after school today that she was a big girl now, and just had decided to be one this morning.  She also told me that she was not going to cry at gymnastics today, and that she went to the bathroom 4 times at school (which is a big deal because she wouldn't go at all last year.)  I was also happy to find that she enjoyed having lunch at school since she flat out refused to stay for lunch bunch last year.  I am feeling so relieved that she loves school!  Her teachers couldn't be nicer and today was a great start to the school year.

Liam has yet to master putting on a backpack.  Wearing it makes him cry!

I can't believe they are both old enough to go to school today.  

The preschool was just remodeled, and it is so nice inside!

Liam joined Laney at the writing center before heading to his class

Liam on the 2 year old playground.

Liam had fun at the parent/toddler class too.  He ran all over the playground, and was most interested in climbing on the boulders and jumping off.  He also helped me set out the snack for his class, attempting twice to take a plate of snack back out to the playground with him.  He discovered the toddler sized automatic sinks today and fell in love with washing his hands.  He washed his hands so many times that I had to forcibly remove him from the bathroom so other kids could have a turn!  He ate his own snack, and then started on the other kids snacks when I wasn't looking.  Oh well...he is so much bigger than most of the kids, I guess they won't miss their food.  Liam was all over the classroom after that, trying out all of the new toys before settling into running up the small staircase and running down the small slide.  There are quite a few only-children in the class who don't know how to take turns, but Liam solved that by yelling "TURNS" at them in a loud voice when he thought they were trying to cut in line.  He also tried yelling "SHARE" when other kids wanted to play with his toys, adopting a defensive stance as though he were about to blitz the offensive line and run off with the toys.  A little intervention on my part saved the day, and I am relatively sure that he didn't make any enemies today.  Poor guy was pretty worn out by the end of class and kept asking to go home about 15 minutes before class ended.  He did give his teacher a big hug when we were done, and wanted to "call daddy, tell school" when we got in the car.  I took him to Panera afterward, followed by a riveting trip to the car wash and quick shopping trip to Thinker Things (toy store).  It was really nice spending time with just Liam, something that rarely happens for him.  It's interesting how he behaves so much better when he has no sibling to compete with for my attention.  Hmmmm....note to self:  schedule more one-on-one time with each of my kids.  We made it back to school to pick up Laney and I was shocked that he hadn't passed out in his car seat.  He ran into her class and gave Laney a hug immediately (LOVE!)  On the way home I announced to him that when we got home I would give him some milk and he was going right to bed to take a nap.  I told him "no books, no songs, just night night."  "Okay mommy," he replied, and true to his word, he got right in bed and cuddled up without a fuss.  

The only hitch in our day was that Toby had a nervous breakdown while we were gone and went around the house destroying things.  He did a #1 and a #2 in the craft room, stood up on 3 different windows and scratched the blinds, wrenched the door open to Liam's room and scratched up his wall some more, knocked a wooden seahorse off the wall in the kid's bathroom, pulled the security handles off of both the front and back door, oh, and did this to our back doorknob:

Yes, he ate our doorknob.  It looks like the Incredible Hulk tried to exit our house via the laundry room and squeezed a little too hard.  Guess we know what Patrick will be doing this weekend.

Poor Toby just couldn't handle this new Miller milestone!  Either that or there was some thunder here today.  Note to self:  add "give Toby a valium" to my checklist for Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

My big girl keeps getting bigger

Today marks the first time that Laney was able to reach the seat belt and buckle it all by herself! Growing up so fast and soooooo proud of herself.

L&L like to help

My kids have 2 very different ideas of helpful.  Laney is truly helpful.  She tidies up toys and messes left behind by her brother, organizes books on the shelves, and even dresses herself for me.  Last night she even got her room and Liam's ready for bed while I dressed him in his jammies, setting out books for me to read to Liam and layed out his sleep sack on the reading chair (so cute!).

Liam has a different idea of helpful.  He tries, it's just that when he is helpful I usually have an extra hour or 2 of undoing his helpfulness.  In the span of the last 24 hours, he has done the following "helpful" things:
1.  Carried a bowl of {thankfully dry} cereal to the table and dropped it on the floor, covering our kitchen in Chocolate Rice Krispies.
2.  Vacuumed up the Rice Krispies, and then went on to vacuum up the magnetic alphabet letters and Mr. Potato Head arms and ears.
3.  Cleaned off the dinner table by flinging the rice onto the newly vacuumed floor.
4.  Helped me do the laundry by taking out the lint screen in the dryer to clean it, and then stuffed Mickey Mouse magnets into the lint trap of the dryer.
5.  Folded laundry that I had just folded by throwing it into a pile onto the floor as I fished the magnet out of the dryer.

So, in the last 24 hours I have vacuumed twice, taken apart the vacuum bag to find the magnets and appendages, scrubbed the rice off the chairs and table, refolded the laundry, and MacGyvered a magnet retrieval tool out of a telescoping Swiffer duster with duct tape wrapped around the end.  I played a frustrating game of Operation with our dryer, beating it after a few rounds of almost pulling the magnet out of the lint trap and then dropping it just as it hit the opening.  Side note:  our 15 year old babysitter didn't know what I was talking about when I told her I MacGyvered something and I had to explain it to her.  Ugh I feel old.  

At any rate, my little Liam is doing his best, but helpful he is not.  At least he still thinks cleaning is fun.

A PSA for anyone in the vicinity of Liam

Dear men of North America:

If you have a super short haircut (think clippers set on 1), are dressed in a trendy fashion, or drive a black SUV of any kind, Liam will automatically run up to you and hug you assuming you are Daddy.  At this point he will look up as you look down, and he will realize that you are not Daddy, and begin screaming.  This will cause everyone in your immediate area to believe you are attempting to kidnap my son, causing old ladies and mothers to tighten their grips on their purses and children, eyeballing you as you flame red with embarrassment over the awkward situation.

You have been warned!