Ho Ho Holy Crap that's a Big Tree

We put up our brand new artificial tree over the weekend and it is ENORMOUS. The 7 1/2 footer looked sort of puny at Costco so I bought the 9 foot tree and it is just huge. On the up side, it looks good in our living room with the high ceilings. Downside is that it will never fit in a regular house should we move. I didn't realize that the measurement didn't include the stand height. But anyway, we've been having fun decorating it and starting the Christmas thing. I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying Christmas. I feel like we're really a "family" now and the kids are so excited by all of the stuff that I'm excited too. I even went shopping on Black Friday at 6 in the morning. Which was too late for most stuff sadly. I should have gone at 4. But really, 4? Is anything really worth that?

I got out the Christmas decorations and the kids have all been squirrelling away different objects. I found G hiding in the closet with these little musical tap dancing things I got last year. The tree ornaments are regularly migrating to various parts of the house too. Charles is getting a little upset with them about it, but I don't mind. I just put the unbreakable ornaments at the bottom.

We had a nice Thanksgiving at Ernie and Diane's. The weather was great and we ate out on the patio. Lucky thing since Saturday a big storm blew in and it got windy and cold. It rained today a few times. Charles told the kids that he could make it thunder, but Laney worked out that it had to lightning first. I bought a new picture frame to go with my singing gingerbread house and was looking for a picture to fill it --so I was looking at last year's Christmas picts. Oh my gosh, the kids have changed soo much.

Bobcats and Babies

Aack! I can't believe that it is almost Thanksgiving! This month has just flown by. In fact, this year is going fast. I was thinking about it this morning--we started the year with an invalid husband and the twins were little babies and we're going to end the year with an invalid husband but the babies have grown so much. They will be 18 months old in December and they are walking and talking (and rubbing toast into their hair in the case of Kenna at the moment)
Anyway, I thought I'd post a few pictures today of Halloween and our San Diego trip. Last week we went down to TEP Park and got H1N1 vaccinations for the kids. We also went to the zoo for playgroup (oh crap, must mail passes along to next group today!!) and did the normal school stuff.
[side note: if there are typos involving an L, please forgive. Kids have got crap in my keyboard and it's hard to type Ls now]
Sunday I got Charles to help me take the kids to the park so that Laney could practice riding her bike. I helped Laney and Charles walked the twins on their leashes. They are so funny. Griffin likes to hold a hand and walk slow so that he can look at everything and maybe pick up rocks or whatever. Kenna is somehow a McNearney/Phillips combo--she's charging ahead to the very end of her leash and walking as fast as she can. She is on a mission! At the park there was a group of older boys (10-12) and they were actually pretty good about playing with the kids. Especially Kenna, since she's a walking talking "baby doll". Is it that boy children don't inspire the same caretaking tendencies? I wonder about that sometimes. Griffin is never the baby for other kids. They just ignore him and he them.
In other news, we haven't seen our resident bobcat for a while, but I haven't got an update from the neighbors in the last couple days. About a month and a half ago I was woken up at about 3 in the morning by these weird noises outside. And I mean weird. Sort of a creaking sound with some croaks and other strange noises thrown in. Although I couldn't figure out what it was, it made me instinctually uncomfortable. Then a few weeks later we started getting reports from the neighbors about bobcat sightings. The bobcat took our neighbors' small dog right in front of them. Just jumped down and grabbed it about 5 feet away from them in their backyard. It also tried to take the next door neighbors' dog, but he chased it off. One of those nights, Laney woke up in the middle of the night and got in bed with me and the noises started again like they were right under the window. This time with more growling, so I figured it was the bobcat (confirmed by Google the next day. The internet is amazing--you can listen to bobcat noises). He's been eating the local bunny population on my other neighbors' patio furniture and shredding the cushions. Charles has been a little freaked out and I haven't been letting the kids play outside early in the morning or at dusk just in case. Kenna is sort of the same size as a small dog after all ;-) Hopefully the bobcat will move on to another locale soon.

Busy Couple Weeks

I might need to do this in several parts because it's been a busy few weeks! We've had Halloween parties, Halloween, Laney's birthday and a trip to San Diego so there ya go. We're trying to get back into the swing of things this week and I think we're all a little tired. The twins have gone back to two naps a day! So working backwards in time...
Today we had dance class and lots of dads were there due to the holiday. Laney missed last week because of our trip so she was a little clueless as they worked through the new "routine" that they are learning. I guess they are doing a little Xmas show. Yesterday I took Laney to the Dr for her 3 year visit and then to school a little late. She weighs 32 pounds and is 36 inches tall. He tested her talking abilities (um, definite pass) as well as physical things. She still can't stand on one foot. I wouldn't say that she is the most coordinated of my children at this point ;-) She was happy to be back in school but had a fight with the teacher's assistant about getting out of the playhouse and hit her! Last week she was in trouble for screaming at her teacher. Preschool is supposed to socialize your children, but I'm noticing a definite decline in Laney's behaviour as she goes to school. I think partially it has to do with the teacher's laissez-faire attitude about the kids interactions. She allows a lot of altercations, which is fine to a point but it encourages aggressive behavior (in my kid!). I don't know. We got our "report card" and they mentioned that Laney needs to learn to ask nicely for things and be less aggressive. If I can't get the other teacher for the twins next year I don't think I will put them into school until they are ready for actual preschool.
side note: I just realized that I spelled behavior in both US and British fashion. I should make up my mind.
Kenna and Griffin are doing great except for G's tragic haircut. Oops. They are starting to talk quite a bit now, especially Kenna. They make me laugh. I cleaned house on Monday and swapped out clothes. Kenna is now in 18 month sizes, sort of. She has things ranging from 9 to 19 months that fit. She's so little in frame that tops sort of swim around on her, but her legs are too long for 12 month pants. She's just dinky.
My brain is tired so I'll add more later.

How Mommy Puts the "F" in Effort

I feel like I'm in one of those dreams where you're running and you don't get anywhere. I'm so tired tonight. I think the crud is catching up with me--I've been ignoring it for a week and a half and I'm running out of steam. Add to that the wind from the massive cold front moving in and it's allergy city here. Bleh.
I guess it is supposed to be in the 50s as a high tomorrow (and it was in the mid 80s today, so wow). Thankfully it will be back up again by the weekend for Halloween and Laney's birthday party. I've been madly dashing about to get a party together by Sunday. I finally got off my duff and decided to do something. It's last minute again. I don't know what my problem is that I can't decide on things in advance. I'm vowing to do better next year. In honor of that resolution, I've picked both a date and a theme for the twins birthday in June. June 12th. Cowboys.
The post title is partially the result of the failure to plan ahead for Laney's birthday and partially due to me running around here this morning after getting up late, realizing that my kitchen floor is a biohazard, having Kenna break a kitchen chair by jumping on it until it fell over while I'm wiping G's crappy butt with dried out wipes because that's all I have left, getting dressed at the couch because all the clean clothes are piled there and then--the piece de resistance! opening the closet door to discover the I'm Special Bag and it's completely blank poster that was supposed to be done for school today. It's Laney's special week and her mother f**cked it up. Then my inlaws showed up.
So. It was Grandparent day at preschool today and Ollie and Don went. Laney thought that was pretty awesome. Hopefully there will not be a problem with her being special on Thursday.
In the win column for the week, I have to mention that I'm steadily making progress on cleaning the garage and I single handedly got my husband's metal Marine Corp footlocker to the top of my garage shelving. It's really heavy, but after much huffing and puffing and failed attempts to lift it to the top of the shelving while standing on a step ladder, I finally had an epiphany: take it apart, lift all the parts up there and then reassemble. While I was at it, I stuffed the contents of another box of Marine crap in there and cut down on the clutter. Ha ha!! Why the top of the shelves for a giant heavy item? Well, our shelves have difficult to change shelves and the top shelf had exactly the right amount of height to the ceiling. So I saved the good storage space for something we might need access to--like the extra diapers and ideally, more wipes. So, you might be asking yourself, "self, what is she doing cleaning the garage when her house is obviously going to hell?" and my answer is "hell if I know".

Oh Crap Croup

We haven't passed the most pleasant of days here. Laney woke up with croup at about midnight and I was freaked out. I moved her into my bed and set up the humidifier but it wasn't a restful night. We were up by 6 again (after yesterday's slap in the head wake up call from her). Kenna woke up with a fever today too, so no one was feeling well. I'm not feeling all that healthy myself. Sigh. So it was a very long day. We got into the doctor early and went to Walmart to buy juice and tylenol.
There are days when doing things all alone is really hard and today was definitely one of them. We're all winding down to go to bed now though and then hopefully I'll be able to tackle the giant mess that is my house. I'm debating about taking Laney to dance tomorrow. Probably should skip it, but we'll see how tonight goes. Laney got a dose of steroids at the doctor but had another attack of croup with afternoon during nap time.
I had sad news last night. My uncle Ray died yesterday of a heart attack. It was a suprise to the family. I feel strange about it. He was very reclusive, so I haven't actually seen him since I was about 20. Still, it's sad.
Can't wait to get the kids in bed and be done for the night. I'm exhausted.

Sicko at the Door

We've had little visitors in the night all week. The babies have been waking up a lot and getting in bed with mommy for a little while (i.e. until they start yelling "hi" at me or rolling over to smack Charles in the face, then it's back to the crib) and Laney has been consistently showing up in the wee hours of the morning and kneeing me in the gut on her way to burrow into the center of the bed. So last night Charles locked the door. This morning we woke up to a sick little girl laying outside our room. I knew I should have left the door open (award for crappy mommy goes to...). Laney was sick all day. The kind of sick where she climbs into your bed and stays there until after lunch sipping juice and sleeping. She seems to be feeling better though so hopefully she's on the mend. I on the other hand am feeling sort of sore throaty so hopefully that is just allergies and not the plague.
Went to my Zumba class today and it was so fun. Then I went out to lunch and to the mall. Where I wandered around with a breast pump under my arm for about 20 minutes. I'm cool like that. Later I was thinking about it and I guess a breast pump is a relatively personal item to be hauling around with you in public. But the truth is, I was at the mall in my sweaty stretch pants following an exercise class. I basically have no shame anymore. I just don't care. The breast pump was a craigslist thing. I've been trying to clean out the garage and it's been satisfying but kind of a pain to do all the meeting/wheeling/dealing. I've got two high chairs to go and I'm fini. I posted a car seat for $10 and got one hit this week. I'm meeting her tomorrow to sell it. But I posted picts of it today and I've got like 7 emails about it. Who knew? Technically, the car seat is supposed to go in the trash because you can't donate them to charity or whatever since they may not be safe anymore or something. BS if you ask me.
Tomorrow I need to get on the stick and get some Halloween stuff out of the way. Like costumes. I originally planned for Laney to be Little Bo Peep and the babies to be sheep, but she wants to be a princess. So possibly I can find a dragon outfit for G and the girls will be princesses. Who knows?

Tang

For those of you not on Facebook, had an adventurous day today. The kids took the Costco sized Tang from the pantry and were cooking with it in their kitchen when I discovered them. Tang everywhere. They looked like ompaloompas and the Tang was piled like sand all over the living room carpet. I wigged out. The Tang vacuumed up mostly but it is starting to come up as a stain now. A huge orange stain.
The kids are doing a lot of playing together now and it's both cute and terrifying. They played out in the backyard together this afternoon and worked out how to use the garden hose. Sand and water was everywhere.
Putting Laney to bed tonight I was thinking about the new "why"stage that we are in. We read Olivia and had an in-depth discussion about Degas, his reasons for painting ballerinas, Jackson Pollock, painting, where Olivia's art supplies are stored, where they should be stored, etc. We had a similar discussion in the car on Monday on the way home from the zoo related to Barack Obama, where he lives, what his job is, how old you have to be to be president, which of her cousins could be president etc. Laney is a big Obama fan and is determined to visit him. She also has a rock collecting campaign in his honor. I'm not sure why. Maybe because rock and Barack sound similar? Not sure but we have been collecting "Rocks for Barack" for a number of months now.
Now off to sweep up the sand that got tracked all over my house and watch a NetFlicks movie, since we just joined.