Christmas Season:15 Lessons Learned

Dear Nathan and Hannah, 

For the past (almost) 2 weeks, we've been spending some time with family up in Illinois. Both of you experienced a lot of new things and are starting to understand how magical Christmas time can really be. But since your meta-cognitive skills are not quite developed just yet, let me go through some of the lessons that you guys have learned along this trip. 

1. Food always taste better when delivered via train. You normally don't eat burgers, but this experience helped you to find out that you, indeed, like burgers..at least ones with bacon. This restaurant really should have veggies on their menu. Think of all the carnivores and goldfish cracker-o-vores that can possibly convert to join the team of omnivores. 

 2. When you call the North Pole, you won't get to speak directly to Santa. No matter how cute you look on the screen, Santa is simply too busy. Better make your request in writing. We had a fun time at the awesome Kohl's Children museum. 

 3. Sea salamanders also put up Christmas lights. They decorate with tetra fish. I actually don't remember whether or not it's a salamander or a lizard, or some other amphibian, but we saw this at the Shedd Aquarium.

 4. Poop Scat, is best examined far away with binoculars. We went on a nature hike through a forest preserve to learn tips on how to track animals. This was the day before Christmas Eve. You can even see the little hairs.

5. Your eyes may burn a bit if you get too close to a fire. Deliciousness doesn't have to come at a price. Just step back, and your marshmallow (not you) will be golden. 

 Hannah simply turns away from it, avoiding the danger completely.

6. If the person next to you is wearing protective hockey gear and they are bigger than you, you may want to stay away. 

7. Great-grandparents aren't really that scary at all. They are super nice. C'mon, do they look like they would bite? We also visited great grandpa and great grandma at their retirement home. All of their friends were super nice too! And the food, Amazing! Which leads me to another lesson, grannies and grandpas know how to eat good food. A  trip to the greats will guarantee that you are fed, and fed well.

8. Your band members may not like it too much when you just take a cookie break in the middle of a song. C'mon, when you play the jingle bells, you kinda are a big deal.

Now, that's more like it. 

 9. Santa likes cookies, but he always leaves a crumb. His reindeer like apples. Core and all. They left no crumbs behind.

10. You will be asked to pose for pictures a lot. Just smile, and sit still. It'll make things go

11. You can find presents in big "socks." Those are called stockings. And no, Daddy does not have socks that big.

12. A piano playing snowman can almost... and I stress almost, substitute for formal piano lessons. Nathan informed me that he now knows how to play the piano after watching Frosty do it a couple of times.

13. And as fun as white elephant gift exchanges are, you don't get to open all of the presents. 

 And the biggest box, doesn't necessarily mean the best gift. (Even if it is wrapped in very cool snowman wrapping paper) Be like me, I picked out the smallest gift in the pile and ended up with a super useful tin of emergency underpants. Let this be a lesson.

14. Ice skating is waaay harder than it looks. 'Nuff said.

15. A wall works great as a breaking mechanism when riding your bike around the house. Your excuse: "I stopped so that you can take a picture of me."

When we got home from the airport we didn't see the bike by the fireplace because this year, we put the Christmas tree upstairs. When we went upstairs, you saw the bike and said, "Santa left his bike here..." and with a moment's pause, your eyes lit up and you exclaimed, "It's a bike for me, it's my bike!"

Well, that's it for now. I just had to get these posted since I've missed 2 weeks worth of letters. I'll probably combine a post with just pictures to share later.

I love you both so much and enjoyed celebrating Christmas with you guys.

Love,
Mommy

Gingerbread House Construction with Threenagers: What I learned.

For our monthly birthing group gathering, I decided to host a gingerbread house making party. Granted, I have never made one in my life, I thought to myself, how hard could it be? Just bake a bunch of big cookies, frost them together and voila! Magical yumminess. 

Yes, my three year old decorated this (for the most part...I helped with the frosting decorations and the construction of the house). The candy cane is supposed to be a chimney. 

My favorite part of the house may very well be the ginger bread "conductor" with the gigantic lips. 

As you can see, the house turned out pretty good. Actually, it turned out way better than I expected, however, the process was long and I learned a lot of things along the way. I will share them here (really, for myself so that I can remember this next year). 

1. Give yourself extra time and then add another day. Baking these simple squares took longer than I thought. I made enough cookies to make 5 largish cookies. If you are baking at least that many and don't have more than 3-4 cookie sheets, you should borrow some from a neighbor or something.

2. Bake the cookies for longer than you think. The recipe that I used called to make them for 9-11 minutes. I think for the thickness that I ended up making the cookies, the time ended up being 13-15 minutes. And then on the day of assembly I found that a few of them were still too soft and so I stuck them in the oven set at 250 degrees F. for an extra 10-20 minutes to allow them to dry out.

3. Use a 3/8" thick paint stick to help control the thickness of the dough. Using a large paint stick on either side of the dough, with your rolling pin rolling over the dough as a guide will help you make nice and evenly thick cookies. I actually rolled the dough right on my silicone baking mat and cut the dough by using a template (which I "laminated" with packing tape) and just popped the cookies into the oven. After you take the cookies out, lay the template on top of the cookie and trim the excess. 

4. Make your roof thinner than the walls. I'd reccomend 1/4" if you don't want to stand there for 10 minutes, holding up your roof. My roof was too heavy for the icing to hold it. My roof was also pretty steep. If your roof is less steep, perhaps you can get away with a thicker roof. 

I ended up setting up a rig with popsicle sticks and a bowl. 

While most of the guests were ok with using the glue gun to attach their roofs to their house, one of the dads came up with this genius idea...which actually would've worked pretty well if we had more time for the frosting to set up. If your roof is sliding down, to cut down on the frustration, just use hot glue. 

5. Place the wall that is not under your roof pieces (the wall with the pointy top) on the outside of the side walls. (Have the side walls butt up against inside the pointy-top walls) This allows the roof pieces to lay flat.

6. For 3 year olds, give them a plate of candy and tell them to eat as much as they want. This apparently had the opposite effect on Nathan. He did not eat any candy while he was decorating his house. Seriously, this boy has the will power of a jedi knight. Toddlers can be just so weird. Disclaimer: This tip may or may not backfire on you.

7. Place a glob of frosting on their candy plate. Allow them to dip the candy into the frosting before sticking it onto their house.

8. Encourage the kids to keep adding candy onto the house. It may at first look like random candies stuck onto a roof (like wads of spit ball), but after awhile, their imagination takes off and you will start to see christmas lights, windows, etc. Nathan's house eventually became a train station. 

9. Make sure they are clear about which "house" you are referring to. We had a little girl proceed to stick her first piece of candy onto our dining room wall. Her dad caught her in time. These kids, they can be so literal. 

10. Make sure little siblings can get in on the action in some way. I put an un-decorated cookie on her high chair with some sprinkles and she was happy. 

11. Let them eat the candy and frosting as they go. I'm usually a sugar nazi when it comes to the kids' sweets consumption, but occasionally I'll let them go crazy. C'mon, it's gotta be tough to have all this candy in front of you and not be able to eat it. 

12. Take a picture of the kids with their artwork. The attention span of three year olds really vary. Some of the kids were finished after 10 minutes, and others like Nathan, stayed at the table and decorated his house for 1.5 hours at least. Most of the parents went in afterwards to fill the space with some decorative frosting. 

13. I found that ziplock freezer bags make fantastic piping bags. In the past I used to use regular sandwich bags which almost always burst at the seams when I am piping frosting out. This time, I used freezer bags and they were able to withstand the pressure of dense royal frosting and toddler hands. I set out bags with piping tips, and some with just the corners snipped off. Both were equally used, so it just depends on preference.

14. Frosting fixes EVERYTHING. Gaps, broken pieces, temper tantrums, you name it. We had gaps due to uneven cookies and roofs that slid down during construction. We had pieces of wall that just broke in half and we were able to just attach them back with frosting. Crying threenagers? Stick some frosting in their face and their frowns get turned upside down. I tell you, frosting, it's like the duct tape of the gingerbread house world.

I had all the families each bring a bag of candy to share and I had bought a few bags from the store myself. Between the 5 families, we had plenty of candy to go around. The most popular ones were M&M's, candy cane, lego candies, and gummy bears. Oh, sprinkles were also a hit.

It was definitely time consuming, but so worth it. I'm confident, though, with these newly learned lessons, it will go much faster next year.

It's the Most Wonderful Time...

Dear Hannah and Nathan, 

As I was singing along with the radio this morning, I realized how real just how real the lyrics "It's the most wonderful time of the year..."are. Sure, Christmas has always brought me joy each year, but I don't know, this year, it seems different. Perhaps it's that Nathan, you are now old enough to appreciate Christmas and all the traditions that go along with it. But I just love to be able witness the joy that lights up your faces as you experience the magical moments of Christmas time. When we are looking at Christmas lights and Nathan, you are yelling, "Blue! My Favorite!!!" every time you see blue lights, and Hannah, perhaps too young to express you opinions, simply goes, "oooh!" when you spot a good sized light display. Another example is when we watched our neighbor's blow up lawn figure slowly inflate. Hannah just stood there through the entire process, mesmerized and when the figure was fully inflated, a huge smile came across you face as you pointed and babbled something out. 

Christmas, a season of joy and giving. This year, I'm viewing this holiday with a different lens. Sure the physical act of giving presents is there, but I'm really appreciating this whole concept of giving joy to an innocent child. Childhood is supposed to be filled with carefree and joyful moments. It saddens me to know that there are children out there who are deprived of this simple, yet powerful gift; so as a parent, I'm striving to make sure that you guys will learn to appreciate this gift and not take it for granted. 

Well, your grandparents came to visit this weekend and the weather was just perfect for being outside. One of the things we did was to ride the Zephyr around to look at the Austin trail of lights displays. While it's probably more magical at night, we think it's good enough for now because we don't need to be carrying around 2 grumpy and sleepy kids through a thick crowd.  

 Hannah, you were able to provide us with a good preview of what airplane flights will be like for the next few months. Yay...

We also drove up north to Georgetown to visit the Bethlehem stroll. They transformed a block of downtown into a reenactment of a marketplace back in the day when Jesus was born.  There were lots of cool things to see. 

Nathan, you got to make your own sand art ornament...

 And watch a demo of someone using an ancient carpentry tool...which by the way, was Jesus' occupation when he was an adult.

 There was even a "Texas" fireplace, safe for kids.

 Nathan even wanted to take a picture with a donkey. While I had to go and change Hannah's diaper during this time, I didn't get a chance to see your reaction to the donkey, but I can imagine that in this picture, you are covering your nose and whining, "stinky!"

On Tuesday, a couple of Hannah's friends came over for a Chinese story time and for the craft, we decorated cookies. Hannah was even sprinkling sprinkles on your cookie, but by the time I grabbed the camera to take a picture, you were shoving the cookie in your mouth. 

 Nathan also had a friend over and you guys did a good job with sharing the blue sprinkles.

 Here's just a random cute picture that I took of Hannah today.

 On Thursday, we went to go visit Daddy at work. We had a quick lunch and then went downstairs to play some Foosball. Both Nathan and Hannah really like it.

  

 Before Grandma and Grandpa left, we went one morning to Cabelas. Hannah loved watching the fish and turtles. You also really liked pushing the buttons on the elevator, which you hardly ever get to do, and going in and out of tents. We spent a good hour there and then went to go visit Daddy at work.

Hannah's really saying a lot more words these days. "Daddy" "Teddy" "More" "Uh-Oh" and also you are getting really good at imitating sounds. 

Nathan is learning how to stand up for yourself at school, fur example, when a friend pushes you or takes your toys, you need to use your words and not just wine and throw a tantrum. We are also talking about how we need to help our friends out too. We've been role playing what you can do if one if your friends is being treated unfairly. We want you to be able to stand up for yourself and also for others. 

I'm looking forward to this weekend as we get to meet up with our centering baby group and make gingerbread houses. I think it'll be pretty awesome to see what everyone comes up with. We'll definitely have pictures to share on that. 

Until next week, 

Love, 

Mommy 

Thanksgiving

Dear Hannah and Nathan, 

You two are both at a precious stage where you simply don't care about others' opinions. Randomly, you guys will often break out in dance oh so ridiculous, but oh so adorable. Hannah's most recent interpretation of dancing includes a fist pull with the other arm up in the air. 

 

In the past few days, Nathan, you have regressed like a whole year in the potty training arena. You've been seemingly going potty in your undies defiantly. Yesterday we were at the gym when this happened and we didn't have a spare change of clothes, so I slapped one of Hannah's diapers over your tushie and we walked out to the car without any pants. No shame, or at least you didn't show it, as we walked through the gym floor, people gave you a few second looks just to make sure you had something covering your bum at least. I gave you the cold shoulder the rest of the way home and you ended up promising me that you would try to go potty in the potty and not in your undies. So far so good. 

The weather has been pretty cold these past few days. I just had to take this picture of Hannah in the hat that Auntie Momo got you last year. You have finally grown into it and it is pretty cute on you. 

 On Sunday, we went to the Asian market up north. I promised you Nathan, that if you followed directions through the whole trip, you would get 2 coins to play with whatever arcade game you wanted. You picked the driving game.

And while we patiently waited for Nathan to finish playing, Hannah was perfectly content with driving the very stationary airplane the whole time. 

Afterwards, we went to get some dim sum. The idea of getting food off of people pushing carts around was pretty interesting to Hannah. Nathan even got to pick out a dessert that pretty much included all of your favorite fruits on top of a custard pie. Like a little foodie, you examined all the components and carefully took your first bite. 

 In the meantime, Hannah had already dug in and ate all of the fruit off of the pie already and was digging into the custard pie.

 Hannah has really gotten to be pretty independent and less destructive. You were able to get in the middle of this intricately set up track without dislodging any of the pieces.

 You can't really tell in this picture, but when we go to the gym, Ms. Elsa will sometimes put your hair in a pony tail or two. You stay so still for her, but whenever I try to tie up your hair, you are super squirmy.

 This cold weather is not cold enough to keep us inside. One day we went to the school playground to play a bit before it got dark. On the way back, Nathan, you jumped into the stroller first, so I just plopped Hannah onto you. You hugged her as we walked for about 3 minutes and then Hannah started wiggling to get out. I snapped this picture just before mutiny.

 After the ponytails came out, you still looked really cute. Wolverine girl in Elmo jammies.

 For Thanksgiving, Ama and Auntie Momo drove down from Dallas... just in time, because I got a cold that day and was able to rest a bit more with extra help around.

 Hannah got a chance to eat your first Thanksgiving meal. You pretty much liked everything: duck, sweet potatoes, green beans, and potatoes.

Hannah, you've been eating your fish lately, so you've had a major cognitive jump. You now know how to problem solve and try something different if what you are doing isn't working. This new ability allows you to play with the shape sorter and get into all sorts of trouble. You are now able to push chairs, step stools, boxes, books, pretty much anything to help you get something that is out of reach. I really have to keep an extra eye on you now.

Well, grandma and grandpa will be visiting this week so I'm sure we will have lots of fun. Until next week, stay warm and follow directions, please.

Love,
Mommy