High points, low points

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was – dare I say it? - pretty darned spectacular. I mean, yes, there were 150 percent more tantrums, but they could clearly be blamed on a decrease in sleep and a by-leaps-and-bounds increase in sugar and gifts, but when I take a moment to look back on the last ten days, I mostly see the good. That's not to say that we didn't have our trying moments, our gritted-teeth-and-clenched-fists moments (there was one morning where I threw an empty bottle of fabric softener across a room), but the goodness of it all clearly outweighed the bad, and I NEVER CRIED, NOT EVEN ONCE.

The kids were pretty excited about gifts this year. Asher is the kind of kid who wants to open one gift and play with it for a while before opening anything else. I really think we could have given him ONE THING and he would have been satisfied with his entire Christmas experience. He isn't the kind of child who looks beyond what he already has to see what he could possibly still get, you know? When we go shopping, he never begs for things or asks if he can have something, so I think it must just be his personality. He got a bunch of Toy Story Legos, some construction trucks, a marble run, a guitar, a Leapster Explorer, a Buzz Lightyear pop up tent, books, art supplies and MORE. I'll remind you that the kids have two sets of grandparents, three aunts and four uncles within driving distance. And they like buying things for kids.

Lucy tore through her gifts; she enjoyed the unwrapping process more than anything else. Even now, she doesn't appear to realize that she has a bunch of new stuff to play with – she hasn't gotten attached to any of her gifts. And she got about three items into her stocking before she discovered candy and after that, it was all over. CANDY CANDY CANDY CANDY. Because I am an idiot, I filled up her Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser with an entire roll of Pez candy and it was gone in SECONDS. I thought she'd lose interest after two or three pieces but she powered through and ate the entire thing. She probably enjoyed the candy more than anything else, even a dollhouse, even a car seat carrier for Creepy Baby Shea, more even than the Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog book that I have read approximately 57,000 times.

This week we find ourselves doing what everyone else does after the holidays – finding homes for all these new toys, and finding new homes for a bunch of old ones. I'm dying to take down the tree and the decorations (our tree is now so wilted and dead that ornaments are just falling off) but before that happens, Dave and I have a date to clean out the attic and make two or three (OR HOWEVER MANY IT TAKES) runs to Goodwill tomorrow. Then this weekend I'll be able to put everything away neatly, so that I can find it all next year without having to dig through 14 various bins scattered to and fro throughout the entire attic, some of which were buried under 10 metric tons of old Dave Barry books. That's how much I hate to be unorganized. I can FEEL the disorganization of the attic THROUGH THE CEILING. Just because I'm not LOOKING at it doesn't mean I'm not DISTRESSED by it. And then hopefully (CROSS YOUR FINGERS) someone is coming to do the tile in our master bathroom next week, which means sometime in the month of January – ONE ENTIRE YEAR FROM WHEN WE STARTED – we could have a renovated bathroom. A special post on that coming soon, I assure you. It will have lots of pictures and will be absolutely DRIPPING with sarcasm.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of the entire last month came on Monday. I took the kids over to my parents' house while Dave was at work, and my mom sent Asher home with a few extra Lego train cars he could hook up to his Toy Story one. He thought she sent him home with three, but he arrived at our house with only two. He and I argued about this for a while – I was sure we hadn't dropped any train cars between my mom's house and the our car or between our car and our house; he was certain there were three cars and he was very upset and frustrated that he was missing one. Finally, I asked him if he wanted to call my mom and ask her if one of the train cars had been left at her house. I went upstairs while he was on the phone with her (he can dial it all by himself).

A few minutes later, he came running to find me and said (YOU GUYS, I SWEAR THIS HAPPENED, SWEAR ON MY LIFE), “Mom, I'm sorry. You were right; the train car IS at YaYa's house.”

Dave and I just stood there, FROZEN, with our mouths hanging open. And Dave didn't even hear the “I'm sorry” part – his mouth was gaping solely based on the “you were right” part of the dialogue. I have never been so completely taken aback in such a good way. I hugged him until I thought his head would pop off and we had a nice little talk about how kind and respectful he had been. It was this tiny glimpse into what kind of person he WILL EVENTUALLY turn into if we keep working with him and leading by example.

Of course, there are low points, too – Asher has had a minor cold over the last few weeks and his new thing is to take a bite of a food he normally very much enjoys and announce that “it doesn't taste very good.” I am never sure whether this statement is made because it really DOESN'T taste good due to a stuffy nose or if he's just being a pain in the you-know-what, because he is VERY capable of that too. But I have been trying to deal with it on a case-by-case basis and we have been talking through WHY something might not taste good, and I reassure him that I'm serving him the same food I always feed him, blah blah blah but the real kicker came the other afternoon, when I set two plates of food down on the table and asked Asher and Lucy to come sit down and eat their lunch.

And Lucy took one look at her plate, pushed it away, and then announced, “This doesn't taste very good.”

And I died.

Comments

[HereWeGoAJen]

Wow, I am really impressed with the You Were Right. Perhaps you should print that part out and frame it for the wall?

And I died laughing at the end. Right now there is a little pile of vegetables, that Elizabeth used to eat happily but now apparently no longer does, on my dining room table because she "no yike this."

[Kerry]

It sounds like you had a really great Christmas- what a nice post. One of the toughest things, but really the sign of a normal, well-adjusted person, is the ability to apologize. I'm sure Asher's future teachers, friends, co-workers and wife will appreciate the qualities you're instilling in him now!

[morgan s.]

My 4 yr old daughter announced the her lunch (something she eats all the time, happily)"was disgusting". I froze in my tracks. WHAT!???? What little t*rd at school taught her to say that! Good grief.

[Callie]

Don't you just love a polite kid? I especially enjoy it when it happens in front of other people, like oh, say, my in-laws. :) Last weekend my MIL offered my 2 year old a bite of this completely disgusting looking cranberry salad and he very nicely said, "No thank-you." And I high-fived myself in my head.

[Christy]

My mother had a lingering sinus infection for a couple weeks earlier this fall and then she told me one day she ate some yogurt and "it tasted terrible, like salt" and then everything she ate or drank, even water, tasted salty. My uncle (a doctor)told her that blahblahmedicalexplanationblah the infection spread to her taste buds! She weathered it, and was fine soon after, but maybe that's what happened? It's the weirdest thing I've heard in a while.

I also love the "You were right" story. It reminds me of the time on Cougartown (don't judge, it's funny!) the one woman secretly recorded her husband saying, "sometimes in a relationship you have to do things you don't want to do" and played it for him every time he didn't want to do something.

[Jackie]

Merry Christmas to you and your family, I'm glad you had a great holiday.

One of my New Years resolutions is to comment more and lurk less, and since I've been reading since before Asher was born (I KNOW) I figured it was time that I actually comment. Consider this the first of many ;)

[badger reader]

Completely random to comment on this post, but wanted to share that "This is the Star" by Joyce Dunbar/Gary Blythe is my very favorite nativity book. The most gorgeous illustrations. Warning that the donkey is referred to as the ass, so you have to use your judgment (but thought I would pass along anyway.) Also avoid "the dog who found christmas" at ALL COSTS. Oh holy hell that one snuck in a scholastic order and it is the worst book ever - dog pushed out of a car because his family didn't want him any more. Yikes.

[Gia]

:) Don't need to say anymore than that.

Gia

[Shiny]

My sister has 17-month old twin boys who seem to go from loving something to hating-it-so-much-I-must-spit-it-out between lunch time and dinner time... quite incredible. She was feeding one of them chicken dipped in strawberry yoghurt the other day because he'd suddenly decided chicken was yuk and he loves yoghurt. Here's to a 2011 filled with easily-fed children!

Shiny x