Christmas Day Fallout

What do you get when you mix a highly anticipated holiday with little sleep, lots of sugar, and 2 highly active toddlers? Crash and burn, baby. Crash and burn.

Christmas Eve was actually not too bad. Luckily we only had sacrament meeting, but even that proved to be a little too much for the kids as spent the last half in the halls chasing after the kids with Ethan begging the whole time to go home. After lunch we made our annual gingerbread house. They had a lot of fun and actually were able to decorate it together without any fighting. The only protests came when I told them they couldn't eat the house until Christmas Day.


That night before bed, we performed our Christmas Eve tradition of opening all family presents. Mostly because I just can't wait any longer! I'm kind of still like a kid at Christmas. Kind of sad I know. I should have developed some kind of self-discipline at this point, but I haven't. We also do the ever popular tradition of giving the kids new Christmas jammies each year along with a new ornament. The jammies were a big hit with Grace. After reading a Christmas story, and setting out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, the kids actually went to bed rather easily. Probably because we told them that Santa couldn't come until they were asleep.

Here are the Christmas Eve festivities:

I should have gotten a hint of what was to come when I checked on Grace before going to bed around 11 PM. She woke right up and sat up in her pack n' play and proclaimed "Look at my new jammies!" followed immediately by "I want a cookie!" Being the great mom I am, I sent Scott to get her one of Santa's cookies and gave it to her before safety pinning her back into her "tent" so that she wouldn't start running around and see the presents that we'd already put under the tree.


Christmas morning they were up bright and early around quarter to 7 and proceeded to rip through all the presents. I have to say that I think its almost more exciting for me playing Santa than it is for the kids to get his presents. And they were pretty excited this year.

Christmas morning:

Here's Grace in her new Christmas outfit (Ethan wouldn't even try his on)

Here is Ethan in the Costa Rican soccer jersey that he got from Uncle "Dodo" on his mission

Breakfast kind of got lost in the mix, as they nibbled instead on lots of peanut M & Ms, Hershey's Kisses, and Starbursts. By nap time they were so wired that Grace wouldn’t fall asleep for the 3rd day in a row. So, after running around for the rest of the afternoon, we decided an early bed time was in order, and put them down at 6 PM.

Of course, there’s no rest for the weary as Ethan kept waking up on and off throughout the night and finally was up for good at 5 this morning. After trying for 15 or 20 minutes to convince him to play with his toys in his room if he couldn’t sleep, I finally realized there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. Especially since around 5:20 I heard Grace awake and rocking. So, I got up and took them to the living room and tried to keep 2 cranky, tired, sugared out, fussy and fighting children quiet for the next hour and a half or so Scott could get some sleep, and so that they wouldn’t wake up grandma and grandpa.

By the time Scott got up, I was ready to be done with Christmas. It was fun while it lasted, but I am ready to get back on schedule with the kids! We took down the tree and decorations (except for my Christmas card display, which I couldn’t bear to part with yet) and Ethan helped to vacuum and straighten up while Grace rocked on the couch.


So after everything was straightened up, here is a picture of the kids playing nicely together with their new toys:


Oh wait a second, that’s a cardboard box Grace found while we were cleaning. Good to know that this is what captures their interest the day after Christmas!

Anyway, by naptime, the kids were out of control and I think I overdid it today, because I’ve thrown my back out or something, and I can’t even stand up straight much less try to walk. So, poor Scott had to deal with getting Grace to go to sleep after she ripped the safety pins out of the blanket and climbed out of her pack n’ play twice after putting her down, and Ethan kept coming out of his room crying saying he didn’t want to stay in there. However, the crash and burn alluded to earlier finally occurred and both children fell asleep for a good couple of hours.

Its at times like this that I’m kind of glad Christmas comes but once a year. Here’s to hoping they get back on track this week!

A Little Update

So, not 2 nights after we set up our tent solution with the pack n' play, we returned to our original problem with our little exhibitionist. I went in to check on her and found her in her pack n' play -- under the tent -- with her jammies and diaper off once again. And of course, she had peed. So, desparate times call for desparate measures and since we couldn't find any duct tape, we used some extra strong packing tape to wrap around her diaper a few times and then once clean jammies were on, we wrapped the tape around the top as well so she couldn't take them off. We had to do that for a few more nights, and here is a particularly funny shot.

the front view

the back view (go ahead, you can laugh)

Here are a few light-hearted pictures from yesterday. Ethan was so excited because it finally snowed some "wet" snow so we could build a snowman. So, despite waking up in the middle of the night on Sunday with a burning fever, by Monday morning he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and excited to get to work. We built a pint-sized snowman and this is the result.

How to build a snowman:

(Please note -- Grace did not actually help to BUILD the snowman -- she showed up for the picture taking)

And there you have it. The anatomy of a snowy day.

I mailed off all of our Christmas cards this morning, so if you sent me your address, you should be getting yours in the mail soon! Nothing else really new to report other than the following actual conversation that took place driving home from Barnes & Noble the other day.

Me: Ethan, you're the most handsome boy I know!

Ethan: Well, that's why mom you can't scream at me anymore.

From the mouths of babes.

Its the most wonderful time of the year

Here are some tantalizing pictures to whet your appetite for my first story:





Yes, the time has come to fashion a crib tent for our little monkey. But first, let me back up a little and give you the background. One day last week at naptime, I changed Grace's diaper before putting her in the pack n' play in the midst of her fussing that she wanted a Zoe diaper and not a Cookie Monster diaper. Well, I didn't listen to her and went ahead and put her down. Fast forward about an hour or so, and I could still hear her awake in her room and thought it was kind of odd because she usually falls asleep pretty quickly. Well, I decided to wait a little bit longer before going in to get her in the hopes that I might actually get a little rest at naptime. Of course, I should have checked on her WAY earlier, because when I went in to see what was going on, there she was standing up in the pack n' play with her pants and diaper off. As soon as I walked in she tells me once again that she wants a Zoe diaper. I fussed at her for taking her diaper off and put a new Zoe one on her and made her promise not to take her diaper off anymore because I don't want her peeing all over the place.

You may wonder where I'm going with all this, and what in the world does that have to do with a crib tent? Patience, my friend, I am slowly but surely getting there. Last night after a LONG day (we got our tree and decorated it for FHE -- and I'll get to that later), we finally managed to get Ethan to stay in his bed and I decided to go check on Grace to see if she had fallen asleep. What I found was a naked little jaybird laying in her pack n' play. This time however, she had managed to pee all over the pack n' play and her blanket, and I started fussing her pretty loudly as I pulled her out to get a new diaper on her and her jammies. Well, she started to cry as soon as I started fussing, and Ethan comes runnng out of his room to see what the commotion was and starts fussing ME in his most authoritative voice saying "Mom, mom, look at me (as he grabs my face to make me look at him). Stop talking to Gracie, you're being mean!" He proceeded to put his arm comfortingly around Grace and lead her back to his room to look at his new Christmas book while Scott and I tried to figure out where Grace was going to sleep since her pack n' play was now soaked. Luckily grandma had an extra pack n' play and we were able to put Grace back down.

Okay, we're almost to the point, now. Today, Ethan taught Grace how to climb in and out of the pack n' play. The result? About an hour after putting Grace down, I hear her door creaking open and out pops Grace! Thinking it was just grandma's pack n' play that was the problem, we took it down and put her newly cleaned pack n' play back together. Well, apparently she can climb out of that one too. And being the party girl that she is, she would not stay in it regardless of any threat we threw her way. We even dumped Tabasco sauce in her mouth and she just wanted more. This girl is crazy! Finally, finally, I came up with the idea of making a crib tent of sorts so that she could not climb out anymore. I safety-pinned a blanket to the top of her pack n' play all around the edges. Don't worry mom, she's not suffocating, all four walls of the pack n' play are mesh, and there are still open spaces around the edges of the blanket. She was NOT happy, but you know what? She was fast asleep within 5 minutes. She just needs to be confined or else she will party all night long!

Whew! That was a lot longer in the retelling than I thought it would be! The next set of pictures don't need a lot of commentary. These are from Grace's birthday Part Dieux. I ended up making her an Elmo cake, which was more red food coloring than anything else, and we went to the Build-a-Bear Workshop at the mall and let the kids pick out an animal to stuff. They both decided to go with a frog for some reason, but it was a lot of fun. My sisters, Sarah and Laura, both came along for the festivities.









Next up -- Thanksgiving Day!

The morning of Thanksgiving, the kids helped dad and grandpa rake up the leaves in the front yard. As you can see, Ethan loves a task and is actually a good little worker, and Grace loves to play.



It was so much fun this Thanksgiving to have ALL of my sisters with me! Emily and Jeremy drove up from Huntington Beach, and Amy flew in from New Orleans for the week. Jeremy's brother and wife joined us for the feast, and fun was had all around.

Here's a shot of the sistas before Amy left to go to the airport.

Here is evidence of Grace's budding sartorial abilities. She thinks she's really big now that she's 2 and continues to want to do everything by herself. Including getting dressed. On this particular morning, she came running into the living room -- having already taken her jammies off, because as we know she's really good at that -- with Ethan's reindeer pajama pants from last Christmas pulled almost all the way up (she just couldn't get it over her diaper in the back) and carrying Ethan's Robin jammie top wanting me to put it on her. After I obliged, she ran back to her room and got her (mismatched) shoes on all by herself. She was VERY proud of her accomplishments and yes, I did actually let her wear this all day long. Who am I to mess with freedom of expression.

Next up is my tribute to Christmas past, present, and future. Let me clarify. As a kid I HATED taking Christmas pictures. Without fail, each year, someone would end up in tears. I always swore I would NEVER make my kids endure the same cruel ritual. Well, the irony is that now that I'm on the flipside, I'm realizing that my mom probably hated it even more than WE did. Because even with only 2 children this year, trying to get a decent picture taken of us was a nightmare. We got home from church on Sunday and decided to squeeze the pictures in before lunch and naptime. In retrospect that was probably the first mistake. Ethan wouldn't smile half the time, wouldn't open his eyes and couldn't keep his fingers out of his mouth. GRACE was by far the hardest. She wouldn't stand up, she hardly ever smiled, and she hardly ever took her thumb out of her mouth. We really need to break that habit. The last picture we took will have to do for this year, but I'll keep you in suspense for that one. What I will post are a few of the rejects.

(please ooh and ahh over the stockings in the background, because they took me FOREVER to make -- in case you're wondering why there are 3, I went ahead and made one for Sophie, too)

Oh the joys of parenting.

Last night for FHE we went ahead and got our tree for 20 bucks in the Smith's parking lot. Its definitely not the prettiest tree, but it has a lot of character. We decorated it for our activity, and you would have thought Ethan had died and gone to heaven he was so happy. Grace really got into it this year, too, and it was actually pretty fun and not too painful an activity.

Here's Ethan momentarily more intrigued by the video camera than the decorating.

And here's the finished product. Its leaning heavily towards the back corner there, but I think it will hold up.

On a random side note, I'm a little concerned with how my children perceive my parenting methods. A week or so ago, Ethan was throwing a fit (which is happening WAY to frequently these days) at lunch time because he wanted a peanut butter and sugar sandwich and not a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I have been weaning them off the former for several reasons, but most importantly because the sugar jar is glass and heavy and on a bottom shelf and it hurts my back and my belly to reach down and get it these days. So, he's throwing this fit and I'm doing my best to try and calm him down and offer him alternate options when he starts talking to me in the meanest, bossiest voice, saying -- and I quote: "Mom, you have 2 choices. You can choose to give me a peanut butter and sugar sandwich, or you can choose to have a time-out. UNDERSTAND?!" Do I really sound like that to them? Hmmmm. Things to think about.

And finally let me tell you about our dollar movie outing that turned into the 25 dollar movie outing. At the beginning of the month, Scott was lucky enough to get flown back for several second interviews for internships for next summer. Because of the scheduling of these, he was actually gone for a WHOLE week. Monday through Friday. Yes a whole Monday through Friday of me dealing with our lovely children. The beginning of the week started out fine enough, but by the Friday I was only too anxious for Scott to return. His flight wasn't due back until late that night, so I tried to fill the day with as many activities as possible to make the time go faster. Cars was playing at the dollar movies, so that afternoon I decided to take the kids to see it. It had been there a while, and it was the first showing of the day, so I figured there probably wouldn't be that many people there who we'd bug. To start off, Ethan saw candy at the candy counter and really wanted some, so I figured, why not? The movie was cheap. So we got a big bag of peanut M & Ms and a couple of styrofoam cups so I could give them each there own stash. We were sitting for no more than a minute or two when Ethan spilled his whole cup and since the seating was on an incline we listened as the M & Ms rolled and clinked there way all the way down to the bottom of the theater, and I geared myself up for hearing Ethan throw a fit. I was able to sneak some of Grace's when she wasn't looking -- because this girl does not like to share her food -- and gave some to Ethan and this seemed to make him happy. However, this really nice person who was sitting a few rows in front of us in the theater went out and bought a whole new bag of M & Ms for them, which I thought was so nice. Anyway, once the movie started, it was like deja vu from the first time we tried to take the kids to see this movie. Grace would NOT sit still or sit on my lap and kept jumping up and running all around the theater. About 30 minutes in I couldn't handle it anymore and I figured the few people in the theater were hating us at this point anyway, so I got Grace and made Ethan leave. He was NOT happy because he was actually watching the movie. I finally got him to come by promising to go right next door to Costco and buy Cars for him so he could watch it when we got home. So, there you have it. A dollar movie outing that cost 20 times that. So here's a question for all you moms out there: How often a day do YOU give in to your child to avoid a fit? I'm afraid my average is not very good these days. I'll blame it on the pregnancy.

Anyway, I'm really almost done now. We're leaning heavily towards taking the Procter & Gamble offer for Scott's internship next summer. So come May, we'll more than likely be headed on our way to Cincinnati, OH. If anyone has any tips on the area, feel free to let us know!

Okay, hopefully the length of this post will make up for the month hiatus I took from blogging. Merry Christmas everyone!

Happy Halloween! and other belated news

So, it hasn't quite been a full month since the last post, but we're close here! I have a few pictures to put up from our Halloween adventures and a few stories to tell about my crazy little children. So here we go.

This Halloween had its perks and its pits. For the first time, both kids "got" the concept of Halloween -- the costumes, the candy, the parties, the candy -- so that was kind of fun. On the flip side, the candy caused some serious problems. Most of this was my fault, because I bought our stash WAY too early which resulted in almost hourly pestering from Ethan and Grace for more treats for almost the whole week before Halloween.

As far as the costumes go, Ethan's costume was a HUGE hassle to make. And even though I started working on it well in advance, I was still up until midnight the night before the MBA Family Halloween party trying to glue-gun the ribbon on the hood to make the mane. Ethan loved the costume, though, so that made it KIND OF worth it.

As far as the MBA Halloween party goes, let's just say that I made the mistake of being in charge of the cake walk booth. Silly me, when I signed up for it, I thought all I would have to do was decorate the booth and make the numbers for the "walk" on the floor. Oh, but no. I was also in charge of making sure that there were enough cupcakes for the estimated 250 children who were supposedly going to be there. That translates out to roughly 21 DOZEN cupcakes. So, even though I handed out boxes of cake mix to others to help me, I still ended up making 6 dozen on my own, and buying another 4 dozen from Wal-Mart. While I was in Cupcake Hell the whole Saturday morning of the party, Ethan was in Cupcake Heaven because I let him help me by putting the sprinkles on the finished goods. We made it to the party on time to set things up and were able to enjoy the party somewhat until Ethan decided he was ready to go home. I was personally relieved, because my kids are just a little too difficult to keep track of at functions like this. Well, we took them home, and I went back at the end of the party to take down the booth decorations, and what did I find? Only 10 dozen cupcakes still left up for grabs. Yes, thats right, only about half actually got taken. I'll have to let the committee know for next year that we don't need one cupcake for every child when there are several other booths with candy and games, not to mention of full table of desserts to choose from.

(In front of our Cake Walk booth)

Anyway, Halloween night was pretty fun. Ethan was very excited about the trick-or-treating. We ended up going with some friends we've made in the MBA program, and here's a picture of the kids before leaving.



The craziness continued the next day, seeing as to how it was Grace's 2nd birthday! And for some insane reason, I asked her if she wanted a party for her birthday, and of course the party girl said yes. Her request was specifically for an Elmo party. So, I bought some Elmo plates and party favors and invited some of our friends over from our old ward. After seeing how much fun Ethan had decorating cupcakes for the cake walk, I decided that for our main event of the birthday party, I would let the kids ice and decorate their own cupcakes. Yes, it was fun and yes, it was a mess. Of course I wasn't too surprised with that last part because Grace is the messiest kid I have ever seen, and I've been around a LOT of kids in my life. So, Ethan and Grace had fun, and Ethan enjoyed opening all of Grace's presents and playing with them and not letting Grace have any turns at all with them. So, that was fun, too. The sad thing is I realized after the party was over that we never sang happy birthday or blew out her candles. What this means of course is that tomorrow I will make her a cake (perhaps even an Elmo cake) and we'll sing happy birthday and let her blow out the candles all so we can get a picture of it.

(Ethan humored me by letting me take a picture of Grace pretending to open her present before he actually took over for her)

(do you like how Grace is eating the icing right off the knife? nice.)

(is Grace not the spitting image of Scott?)

Anyway, in other random news, Grace is somewhat of an exhibitionist. I won't the post the picture here, but we got a good laugh out of our crazy girl the other night when we went in to check on her before bed and saw that she had taken off her pajama pants and pull-up and was asleep bare-bottomed on top of her pillow and blankets.

Ethan's new thing is informing me when I'm being mean. So, that's cool. I got him CTR ring a few weeks ago, because for some reason he got it into his head that he really wanted one. And so we had a family home evening on choosing the right and what it means to make good choices. Well, of course the next day when we go to Wal-Mart to do our BIG grocery and other shopping trip he starts freaking out when we're all done because he doesn't have his ring on anymore. So, despite my hunch that a search would be fruitless, we nonetheless retraced our steps looking for it all the while Grace was trying to escape from the buggy and run away. Needless to say I was not in a very good mood by the time we were checking out and I believe I threatened Ethan with throwing away Candyland if he didn't start listening to me. Well, wouldn't you know as soon as we get in the car Ethan finds his ring in the carseat. After putting it back on and buckling himself up, he tells me "you're not choosing the right, mom. you're being mean to us." Thank you, Ethan, for that nice reality check.

Last, but not least, here is a picture of us supporting Scott's intramural flag football team, even though it was freezing cold and Grace kept trying to run away.



Well, I think thats all the stories I'll bore you with for now. In closing I'd like to wish a happy birthday to Everett who is turning one today!