o tannenbaum

All the Loans Are Paying Off.

Well, not really. Not yet. But as least I know ye olde gray matter has not yet gone to mush.

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Santa Visit 2007

Breaking away from his traditional tearful Scream/Wail/Maul Santa Visit Routine this year, Angus embraced the experience. He talked Santa's ear off, asked him for a motorcycle, and even sang a round of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the Man in Red. My little boy is growing up....sniff sniff. Noah, on the other hand, was definatley not into letting Santa touch him, so he did not participate this year. Yet. I am going to try again this week. He will be in a photo with Santa, even if it means that we have to merely dangle him into frame. It is important to me, even if it is mildly and temporarily traumatizing for him. I need to scan in the actual "paid for" photo, which is actually in focus. Here are the ones I snapped.

Frosty The Snowman

Santa's On His Way

One week and counting......

Etsy for Everyone

I love Etsy.com and can waste hours browsing around, drafting Wish Lists of handmade lovliness. I hunt around Etsy the way I did when Ebay was young and exciting....just clicking around on a virtual thrifting extravaganza. Lots of looking and almost never buying. But Etsy is way cooler than Ebay ever was because it is only handmade goodness. You can find anything from Robots made of old cameras to sewing and clothing/accessories and random art. Beautiful prints on the cheap cheap. My friend Noelle's stuff rules. So go and check out Etsy. Buy something homemade. Buy something free of Chinese lead paint this Christmas.

with pathetic tree, ornament and blanket!

I found the World's Greatest Christmas Decoration last night. I think it will end up being the one that the kids really look forward to seeing year after year. (And P.S. Charlie Brown: I'd have never gone so far as to call your choice of tree pathetic, but I guess if the shoe fits.....)

Virginian November

77 degrees and sunny on the day before Thanksgiving is something to be thankful for, indeed. So I took my kids and our friend Salt Lake Jake to a park so we could store up Vitamin D and some warm sunshiney memories to help keep our spirits warm in the coming winter. The kids ran around like maniacs and were filthy and exhausted by the time we headed home. Angus is in full blown hero worship mode over Jake now. I don't blame him either. Jake's funny and sweet and kind and patient and genuinely likes to be with the boys. Noah is way into him, too. You did good, Salt Lake Amy. Your boy is a winner in the game of Life.

Last September

Last night, our friend Steve just gave us a disk containing some pictures taken last year, just one month before Noah popped into the world. I really can't remember where we were when these were taken. And even better, I have almost forgotten what it felt like to be that uncomfortably pregnant. Almost......

Fall

Shorter days mean that the boys need to work harder to achieve maximum giddiness before sundown.

Dancy Pants

Noah rarely passes on the opportunity to dance. What kind of music he hears is not important. It could be carnival music, a bass-heavy car stereo rolling past the house, or just someone whistling. All he knows is, he's got to move. He's got quite a variety of dances in the old repertoire now. What each of his dance moves have in common are (a) deep knee bends, (b) one arm doing the majority of the work, and (c) a look of total concentration on his face while he grooves. Here is a bit of a peek at what I'm referring to. This kid rules.

do good

Hat Weather Arrived

skybaby

i swiped this from the webiste which was set up to honor the memory of, and memories created by and with, our friend patrick. ladies and gentlemen, i give you “skybaby.” jeff gay submitted this classic. it is taken directly from a letter patrick once wrote to him.

enjoy.


"Once when i was younger like 12 or something I was a jr. counselor at this soccer camp in Massachusetts and I was standing out in this field jumping up and down on this piece of wood that was laying across this big log like a teeter totter. I was standing with my back to the wood which made a cool sound when I jumped backwards on it like “dannanannannna” and I was zoning out, staring out at the field. Suddenly I saw a child falling from the sky. I couldn’t believe it. It was a 3 year old falling from like 50 feet up and it landed directly in front of me. I ran over to it and it was fine. It just looked up at me a little dazed. I looked up in the sky and there were no planes or trees or anything the kid could have fallen from. I was truly amazed. I heard screaming from the parking lot and a woman, the kid’s mom i guess, was running and screaming towards us. She pushed me aside and grabbed the skybaby. The kid started crying like crazy and the mother was screaming at me. Apparently I had launched her child when it crawled away from her over onto the wood i was jumping on. I felt a little disappointed as she walked away. It was my first encounter with something totally mysterious and within moments it was taken away from me. Even though the kid was fine I was still fired from my position as jr. counselor at the soccer camp. I don’t think i cared as much about losing the job as I did about losing the mystery of the skybaby. "

Trick or Treat

Things I either learned or things that I reaffirmed my existing beliefs in while trick or treating with the family tonight:

1. Angus LOVES skeletons. He kept asking random folks in skeleton/ grim reaper costumes for "big hugs."


2. Large crowds continue to piss me off.


3. That while some people will always suck, (that means you minivan tire screeching speeder man who nearly hit a bevy of children because you NEEDED that particular parking space lickety spilt) others will continue to rule (another huge thank you to the Tinman and his possee for the Loot Bag you gave us after we forgot the kids' pumpkin buckets and also for the fantastic Danceoff. It will be what I remember most about Halloween 2007).


4. Teaching manners and gratitude and graciousness by example creates not only a good student, but a good teacher as well. Parents who shoved other people's children out of their way---this lesson is for you.


5. Trick or treating is way more fun a year after a C-section than it is a week after one.


6. Angus likes Reeses Peanut Butter cups.


7. Strangers see a Noah that is calm and silent. Those who know him well know that there is a Beast within.


8. Tony makes me feel safe.
9. Halloween = Good Times

Halloweentime

Saturday

I took my biggest big kid on an all day fun-filled adventure date today to try to shake free of the cabin fever that had begun to eat away at our souls. Noah and Tony still don't have clean bills of health, so we left them at home and headed out for a little one-on-one bonding time. It was lovely. We hit the toy store for some hands-on window shopping for over an hour, then walked to the library making sure to stomp in every puddle we encountered along the way. After checking out some new reads, we strolled back through town to our car and changed out of our rain boots and into dry shoes and headed off for MM's Spooky Saturday Fall Festival. Angus played hard on the playground and at some of the little game booths and won a few prizes. Once we tapped that shindig for all it was worth, I asked him what he wanted to do next, since it was his day and he had been calling the shots and doing a swell job of it thus far. "Toy store!" was his response. So back we went, making sure to park far from the store to guarantee a good walk together and enough time to eat the cookie we stopped for at the bakery. Back at the toy store, we hit the fun house mirror and laughed ourselves silly. And to top it all off, Angus had his caricature drawn by a street artist on our walk back to our car. I had more fun than I have had in ages. He is an almost perfect date. (A perfect date wouldn't make you help him go potty or make you pay for everything or force you to do all the driving or insist on calling all of the shots. But he is damn cute and clever and charming, so he scores a 9 out of 10.)

The Baby Turns One

I started this blog a year ago in anticipation of the birth of our little man Noah. I figured it would be interesting to chronicle our family's shifting dynamic and the craziness that was about to unfold. A way to chart his growth and development while charting ours as a family, too. I just went back and reread all of my previous entries. So much has happened in the past year. It simply sped by. Everyone tells you the years will pass quickly when you have kids, but I never fully understood how quickly until this week.


My baby is a year old. He can run, feed himself, climb just about anything, and calls me momma. He claps his hands, dances to music, is a very forceful mouth-kisser, loves to wrestle with his brother, and is a born biter. Noah is determined and clever and so smart that you all had better watch out. He is a force to be reckoned with and he is our big kid now.

Another thing that occurred to me this week as I was sorting through Angy's old clothes that I had saved for the sibling we might one day create for him. Angus was a year and a half old when Tony and I made up our minds that it was time to add another little person to the family. Three weeks later, I was pregnant. As I grabbed tiny overalls and sweatshirts and teeny weenie socks out of the bags of Angy's old things and began to wash them for Noah to wear it really hit me. Childhood is so short, and i had better work even harder on making their memories of this time the very best they can be.

yesterday, i was told the saddest story imaginable. what makes it most horrible is that it is true. p2, the world will miss you.

Pumpkin Patch Fun