Christmas Morning

Christmas morning started with excitement and some tears. Allison came into our room with a big grin on her face and asked if Santa had come. Amelia had a meltdown because she didn't get to make her own chocolate milk like she normally does (I brought their milks upstairs so they could have it before we started the day off).  After calming Amelia down, we headed to the living room to see what, if anything, Santa had left for us under the tree.  Allison was very excited to see all the presents, while Amelia was still trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

The girls had fun opening their presents and were especially excited to give the gifts they had picked out for each other. Allison bought Amelia a special spinning sucker, a coloring book, a pair of Christmas socks, and a Laffy Taffy ornament. Amelia picked out a ball, a candy cane filled with candy, and a craft project for Allison.

From Santa (and Mom and Dad), Allison received a remote controlled car, a puzzle, an Eye Spy game, and Cootie. Amelia received a Little People fire house and truck, a Barbie cash register and jewelry, and some games and puzzles. Both girls together received the movie "Rio", a hopscotch game rug, a Wii game, and their "big" present, which was a LeapFrog LeapPad tablet and some games.  

After opening the big presents, we took a break for some breakfast and returned to the living room to open our stocking stuffers. We received the best reaction from the girls during this time. Allison was most excited about opening her box of Disney Princess "boo-boo band-aids" and her box of Jelly Belly jelly beans.

Later that night, Brian's parents and sister came over for dinner. This was the first time I hosted a Christmas dinner and was excited to do so - I made a very nice ham dinner with all the trimmings. It was a nice way to end a beautiful Christmas day - presents, family & good food!

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Christmas Eve started off bright and early. I knew the girls would be excited about going to Nana and Papa's house later than evening, so I had stocked up on craft projects for them to work on during the day. This kept them busy for about an hour and then we let them open a present. It was their annual Christmas PJs. Luckily monkeys on PJs are still cool to a three and four year old, so they weren't disappointed by a "lame gift."

Before we left the house, the girls put out cookies and letters to Santa.

Allison and I had plans to go to Christmas Eve mass with my family, while Mia and Brian were going to stay at my parent's house. We didn't think Amelia would sit still long enough to make it through the whole mass. However, Allison decided that day that she didn't want to go. We have been having issues recently with Allison getting really frustrated if she feels like she is not being taken seriously or being listened to, so I wasn't going to push the issue. Amelia spoke up and said she wanted to go to church with me. So, I dressed her up and brought her along.  She was a perfect angel! She sat still the whole time and took everything in and liked "following" along with the hymnal. Allison, on the other hand, was content with hanging out at Nana's house reading books and doing puzzles.

After mass, we all went back to my parents' house for a big dinner and presents. The girls loved hanging out with their cousins as they are completely spoiled with attention by them.

Allison took her job as garbage collector very seriously.

I took the girls to the dollar store to pick out presents. They were so excited to give Nana and Papa their gifts. Amelia bought my mom a Mickey Mouse watch and my dad a tape measure. Allison picked out a candy bar for my mom (which she told Nana that her tummy was really going to like the present) and she picked out a dust wand for my dad to clean his car's interior.

At the end of the night, my dad read "The Night Before Christmas" to all the grandkids. To me, this is what Christmas Eve is all about. It was a tradition that was started when my oldest sister was a baby 29 years ago (right Jodi?) and has continued ever since.  Thanks dad for the memories!

A Visit With Santa...Times Four

As I previously mentioned, Allison loves visiting with Santa, or rather Allison loves getting candy canes from Santa. This season we made four visits with Santa. The first trip was to the Gardens and then we had an unplanned visit when I took the girls to a smaller mall in the area to see their train exhibit. Santa was on duty that night and it didn't take Amelia long to spot him. She told me she wanted to go visit him, however as we got closer she suddenly became shy and backed off. She told Allison to go first, which caused Allison to suddenly question whether she should be so willing to go up to him. So Allison replied back, "no, you go" and this "you go first" continued back and forth with each girl nudging each other a little closer until they both broke out into tears and hid behind my legs. I stood there dumbfounded as visiting Santa has never been an issue, other than when Allison was 18 months old. Luckily Santa was an old pro at this and quickly made them feel comfortable. Before we left the mall, we had to make a return visit (twice the amount of candy canes that way). 

Our third trip was to the mall that we go to every year for the "professional" picture. Once again, the worker stood there watching the girls smile, all the while saying "Smile, smile" and then taking the picture when they didn't have their natural smiles. However, I'm a sucker and will continue to go back there year after year, so we can get our annual picture with Santa.

The girls were able to visit Santa one last time when he stopped off at their daycare party. This time, the girls hit the jackpot; in addition to receiving a candy cane, they also received a small bag with treats and a very nice holiday book.

It's a Good Thing....

A few weeks ago I took the girls to another library than the one by our house; just for something different to do. All went very well - at first. The girls loved the play activities they had set up and made brownie points with the librarian by helping her clean up. They picked out a stack of books that I checked out at the self-check out desk. As I was doing this, Amelia started to head towards the door and I called her back, telling her she could hold the receipt that was about to be printed off. Allison's ears immediately perked up and her eyes glimmered with mischief - she quickly grabbed the receipt as it was printing.  This sent Amelia into meltdown mode and she tried to grab the receipt from Allison. At this point in time both girls were SCREAMING bloody murder and the librarian that was showing me how to use the self-checkout looked at me and said "good luck." 

I quickly dragged the kids out of there as fast as I could and gathered them into the corner of the lobby and shared my displeasure of their behavior. I also shared my displeasure the entire car ride home.. yep Mom, I said it...."And another thing...." 

By the time we arrived home, I was livid and the girls just nodded their heads and acted like they were listening to me when I know they had tuned me out long before. They went into the house and immediately put in the Curious George CD they had checked out from the library. When I walked into the room, I saw them laying on the floor and sharing the book together while they listened to the CD.  It's a good thing they are so cute or otherwise I would have returned them to the library with the books when they were due two weeks later.

O' Christmas Tree

Future Architects

A Quarter, A Dime, A Nickel, and a Penny

I had the week of Thanksgiving off and had two days to myself while the kids were at daycare. I had grandiose plans of getting a lot done those two days. I started off Monday cleaning the house. At lunch, I figured I had worked hard and deserved a 'treat' so I picked up some fast food for lunch. About a half hour after eating, I was thinking that maybe fast food wasn't that great of an idea. Despite my best intentions, I cried uncle and gave up cleaning in exchange for a Mad Men marathon. Brian called later in the day and said not to worry about dinner, as he thought he had a bout of the stomach flu. I knew I was in trouble and that it wasn't the fast food that was making me ill.

By the time I picked up the girls from daycare, I was feeling pretty sick. Brian arrived home from work and after a five hour car trip that day, he was exhausted and white as a ghost. I couldn't wait for bedtime, but yet dreaded the thought of bedtime The thought of wrangling up the girls, getting them to change into PJs, reading books, and rubbing backs made me want to hide under the bed and not come out until the morning.

When it came time for bedtime, I went into our bedroom and rounded up some loose change. For Allison, knowing that she likes money, I gathered one of each type of coin and for Amelia I grabbed a few random coins.  I went into Allison's room first and put the money on her play kitchen table. I told Allison that if she was good and went to bed without any books or backrubs, the money was all hers in the morning. However, anytime we had to go back into her room, I was taking away a coin.  Allison was game...anything for money! Amelia was excited, however we had to go back into her room once because she was too busy playing with the coins I had left behind.

So, for the low cost of only $0.41 for Allison and $0.21 for Mia, I was in dreamland by 8:45 pm.  Not a bad price.  On a positive note, when Allison woke up the next morning, she wanted to put the money in her "church money box," a coin box that our church handed out to collect money for the Heifer Project. So despite the bad influence of bribing my children, maybe we are doing something right after all.