A family trip to the movies.

My parents are in town, which has been lovely. We went to the movies last night to see We bought a Zoo, which I loved. The 4:20 movie was sold out, so we had to wait for the 6:45 movie, which might have been a bit too late.

During the previews, both kids screamed each time on ended. "Mom, is it over? What happened?" For every preview.

Then my dad bought the giant trough of popcorn, which immediately demanded the full attention of the children, particularly Remick, who ate twice his body weight in popcorn. Raph took him to the bathroom twice trying to ward of the inevitable, which came near the end of the movie, when Remick started screaming, "Will you wipe my bum?" At this point Makili was asleep on my lap.

So Raph took Remick, and when we found him again after the movie, Remick was at the video games, with his socks pulled up to his knees, with his little tush hanging out holding a bazooka.

I eventually couldn't carry Makili all the way to the car, so I put him down and he was walking, but I realized after he ran into a door frame really hard that he was walking with his eyes closed.

It was pretty funny.

holiday elving

Nevermind that the mess is overtaking my life. We're making stuff together! We have had such a fun time this year elving. Raph figured out that there were 24 spaces between the ballusters on the railing (who sits there and counts that?), so we made pom-poms for our advent calendar. I'm going to fancify it a bit more next year, with glittery clips and ceramic numbers, but I have really enjoyed the pompoms. And then, there are the ornaments! Salt dough and wood mostly this year. Total love.

Moments at Grammy and Opa's house.

We had a really great time in Pittsburgh with my parents. We visited a bunch of museums where we say dinosaurs, dug for dinosaurs, made our own collection (which happened to be dinosaurs that were red and yellow.)

We had mellow mornings together
Evenings of Dora and snuggles
And lots of attention for both my boys, so that their momma could put her feet up:)

All in all it was a terrific visit.

Hmmm

Makili just asked me how to spell "All drains lead to the ocean."

I was really pondering where he might have heard this, and it just occured to me it was probably Nemo, which he hasn't even seen lately.

Sort of how I feel at the moment

I complained enough about my missing cord that Raph went and pulled out the card reader he was going to give to me for Christmas. But I mean really, I'm a month behind on pictures. Pittsburgh, Thanksgiving, December.

This is Makili in Pgh doing a project where he tries to recreate a famous painting. Clearly this was hard work for him. That's how I feel lately. I feel so unproductive, and yet I never feel like I have any time. Viscious cycle. But I'm excited about many things too.

About the Holiday

I so struggle to walk the line of enjoying Christmas without overdoing the materialism of the holidays. Today we decorated our tree. To start with, I struggle with the tree. I know they grow the trees for the purpose, but it still seems awful to cut so many trees down for a holiday. We tried using a live tree one year, that we would later plant outside, but it died, and we still had the needles all over the ground anyway. So we got a tree this year at a farm stand of a guy we know. I don't know where he gets the trees, but he's a nice guys and works tirelessly, so I guess I felt okay about forking over the $30 for our tree. Last year's mini $5 tree was pretty awesome, but I guess that what you expect when you buy your tree a few days before Christmas. The tree we bought is already dropping needles like Makili drops changes of clothes all over the floor, but who's counting. Decorating it was SO much fun for the boys, and since we've had this tradition of each of us making an ornament for the tree since 2007, it was very fun for the boys to open the ornaments up and have us talk about why we made what we made. They loved it and were immediately obsessed with making more ornaments so their contributions would be noteworthy. I was pretty into that. The boys and Ege discussed the best distribution of ornaments, and where everything should hang. It was really cute.

I've tried to get the boys into making gifts for other people though and I haven't been as successful. As soon as I show Makili something that he could make for someone else, he immediately wants his own, and every time he does a good job on something, even a drawing, it is officially his. Every time I buy a gift for someone, wrap a gift for someone, and include him, he is immediately completely obsessed with what he is getting, where his gifts are. Which of course prompts me to use the old Santa wild card. "Santa won't bring you gifts unless you're good." And that sort of feels yucky to me, even if it does work. The truth is I enjoy getting a really thoughtful gift for someone, making gifts for people, but I don't know how to balance that with really disliking my children's obsession with MORE.

Cute

I find it really endearing that I am listening to Raph who is downstairs reading aloud The 5 People You Meet in Heaven to my 18-year-old exchange student, stopping to make sure he understands what is being read in as sincere a way as he does with Makili.

Can't Touch This.

I can't find the cord to download picture, so I've been rather lazy. Plus I discovered cookies that you roll into dough and slice and I can't seem to control my self.

Anyway, last night, Raph is putting the kids to bed and I listened to the following conversation:

Makili: Dad, will you lay with me?

Raph: What are you going to give me?

Makili: How about that pillow?

Raph: I don't want any material things.

Makili: What are material things?

Raph: Things you can touch.

Makili: Okay. How about a sharp knife?

Raph: I can touch that.

Makili: How about a really high window in the sky?

Raph: You're going to give me a really high window to the sky?

Makili: How about the moon?

Raph: You can't give me the moon!

Makili: How about the dirt under the dirt.


This seriously went on for half an hour. It was awesome how many things Makili came up with that Raph couldn't touch.