Christmas Music

This was really cute at 8am...especially Ben's wiggly bum in the background grooving to the music...the party is still going at 6pm and mommy may need some Tylenol for the headache that is developing!

Dear God,

Thank you for always keeping me on my toes out here in Chicagoland. I
am happy to report that I am making progress on my patience training
and coping ability.

This morning's lesson, where I got up early to get to the Macy's
furniture gallery in Oak Brook, only to get lost seventeen times,
drive around in circles, and finally find my way...only to realize
that the 7am store opening quoted on their phone line and web site was
incorrect, and they really don't open for another fortyfive minutes...

...that was a good one!! Thanks for putting a Starbucks on the way.
I needed it.

Yours truly,
Beth

Phonemic Awareness

Molly's Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Verdun, is focusing her writing lessons on helping the children to become confident and comfortable in putting pencil to paper and writing down what they sound out.  They have learned all the letters of the alphabet, and all of the basic sounds that those letters make.  So when they want to write something down, they have the tools they need to begin spelling them out - phonetically.  Apparently, Molly is one of her most confident writers - she loves writing! 

Decoding what she writes can be a challenge though, as you have to train yourself to READ phonetically!  Molly takes her phonics rules VERY seriously and writes words exactly as she says them.

She brought home the most adorable worksheet today.  It said

Molly

OBSERVATION OF ICE

ICE IS slipree
ICE IS dripain
ICE IS isee
ICE IS hard
ICE IS sefroo

Did you get it???  Ice is slippery...dripping...icey, hard...and my personal favorite, SEE THROUGH!!!! 

Dear amazon.com

Thank you ever so much for taking care of all my Christmas shopping,
and especially for free two day shipping!!

All they want for Christmas is...

This is the time of year that a mother's mind starts melting from all the thinking that needs to be done for the holidays.  There are gifts to be gotten!!  And not just for my the three kids (and Marc!) - there are godchildren, friends, neighbors, cousins, sisters, brothers, parents, and all the other folks we cherish and want to spoil a little around the holidays too.

And then there's the ubiquitous question of "What would the children like for Christmas?"  Frankly, it's a blessing that anyone even cares enough to ask what the kids might like - I remember many Christmases when I'd open up gifts from far away relatives and think "Really?  Gym socks?  Really?  A comb?" 

No kid worth their salt would turn away ANY gift no matter how odd, but sometimes I wondered if the giver even knew who they were giving to, or maybe just bought 50 pairs of gym socks on sale and ran with it as a theme that year! 

Anyhow, I'm doing my best to come up with great ideas for everyone, while still saving a few of the best ones for Santa.  And because I know all these fabulous gift-givers are readers of this blog, I figured this is a fantastic place to list them!  I learned my lesson with Ben's birthday when I just listed a few ideas and he got multiples of them...so this time I'm splitting it up by gift giver.  If you want to borrow an idea from someone else's list, do so at your own peril!

AUNTIE KATIE
Molly would adore a larger tea set as she has outrgrown her tiny, child sized ones.
Jack would be over the moon with the magic kid we talked about last month.
Ben - The Bat Cave by Fisher Price.  He's been begging for it!


AUNTIE PATRICE
Molly would go bananas for a ribbon stick like the one her friend Emma has.  This one from Amazon.com looks really durable.
Jack would have a blast with the Kids' Paper Airplane Book by Ken Blackburn and Jeff Lammers.  This one is special because it includes the paper needed to make the planes and he'll have a blast using it when we visit after Christmas
Ben would love a set of squeeze planes from the HearthSong catalog so he can fly planes like Jack.

NANA AND PAPA
Molly would lose her mind if you got her the Fur Real Friends Parrot  Seriously, she might faint.
Jack would love a new game for his Nintendo DSi.  Maybe Lego Harry Potter?
Ben would play for hours with this Happyland Martian Moonhouse that goes with the Liftoff Rocket he got for his birthday. 

NANNIE AND GRAY
You wanted some general ideas to run with so here are a few:
Ben: Zhu Zhu Pets/Backyardigans/Superhero stuff
Molly: Zhu Zhu Pets/Webkinz/Polly Pocket
Jack: Zhu Zhu Pets/Nintendo DSi/Harry Potter or Percy Jackson books/Itunes gift card

Molly wears a size 5, Jack a size 8 shirt and size 7 pants, and Ben is in a 3T all around.  And as a caution, Bratz dolls/Barbie Dolls and weapons (water pistols, nerf guns, plastic swords, and yes, even light sabers) will mysteriously disappear at the earliest opportunity after the holidays.  I know it won't make me popular, but I never was popular anyway, so why start now!

So hey, while we're at it, what do YOU want for Christmas?  If there's something on your wish list, I would LOVE to know about it!  I'll be shopping my little fingers to the bone this week on the internet, so if you're on my gift list, expect a surprise in the mail soon!

The Countdown Begins!

Yesterday was the first day of Advent. The kids had such fun counting down the days to Thanksgiving with Jack's awesome homemade paper chain, that I thought surely, THIS will be the year that an Advent calendar would work for us!

I try so hard to help my kids overcome the mass market hysteria that is in their faces every day, and instead, to prepare their minds and hearts to celebrate the true meaning of the season - the birth of our Lord!  But to be honest, it ain't easy.

I've tried to use many different types of advent calendars in my quest - the key word being TRIED.  The year Jack was three, I used an advent wreath and found out that candles and toddlers don't mix.  All he wanted to do was blow out the candle "again" and "again" and "AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN!!!!" until he was a shrieking mess on the floor and I was ready to chuck the wreath out the window.  We've also tried the cheapo, piece-of-chocolate-behind-a-cardboard-door kind too. These are great if you only have one child...with more children it quickly becomes an exercise in hysteria as Jesus is forgotten during the fight to the death over a sliver of chocolate.  I spent a small fortune on an Usborne Advent book last year that had a figure to pop out each day for 25 days, eventually helping your children build an entire nativitiy set. But the figures didn't fit in their stands well and much weeping and gnashing of teeth ensued. 

When baby Jesus is hurled across the room by a child screaming "Why won't He STAND UP!!!???"

...that's when you know the message is not quite getting across.

But this year?  THIS year might be "it".  I think I may have struck on something that will become a family tradition as well as our own personal advent calendar.

For eight years, since Jack was first born, we've been accumulating Christmas story books.  Mostly from my mom and me as it seems neither of us can walk by a well-illustrated children's book without it leaping into our hands and insisting on coming home with us.  Rudolph has also helped build our library as he's been bringing a book and pajamas to the children on Christmas Eve for the last four years!

With my idea hat on, I spent a half hour the other day with some coordinated wrapping paper from Target, and wrapped up the whole lot of them!  Then I used some fancy labels I got for pennies at Office Depot to put the numbers 1-23 on each of the books

Currently, our library includes juuuuust enough books to cover us from the 1st through the 23rd, leaving Christmas Eve for Rudolph. Thank goodness for the Jan Brett Treasury that includes 7 stories - we're milking that one for all it's worth!

I put the books in numerical order in a metal beverage tub and covered the ugly label on the tub with a dolled up sign using leftovers from Ben's birthday presents.

The only books I consciously rigged to fall on certain days were the first book and the last.  The LAST book, of course, is The Night Before Christmas!  But the first one is one that I picked up last week at Borders - I thought it was the perfect way to engage the kids in thinking about the Christmas Story. 

The illustrations in this book are phenomenal, and they have the added bonus of changing as you turn the page, much like those billboards that act like vertical blinds.  Molly is enchanted, especially with the illustration of the angel who came to tell Mary and Joseph about Jesus.

Tonight was night number two, and our story was one of my favorites from when I was a little girl.  "Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree"  Molly and Ben loved the story of the tree that just won't fit properly, so the top gets chopped off and thrown out, to be found by someone else who chops the top off and throws it out...and so on and so forth until the teeny tiny tip of the tree ends up with the mice who live in the wall behind Mr. Willowby's grand and tall tree. 

So far, things are looking good.

Two down, twenty-two to go!

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!!!

Yesterday afternoon I walked outside to get the kids off the bus and immediately said out loud  "Feels like snow!"  You don't spend 30+ winters in New England (four of them in Maine) without knowing in your bones what snow feels like, and sure enough, by the time I got to the bus stop, the flurries were coming down!  They only lasted a half hour, and barely dusted the ground, but Molly came home from school, took off her coat, put on a new, heavier coat, a hat, mittens and boots and said "Okay Mama, I'm ready to go build a snowman now!!"

On the way to the bus this morning, we had even heavier flurries, and every time I'd turn around to make sure Molly was following behind me, sure enough, she was lagging behind inspecting snowflakes, or eating them, or picking up leaves with snowflakes on them, or dancing her happy snowflake dance (which is pretty much just the happy everything dance she does every day, but with snow falling). 

Jack scratched up enough to make the first snowball of the season, for which my back provided target practice.

And Ben, well, he liked it a whole bunch too!  But he said "Mama, this wind is CHILLY!  Get me home to my house and let's have some hot CHOC-OH-LIT!" 

And we did!