The kids find a new show to like

Two nights ago a very strange thing happened.  L&L discovered a TV show they were mesmerized by:  the Lawrence Welk Show.  I am not even entirely sure how that show came to be broadcast into our living room.  I only know that I had 2 wild hooligans running around with soccer balls one minute and 2 statues staring open-mouthed at the screen the next.  They both were entranced as the orange-frocked ladies crooned a love song for the camera as pairs of happy octogenarians swished about the dance floor.  Then L&L began to dance.  Laney does a little side-to-side move and Liam looks more like he is marching, but they were dancing to Lawrence Welk!  On purpose!  Patrick and I took this all in from the kitchen, and the more they danced, the more we laughed because this stuff wasn't even cool when we were kids.

I had just put dinner on the table, and usually we turn the TV off for family dinner, but tonight I made an exception.  The LWS is hardly even TV, it's more of a bizarre time-capsule-esque music video.  Each time a song came on Liam would tell us it was "really pretty."  Laney thought the music was "fun" and begged us to let her keep watching.  So we did.  We had family dinner with a Lawrence Welk soundtrack.  Not as bad as I thought it would be.  Thanks for a memorable dinner L.W.!

Liam vs. Mommy

As part of Liam's continued campaign  to remain the second and last in our family, this morning's daily tantrum resulted in 10 minutes of laying prostrate on my bathroom floor screaming to the heavens.  The reason? I told him that blush was only for girls and that I wasn't going to let him wear any today. 

Sigh.

When will this reign of terror end?

Laney talks about Laney

For unknown reasons, Laney has begun to refer to herself in the third person.  She tells us, "Laney is hungry for dinner," or "Laney is ready for school."  We keep asking her to stop, and she says that "Laney promises to not do it."

Tracy is tired of it.

The Birth of Christ According to Laney

I overheard Laney “reading”  to Liam today and had to write down what she said.  She was reading a do-it-yourself sticker book about the Nativity that we had done together.  Of course she can’t actually read, but she was able to piece together the story of the birth of Jesus.  In case you are curious, here is more or less how it happened 2000 years ago:

“There was lots of sheep and buildings.  Mary was there and all of the sudden a angel told Mary she was having a baby going to be born.  And then Mary was on a donkey and there were lots of roads and sheep and animals and Joseph leading a donkey.  Lots of people and chickens.  Jesus was going to be with Mary in the manger and there was lots of animals.  All of the sudden an angel disappeared with sheep and he told all the shepherds a baby Jesus was going to get born in Bethlehem.   The sheep were watching the baby get born fast asleep.  All the shepherds came and Joseph and Mary were there to see Jesus.  It took a long way to travel for the shepherds.  They went by some palm trees and all the kings brought gold and sparrows.  And Jesus woke up and Mary and the animals and one angel and lots of stars were there.  And it was good.  There was a angel and a man who brought sparrows and gold and the shepherds came, all the animals came, all the angels were singing and the stars, animals and people took a long way to travel there.  Okay?  And Mary had her baby after riding a donkey.   The End.”

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!