A Visual Catch-Up Guide

To help you cope with my usual delinquency, I have created a visual catch-up guide of the recent history of the Cummings family, covering our three Christmases, and into the new year. 

On the first third of Christmas, I achieved, on the 15th shutter release, a nearly-focused snapshot of my three miniature men about to open their Georgia-based gifts. 

What followed this shot was a verrry leisurely opening, inspecting, assembling and playing of new toys. We took pleasure in the non-carnage of the event. Hours after commencement, gifts sat unopened, as each toy was thoroughly appreciated, leaving our nervous materialism alarms unsprung. P.s. When, and if, I find those evil little loss-prevention gnomes, with their nubby, nimble little fingers meticulously binding toys to hidden crevasses of their packaging, there'd better be some gnome-loss prevention yetis nearby to bind *my* limbs.

Next, we continue to BJs Wholesale Club, where we "wrapped up" some last-minute shopping, and I shrunk Ian back down to pocket-sized.

Everyone, meet Gene Gnome, Dad's birthday Father's Day Christmas present. My free time has made itself somewhat scarce lately.

Finally, the Wednesday before Christmas, Elijah started walking, so in retribution, I packed the car, strapped him  (and his brothers) in the van and drove to Florida.

Everyone began feeling properly spoiled. Isaac and Aunt Ashley pressed cheeks.

Uncle Jack grinned from ear to ear.

Elijah and Grammy shielded their eyes from the glorious Christmas inferno. According to Ian, this is appropriate Christmas decoration, in contrast to my "Christmas shrine" - a table top tree with a token handful of ornaments, stuffed into a corner of the living room. I agree.

On the second third of Christmas, Aunt Ashley and Uncle Adam amuse themselves trying to stuff Elijah into his Santa suit. Elijah amuses himself by masterfully resisting.

Oooh! Dada a do! Do doo!

Starting stocking stuffers.

Grandpa Jim is so funny!

Elijah's first wrapping paper party.

On the third third of Christmas, Ian and Grandpa saw some meat.

Elijah narrates the festivities.

Mr. Isaac looking handsome in his Frosty vest.

Ian rings in the New Year.

Statler and Waldorf give their condiments to the chef.

Chef Boyardee does it again! Perfect pancakes, served with a smile! 

Aunt Kelly reels in amazement as Captain Isaac, Space Ranger, launches to the moon in his new Fatheronium-powered rocket.

Whew. Christmasing is hard work.

 Ian sporting a handsome chocolate 'stache.

 Just a Georgia boy enjoying some old-fashioned Florida orange-pickin'.

 We enjoyed an evening of weenie-roasting and toasting s'mores at grandma's fire pit.

 Catching a movie (and some Zs) with Grammy.

We enjoyed the sweater weather, but Florida quickly lost its coolness.

Meanwhile, the Toys exercised a bit of passive-aggressiveness.

We decided to give Elijah an early birthday party, complete with the traditional birthday pumpkin pie.

 Returning home from two thirds of Christmas requires super-human packing abilities and a long history of Tetris playing.

 On the way home we stopped to admire the manatees and the smoking area.

We returned home just in time to be iced in for the week.

 By the end of the week, we were amusing ourselves by sliding sheets of ice off the "New Van."

 Brian discovered ice petals sliding off of the bushes.

Elijah enjoyed his first snow day, Tupperware-sledding in the back yard.

 During our drive back to Georgia, I tried to play a new book on disk and discovered that our car CD "changer" wasn't working, but it made cents. Twelve cents, to be exact. (Thanks Ian)

After getting somewhat settled at home, the boys went to play with their friend, Luke. They wanted to decorate gingerbread cookies. That lasted about a cookie and a half, leaving mom to do the remaining dozen or so. My impatient grip, paired with a makeshift sandwich-baggie piping bag, resulted in one unsuspecting gingerbread man succumbing to a sweet, red tsunami. In an effort to clean up, most of the gingerbread men ended up with rosy sweaters, crimson jogging suits and bloodshot eyes. That got boring in short order, so I mixed it up a little with the occasional ginger cow and ginger business man.

To bring us up to date, I regret that I have no photo evidence, but I will conclude with today's highlight: Brian applying glue stick to Isaac's lips.

Isaac approached Brian with an opened glue stick, conveniently tinted purple for gluing accuracy, and asked him to put it on his cheek. Brian says, "Don't you mean your lips?" and proceeds to apply it to Isaac's lips. Then, Brian decides to find and inspect the "chap stick" lid and discovers it's glue.I think he missed a fabulous opportunity. In fact, maybe I'll give the "chap stick" trick a crack next time it starts to get a little wild in the house.

Approaching the Holidaze

I totally need to get more creative with my "veggie hiding" when cooking for the boys.  Ian saw a picture of green beans in a book yesterday and said, "green bean casserole!" Well, what can I say.  Putting them on a plate and calling them Super Green Power Rods only garnered enough interest for them to emit a few sound effects and launch them one-by-one to the floor.

Santa was generous enough to swing by our subdivision one evening.  We made a deal of it, tossing the boys in the car and letting them cruise, unbuckled, through the neighborhood as we searched for Christmas decorations. Several houses had the sidewalks lined with glowing candy canes.  The boys cheered for the candy canes, as if they had planted their own sweet selves in nearly-straight rows.  When we arrived at the clubhouse, Ian celebrates, "Yay!  We're at the North Pole!"  He shoots out of the car and up to the door, and once inside, squiggles through the throng to get a not-too-close peek.  Satisfied with the sighting, he raids the dessert table, chugs some hot chocolate and starts jumping and dancing and diving under the table.  Neither of our kids have any interest in getting close to Santa, so Ian hollers "Goodbye!" to Santa, who is busy grinning for a camera, and he prances back to the car. For the next couple of hours, he asks to go see Santa again, but it's late and we have lots of sugar to burn before bedtime.

It's probably time to start wrapping presents. We're going to have a GA Christmas and a FL Christmas. I've done an inordinate amount of Christmas shopping online this year, so hopefully the deliveries will be rolling in soon. After his drawn-out birthday and the approaching drawn-out Christmas, we're going to have to enroll Ian in a 12-Step program for gift addiction recovery.  On the first day of Christmas, I admit I'm obsessed with wrapping paper...

I'm excited to say Ian is probably officially potty-trained.  I haven't looked up the official Certified Research Academy of Potty Training guidelines, but he hasn't had any accidents, he's randomly decided he's willing to go on "big" potties (even in public places!), and only gets 'suggestions' from us right before bed or long road trips.  I'm not sure what has occurred in the blur of the last month to make all this possible. We really have done nothing but let him figure out his own body and provide choices of what undergarment he'd like to wear and where/how/if he wants to "go."

At some point we got all tangled up in our own frustration of trying to "make" it happen, so we just gave up trying, really. We'd usually describe his behavior to him and help him try to link that with what his body was telling him (You're dancing.  Your body is telling you it wants to pee.  There's your potty if you want to pee.).  We didn't think he had attachment issues with his poop/pee, but we explained that it's just parts of food he ate and other 'trash' his body doesn't want anymore.   We pointed out how when his belly grumbles, his body is telling him it wants food and he eats. When his mouth is dry, he drinks. When his nose tickles, he sneezes, and so forth, and then pointed out the potty signals. After that, we turned it over to him. No more reminders to go or anything. Maybe he just needed the time and space to figure it out himself.

Ian's been enjoying a steady trickle of gifts and cards mailed from relatives.  On his actual birthday, he got a motorized Cars racetrack that came with Lightning McQueen. He was so excited.  After playing a while, he came to me and said, "We need to go to the store and get Mater." Oh dear, he's got it figured out already. When he took a break, Isaac was turning the track on. Ian told him "No noise, baby. It hurts my ears" and turned it off. Isaac turned it on again. Ian said, "Baby, I know you want to play with it, but no more noise. It hurts my ears" and turned it off again and asked me to put it away. It's good to see he also practices tactics from those times when Mommy isn't a beast.

Isaac woke up on one of those rare occasions when Ian and I were already up, and got out of bed and walked out -- not sitting in bed crying (also rare) -- toddled past me (another rarity), inquiring, "Ian?" He found Ian in the kitchen and threw his arms around him and Ian hugged him back (getting rarer yet).  It's the cutest thing ever when they hug! Usually one is offering and the other wants nothing to do with it. Sometimes the sibling stars align, and...cute cute cute!!!

Isaac is sitting on the floor now in a pile of books. I just heard him close one and proclaim, "Great Tory!" His word combos are getting longer. Probably the best yet was when he stuck his toe up and said, "Kiss toe. Nay  bip-per hurt me (nail clipper)." Not to change topics, but I'm pretty impressed with his soccer skills too. He loves to run behind a ball and seems to have a knack for kicking.  So far I have a mechanic/engineer and an athlete/diplomat.

I've stalled long enough.  Time to go attack the Godzilla-sized pile of laundry.  :(

Ian's Happy Birthweek

Ohh, but it's been a while.  Last Friday, I ended up finishing Ian's cake. It said "Happy Brrrthday."

I sent Brian a picture of it and we got ourselves all hyped-up and decided to celebrate that evening, instead of waiting until Sunday.  Even Sunday would have been early, because his birthday is on Tuesday (today), but we were going to spend Sunday spoiling him so we could have a whole day.  Brian brought home "balloons and silly hats" (as Thomas the Tank Engine had in his birthday story).  Ian carried around his "honker" most of the evening.

He finally got to dig into his "snowy house" cake that he'd been drooling over for days.  Notice how he helps his lips to blow out the candles.

Probably his favorite toy was the set of Automoblox Minis cars we got him - little cars he can build and take apart.  They really are very awesome.  He definitely needs more of them!

Saturday night, we took him to The Rock Ranch, Truett Cathy's (of Chick-Fil-A) totally awesome ranch wonderland, to their free Journey to the Manger program.  It was incredible.  When we arrived, we filled out our 'census' papers and received our 'tax money' coins and hopped on a bus (which the boys could have ridden all night and been thrilled), which took us to the main gathering area.  We got some chili dogs and chili-cheese fries and hot chocolate.  It was fu-reeezing out!  When it was our turn to board the hay-ride-esqe wagon, pulled by a tractor (again, another thing the boys could have enjoyed all night), Ian shot off ahead and boarded, with no apparent use for the parental units.  We caught up and took our seats next to him and off into the night we rode.  We stopped next to an encampment of Wise Men, who told us about their star-studying findings.  Ian stood up and asked them if they saw the school bus.  Then he told them he was going to the manger, and that he had on his mittens.  Sure, he will cower behind our legs when we ask him to say hi to a friend at church, but he'll stand up in a wagon-load of strangers and chat up some oddly-dressed Wise Men below.  

Next we proceeded to the edge of a corn field, where we were escorted off by some Roman soldiers and directed down a torch-lit path through the corn-field.  As we entered the town of Bethlehem, we were directed to turn in our census papers and tax money. Ian faithfully coughed up the gold.  Inside was quite a spectacle.  Rows of trade booths, in probably-accurate biblical detail, lined a small clearing in the field.  There were carpenters, potters, people peddling wares of cloth and bread, people selling animals for sacrifice (that the kids got to pet), and soldiers stomping around impatiently barking orders. All along, Ian kept asking where Baby Jesus was, and so we kept up our search. As we continued down another path, we came to the Inn, which of course had no vacancy, but we were permitted a tour.  From there we followed the path to an encampment of shepherds, with their sheep in a corral.  They told us their story and pointed us in the direction of a star, bright over the corn field.  It led us to a sweet little manger scene.  The boys stood in awe, from a safe distance, and yelled "hi" to Baby Jesus. Then they yelled "bye" and "congratulations" and proceeded down the path to where a poor red-eyed fella told us a synopsis of Jesus life & sacrifice.  We hopped on another tractor ride back, listened to a sermonette, and then Ian tried to offer up a competing prayer over top the speaker's.

We returned to the gathering area, checked out the gift shop, and warmed up again to some hot chocolate before another exciting bus ride back to the van.  The boys couldn't stop talking about the school bus, but when asked what his favorite part was, Ian said he saw Baby Jesus.

Sunday arrived after a quick night and we decided to continue the spoiling (instead we earned yet another Horrible Parent of the Year award).  We took Ian to an Italian restaurant (?!) for breakfast.  He ate his favorite breakfast of banana pancakes, while Isaac scarfed his favorite -- cheesy eggs. Someone asked if we were going next door to a movie afterwards. I took the boys to several kids movies during the free summer showings and they loved it, so we thought that was a great idea.  Brian had a co-worker tell him he thought Ian would really get into the new Christmas Carol movie, so we got tickets for that.  Later, I asked Brian if his co-worker has any children and he sheepishly admitted he (obviously) didn't.  Long story short, what, in our fanciful imaginations, we thought would be a fun family holiday movie was probably terrifying for the little guy. He did hop into my lap, and I did cover his eyes a few times, and he did comment afterwards that the guy (scrooge) was scared and sad and wanted his mommy. Otherwise, he didn't seem traumatized, but I knew those images could stick with him. That night he said, "There's noooo monsters here."  Brian talked to him a bit and tried to explain the concept of "pretend" and promised to gobble up any monsters, if any were to exist. Ian seemed content with that and fell right asleep and had a calm night. But, yeah, we hang our heads and humbly accept our not-so-genius parenting award.  The next morning at breakfast, Ian said "Daddy gobbled up all the monsters."  I think he'll survive.

Sunday evening, we had a leaf-raking party and a beautiful sunset.

 

Today is his actual birthday.  It's a rainy day, so we're stuck tearing the house apart.  We are expecting a grandparents' gift in the mail, and he gets to open some cards, take some phone calls and there's still a few walls of the "snowy house" left, so there's still some celebrating to do.  We plan to take him out for ice cream, too, and that always makes his day.

This morning, Isaac woke up, grabbed my hand and started rubbing his leg with it (as to demonstrate) and said, "Get going." Ian said that last night Grandma was a giant and was mad at him.  Ian later balanced his body in "flying position" on his Sit 'n Spin handle and said he was a "golden flying horse." I think we'll find plenty to do today.

Rainy Day Ramble

Hooray!  For two days now, I've kept the house unusually clean.  Go me.  But, it's not without that acid-reflux sheen that gives everything a warm glow. I don't expect to do a lot of posting this week, while getting my act together for Ian's birthday "party".  The boys helped me make some gingerbread men and trees, a few of which I might use on his cake. I don't intend to do any real, invite-all-the-friends parties for as long as I can get away with it. Is that Scroogey?  He's so thrilled with family parties now, why mess with what works? He's been having us read his Thomas the Tank Engine story about Thomas' birthday -- Thomas wanted presents, balloons and silly hats, so that's what Ian wants too.

Yesterday wasn't so special.  I was a grump.  Sure, I'm tired and feeling huge and uncomfortable, but I never feel justified in snapping at the boys so much.  It seemed like things were constantly being inappropriately spilled out, splashed in, stomped on, torn up, wadded up, knocked over, thrown down and whatnot, and I think each time I had a nuclear meltdown.  Why did it seem like my 3-y/o was the grownup here?  He kept softly cooling my jets with little phrases like, "Mommy, do you feel frustrated? I'm here."  "Mommy, you are soooo sorry for yelling."  "Yes, I am so sorry for yelling at you," I'd say.  "I'm soooo sorry too.  I love you sooo much," he'd reply.  "I'm sooo sorry about that, Mom. It was and acc'ent" I felt like an even bigger monster after all his cuteness. [Sigh.] Today will be better.

The boys had me read a couple stories before breakfast. Isaac wanted a truck book. He points to one and says "Car pa-po-ter," correctly labeling the car transporter. He also recognized the "duh truck," "deer [skid steer],"loader," and "tra-ter [tractor]."  These boys know more about trucks than I do.

We recently made hand puppets with paper bags, glue sticks, googly eyes, pom-poms & crayons.  Glue was a new concept for them. Isaac kept trying to disassemble his before it would dry. Ian felt he had a bad start and said his puppet was Isaac's and traded bags with him.  They turned out pretty cute.  Ian still liked Isaac's better in the end, but he had fun making them talk and dance.  The next day, they took Isaac's apart together.

It's a rainy, chilly day.  Ian keeps taking off his robe and then telling me how cold he is. Then he tells me, "I want the green blanket.  I want a green tent, actu-wy."  I see lots of story-reading in my near future.

Boyscout Badgering, Birthday Brainstorming and Baby Babbling

Yesterday evening, we juiced the boys up on ice cream and took them to the park.  While there, a troupe of boy scouts went thundering past the playground to an open field. Ian dashed after them and stood at the edge of the field.  The boy scout leader saw him and, in my best estimate, figured he was going to cleverly "scare" him off. Mr. Boy Scout launched into some loud monologue in a voice I can only describe as an even more annoying Bobcat Goldthwait. It was something like, "Hey little boy!...[blah blah blah]...Do you want to be a boyscout?!...."  Instead of its intended effect, Ian arched his back, threw back his head and erupted in maniacal laughter. The troupe went chaotic with it's own amusement. Ian - 1, Mr. Boy Scout - 0.

After the park, we enjoyed a spontaneous play date...at Kroger. We ran into a friend and her kids, and the whole gang of kids, ages 20 mos, 3, 4, and 6 (I think) zoomed off to besiege the grocery store.  I guarded the carts while Brian and the other mom dashed off in pursuit.  They forgot their nets and manacles, but eventually reclaimed our progeny.  We adults squeaked in a brief chat before the clan escaped again.  It had to be great marketing for the bakery treats on the tables they were crazily circumnavigating:  Buy these and your kids can be just like this!

We finally parted ways and otherwise left the store fairly victorious.  For his upcoming birthday, Ian requested a cake with a house and snow.  My best idea for tackling that was to find a gingerbread house kit to use for a cake topper.  Fortunately, Kroger had one, so I'll be tackling that this week.  They didn't, however, have any gingerbread man cookie cutters.  They had lots of gingerbread man cookies, but my masochistic self decided it would be a deeper expression of my love to make the little cookie men that will frolic in the sugary snowdrifts.  But, I may reconsider the bagged ginger men since he won't fully appreciate the effort until about his 32nd birthday...maybe.

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Isaac does everything about as cutely as I can imagine it being done. Right now he's fascinated with eyes. When I put on my "ga-giz" [glasses] in the morning, he slips a finger behind them and declares, "Eye!" and then points out all the other eyes present in the room. Then he gently raps on my glasses with his fist, saying "knock knock" and lets me know it's time to "eat!" The way he requests his waffle (wah-wul) sounds like he's prodding me to rock 'n roll.  He waits patiently as I dance, then leads me by the finger to the freezer. Ian walks by with a drink and Isaac makes the "share" sign and requests "chare meeeeeeee", holding out the "me" while his sweet voice slides into an increasingly higher pitch. Depending on what room we're in, "boo bus" either means he wants to ride his school bus or he wants his tooth brush (with "boo pase" on it, of course).  He's a little flirt and a cuddly cuddler, and I just want to squeeze him!