Harry (or is it Hairy?) Poppins

Pops and Susan took the boys to see a production of Mary Poppins at the playhouse.  The boys were not familiar with the story and were whining before about going to what sounded to them like a long, boring event at which they would have to not talk and sit still for hours.  Before they left, David whined "I don't want to see Harry Poppins!"   I think he had a mashup of Harry Potter and Mary Poppins in his head.  

But off they went, and sure enough they came home three hours later loving the play and singing the Supercalifrangilisticexpialidocious song and talking about how much fun they had.  I think it helped that they got to take their allowance and treat Pops and Susan to a lemonade and a snack at intermission.  And on top of that, after they got to go to the Drake Diner, too.  Kinda wish I was 5 and 7 again.  

Top (Sh)elf

So this guy comes to our house.  The Elf on the Shelf.  If you haven't heard of him, a family invented him to come at the holidays to watch their children and report to Santa each night if they are good or bad.  Then they turned him into a book and a thing and made millions.  The internet has exploded with clever and funny reports of what Elf on the Shelf does in other homes.  You have to name your elf.  The kids named ours Albert L.  Except I thought they  meant Albert Elle and wrote it in the book that way.  I really can't remember where the Albert came from.  Albert is a bit lazy.  He makes an annual appearance in the sink with a bunch of mini marshmallows as he takes a bath.  And he always likes to put the kids' underwear on the Christmas tree.  Other than that, he is pretty tame.

The Epic Story About Two Teeth

Oh, these boys and their teeth.  They have been losing them faster than they lose gloves, and I can't keep those in stock.  This winter someone always has a loose tooth, and one night they both had the same tooth that was very loose.  AJ was anxious that David would lose the tooth before AJ did.  I put them to bed and heard some shouts twenty minutes later that had me running to their room thinking they were fighting.  Turns out they were playing "dog" and using their teeth to play tug-of-war with a pillow and David's tooth popped out.  Lots of excitement, no one was sleeping and AJ started very determinedly wiggling his tooth to the point that it was bleeding.  I finally got them both tucked back in and then five minutes later heard shouts again.  This time AJ had convinced David to pull on the pillow while AJ bit it so that he could lose his tooth as well.
You might think all ends there.  But not in this household.  In the drama of rinsing mouths and teeth, AJ dropped his tooth in the toilet.  And then said--"Mom! Get it out!!"  I told him that if he wanted it back, he was going to have to fish it out himself.  His eyes got very wide as he thought about this, and I guess the tooth fairy loot outweighed the gross out factor because he plunged his hand right in and grabbed it. Once he had the tooth out he said to me "I can't believe you made me do that!"  I laughed and told him I didn't make him do anything.

And no, it was 9:00 at this point but it was not over yet.  AJ set the tooth on the counter to wash his hands and promptly managed to knock that same tooth into the sink where it slid down the drain with a tiny clink as it hit the metal rim.  AJ and David were both beside themselves.  Many tears later, dad came to the rescue and took apart the sink. Sure enough, he managed to find that darn tooth in the drain catch.

The end, you think?  Of course not. The boys decided they wanted to keep their teeth for a day and leave them for the tooth fairy the next day.  So we very carefully put them in a special spot on their dresser and they finally went to sleep at 10:00 on a Sunday, a school night no less.

The next night when we went to put the teeth under the pillows, we couldn't find them.  Upon inquiry, David admitted that he had sneaked out of bed the night before and taken both teeth into his bed to play with them (it must make sense to a six year-old) before he fell asleep. And then forgot all about them when he woke up.  We looked around their very clean room in horror.  The cleaning ladies had come that day, made the beds and vacuumed.  The boys were certain the teeth were gone, and AJ was mad at David for losing his tooth.  But we moved the beds, took the sheets apart and crawled around on the floor until we found one tooth on the rug.  Only one.  And the boys were able to identify it as David's.  Much tears and anger because David's had been found but not AJ's.  AJ felt David should give him the tooth as compensation for playing with and losing AJ's.  David was not willing to do that but offered AJ one of the three gold dollars he was anticipating from the fairy.  AJ was unwilling to compromise.  Drama, drama, drama.  No one was sleeping for the second night in a row.  I finally had the idea to go through the laundry basket where the dirty sheets were, and what do you know...we found that second wily tooth.  What a saga.

I Mustache You a Question...

but I'll shave it for later.

All credit for this post, including the mustaches and the silly joke, go to our wonderful nanny, Ashley.

Hut, two, three, four...or the choosing of the annual Christmas tree

One of my other favorite holiday traditions!  We headed out to the local tree farm for the fourth year to choose our tree.  This is our second year in this house, so I really don't have a good explanation for how we misjudged the height of the tree we needed by so much.  We thought well, we have 10 foot ceilings, so we'll take a 10 foot tree and just have them trim six inches off the base and we'll be set.  Right.  I believe Joe had to take the tree back out to the garage at least two and maybe three times to trim it some more.  Once we got it in the stand we thought we had it just right until we realized we forgot to leave room for the star.  So note to self for next year---an eight foot tree will do just fine.

Families always have funny recurring disagreements on some mundane topic.  Ours is about when it is time to get the tree.  I am an advocate that the right time is the Saturday after Christmas.  Joe believes it is two weeks before the big day, or some years the Saturday before Christmas.  Growing up, my mom always loved to decorate a live tree and arranged the lights so that the tree looked like it was lit from within.  (Her tip is to poke the lights way in by the base instead of just stringing them on the outside branches.). My sister and I would turn out the lights in the house but leave the tree lights on and sleep on the couches next to the tree watching it glow as we fell asleep.

Joe's family waits much longer.  His birthday is in mid-December, and his mom used to wait until after his birthday to get ready for Christmas so that he wouldn't feel shorted on the birthday celebration.  That and Joe is pretty convinced a live Christmas tree only has a 10 day shelf life before it becomes a Major Fire Hazard.

So this year I let Joe pick the date and we went two weeks prior to Christmas...only to find there were very, very few trees left to cut down.  We walked over an acre of stumps in fact, passing only three or four stragglers that were left for obvious reasons.   A huge bald spot on one, an odd, deep ring of brown needles on another.  We asked two guys who worked there for tips on where to go to find a good tree, and they sheepishly and politely said, "well, you really gotta come the Saturday after Thanksgiving to get a good one..."  It was as if I had written the script and paid them a tip to say it.  But so much more convincing when it comes from The Tree Guys than your spouse.

So we were pretty dejected and about to leave for a pre-cut tree when the kids found this one at the back of the lot.  A bald patch on one side and some brown needles, but I thought maybe we could make it work.  Joe was skeptical, but the kids were so excited and quickly started marching in a circle around it chanting "hut, two, three, four!" Trying to guard their tree from the two or three other straggler families out there with us.  We lugged it home, trimmed off the brown, hid the bald patch behind a chair and all thought it turned out better than we had hoped. Oh, and I poked the lights way in toward the base, just like mom taught me.  Because part of holidays are traditions, right?

Gingerly

We continued the tradition of making gingerbread houses for the holidays.  It is one of my favorite things to do every year, and as I read more about the current simplicity movement that says to do less and be happier, I think this is one of the things on my short list that I would keep about the holidays. I only wish I could add an extra pair of hands or two on this day, because someone always  needs help with squeezing the frosting bag, unwrapping candies or (my favorite this year) getting the frosting off the dog's fur.  From top to bottom the houses are Julia's, David's and AJ's.

Wired

We are trying to determine whether David has sleep apnea.  His kindergarten teacher reports that David is often tired and lays his head on his desk or lays on the floor under his desk despite getting 10 to 11 hours of sleep.  Figuring out whether he has sleep apnea involves an overnight stay at a sleep center in which David slept in all of these wires in that comfy looking bed and mom slept in...a chair in the corner.  That did not recline.  Apparently they do not have many pediatric patients with parents sleeping over? David was very patient with the wires and asked the technician who put them on about one thousand questions.  I think she was relieved to say "Okay, David, now it is time for you to be quiet and go to sleep!"  There are days when I can relate...that boy is awesomely curious and always has a thousand questions.