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.

Cluster Feeding and Flustered Pleading

I think I'm regressing. I dreamed last night about building a really awesome GeoTrax layout. I guess creativity can strike anywhere. What the hay, I went ahead and gave it a shot and it actually was pretty cool.  I barely got it finished before I had to get back to my cluster-feeder.

Elijah surprised me by sleeping all night, two nights in a row and then began his rampage for milk. For the last 3 days and two nights I've rained milk hourly upon that boy. Somebody please send out the dove! If he's not nursing he's crying from exhaustion - no, wait, that's me.  Meanwhile, the house has collapsed and I think I will too. The "big" boys are bouncing off the walls and employing some desperate attention-getting tactics. All the toys are spilled and all the noises are shrill. Gotta love those growth spurts.

Brian made a funny office joke today and I ran with it.

The Cube-liette (The Cubicle Dungeon): Improving productivity through misery.

Two weekends ago we were trying to decide what we wanted to do. We ended up driving to the theater to see the Disney Oceans movie, but by the time we got there, the boys were asleep so we went to Ikea instead. That night Ian was very disappointed to return home without having seen the movie. This weekend we asked Ian what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to go see the fish movie. We were surprised he remembered it (I don't know why we would be surprised - he remembers everything). We took them to the movie Sunday afternoon and it was pretty good. I think Discovery had better narration and cinematography in their Earth and Life programs. What most amused me was listening to Ian's narration. It was an hour and a half of comments like:

That's a sad song. He's lonely for his mommy.
Ian got distracted with some popcorn and I pointed to the screen, saying, "Manatee." "Yes you may," he replied.
That's Nemo! That's lots of Nemos!
That's loud! Then quiet. Then loud. That's scary loud.
Mom, I can't burp real loud.
Two crabbies! That's a happy crabbie.
I want to leave the movie. I'm done now.




Isaac has better diction than Ian, but then again, Isaac is our little Mockingbird. I was changing Isaac and Ian comes up and says, "Hi Igick." Isaac replies, "I-zick. Can you say 'I-zick?'" Isaac enjoys discovering sound effects and thinking of words to say. He will be puttering with a toy and say, "Say 'pillow'." Ian repeats, "piwow." "Say 'pil-LOW.'" "Piwow." "Say, 'business.'" "Igick, I'm building a dangerous house." He babbles so much, it's unfortunately easy to tune out, so Isaac has turned to saying something, waiting a split second and following up with "I tode-ju...!" Sometimes he even talks over himself to say it. For instance, a 1-minute period may go like this: Fire truck fire truck fire truck. Good night ladies. Good night ladies. I'm go'n leave you now. Ring roun da rosie. Pop goes Isaac! Dinosaur is eating man. I'm going to jump. May I jum - I TODE-JU MAY I JUMP?!


Ian is our Thinker-Builder. He makes curtains for his trolley cars.

He makes toilet-paper capes for his cars. He uses his blocks to build houses with couches and TVs and lamps and slides for his little block "people". He is the boy that sits and pats his friend's back while his friend is being disciplined. Instead of talking about what he will do when he grows up, he says, "When I grow down, I will be a little baby and you will 'nuggle me and hold me and I will laugh and cry, 'wahhh' and nurse you and do all the fings I can do. He went to "check" on "Bebe 'Lijah" lying in his Kickin' Coaster (an AWESOME baby seat, by the way) and inspected his toes and said, "This piggy went to market, this piggy stayed with Dad, this piggy laughed, 'ooh hoo ha ha,' [skipping a toe] an' dis piggy runned away."

I've been loving my crazy new birthday shoes.

I actually exchanged these for ones with more foot coverage, but you get the idea. They are called Vibram Five Fingers. I won't go into all the foot-health benefits they claim, but they are fun and about as close to painless barefooting one can get without years of rigorous callous-building. I run around with the boys in the backyard with them and feel a little giddy. I glide (at least in my mind) across the bumps and dips of the terrain and feel agile and sure-footed, unlike the guesswork of running in regular shoes. We went to Line Creek last weekend and I tromped seamlessly from rocky-rooty trail to slipery-cool streambed. I couldn't resist sneaking out of the water for a moment to hit a creek-side trail like a swift ninja. Nevermind the 32-year-old mommy-body bounding down the path with more undulation than typically present in a ninja. That was somebody else.

Eureka! I've found my floor!

Here we are, home again, with three merry iterations of Christmas sadly behind us. I've finally found enough of my floor to justify stopping to update the blog. It was so fantastic to be around family again for a week. We wish we could always be a part of our 'village.' Perhaps some day, everything will line up so that we can live near family again. Ian seemed to remember and be almost immediately comfortable with most everyone. Isaac too a little warming-up, as expected.

Poor Isaac. He will leap off of nearly any cliff, but is afraid of anything cute:  puppies, kittens, bunnies. It took him a hard part of the week to re-acclimate to my parents' dogs.  They were particularly scary (i.e. cute, cuddly, friendly).  Both boys surprised me with their self-control around the Christmas trees. For the most part they left them alone and otherwise remembered their 'one-finger touching' rule. It was rather hard to get to the trees in the first place with all those tantalizing presents in the way, but they restrained themselves there too.

A couple days before Christmas was my husband's niece's birthday dinner/party at his parents' house.  Ian has a particular love of all things party.  Any reason to celebrate, really.  He knew what was going on, and we could tell by the way he wasn't eating his dinner that he was saving plenty of room for cake.  Brian requested of him that he take one bite of his dinner.  Ian refused the many attempts, until Brian finally made it clear that no bite, no cake.  Ian's mouth shot open to accept the spoon.

I'm not sure the boys quite knew what to make of Christmas.  It was like a toy wonderland.  They were so fascinated with each thing they got, they didn't quite want to stop checking it out to open the next one. My family has always celebrated Christmas Eve night and Brian's family does Christmas morning, so it works out great. Some of the toys, we knew we'd better keep boxed up and our precious little boys wanted in so badly, but were very patient. When the car-packing day arrived, we truly thought it would take a miracle to fit everything in.  We did leave a couple old ride-on cars and Brian's new globe (to be shipped or brought up later), but somehow everything else made it.  It was like super-mega Tetris.

Ever since we've been home, it's like the boys' imaginations have been unleashed, surrounded by their new trains, puppets, a gourmet kitchen, ride-ons, a wooden castle, etc. I get such pleasure out of watching them work at playing and how they combine toys from one set with another.

The boys quickly transitioned back to our normal 'schedule', if you can call it a schedule.  The other night, after a bath, Isaac was crying about something. Ian, with his shirt still off, squeezed his 'breast' and said, "It's O.K., Baby, you can drink my milk." As I mentioned before, Ian has been weaned since about 2 1/2, but since he's figured out about the new baby on the way, he keeps reminding me that "Baby is making more milk for me." Finally it came out different this morning.  Ian woke up and said, "Mom. Baby is making more milk for...Baby. I'm going to have a new baby soon!"

Brian came home the other day and Ian approached him about a snack.  Ian said, "How about pizza?" Brian replied, "How about yogurt?" "How about s'ghetti?" "We only have yogurt." In his final attempt, Ian cheerfully proclaims, "We only have birthday cake!"

I ought to get back to unveiling more floor space.  I got an amazing Dyson vac for Christmas.  Before we left, I did an aggressive clean on the floor with our old vac.  I tested a strip of hallway with the Dyson and had to stare in amazement, excitement and disgust at all the stuff it sucked out of our "clean" floor! Vacuuming never sounded so fun - I'm actually looking forward to doing more. Is that the depths to which SAHM-hood has brought me? Hi ho, a derry-o, a vac-ing I will go!

Oh The Places You'll Go!

A couple nights ago, Ian was wrestling with Brian. At one point Ian's hand lands on Brian's backside and Ian stands, frozen. "Oh no Dad, you have poop!" he blurts as he squeezes something.  I glance over and giggle, "No, Ian, that's just Daddy's tail bone." Brian points out that Ian has a tail bone, too.  For the next 2 days, Ian would approach me bun-side first asking if I'd like to see his tail bone, and he pulls down his underwear a bit, saying, "See?" "Yes, I see it," I reply each time with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. "Yep, that's my tail bone," he replies and proudly swaggers off.

Last night we did our Georgia Christmas, so the boys have some time to play before we drive to the grandparents' for real Christmas. I was a little concerned that it would be a puny event for them, since in my memory it didn't seem like I'd gotten them many toys.  But, I think it turned out just right.  For instance, Ian gave the set of "castle people" hardly a pause before moving to the next gift.  However, when they opened their castle, Ian decided he needed a "Princess Fiona" (someone has been watching too much Shrek) to put in the tower and we reminded him about the castle people.  They've had nonstop fun with it since then. We got Ian a toy guitar and Isaac a not-so-toy drum.  All the toy drums were kind of lame and this floor drum was awesome and about the same price. Ian was hilarious rockin' out on the toy guitar. He had his eyes all scrunched closed and his head bobbing as he shouted, "Rock and roll!" Isaac got a basketball hoop, which Ian pulled over and nearly beaned his brother with (note to self: fill it with sand sooner than later). Ian also got a viewmaster. I LOVED those as a kid, and I think I still do. Ian is quite enthralled as well.  The most interesting/unique toy has to be the Kid-O Bilibo. It's even hard to describe. It's a plastic shell shaped like a flared-out helmet...sort of. It's made for open-ended play. It can be a seat to spin in, a helmet, a bowl, a turtle shell, a whatever. Isaac was scared to sit in it at first, so we put it on my head and sat under it while Ian opened his next gift.

This morning, we're sitting up in bed and Isaac pats his head and says, "Gaigick hair." Ian looks over at the bed-head and laments, "Oh no. Igick's hair is ruined!"  I've thought that about my hair some days.

Ian's philosophy is: Celebrate your victories, first; Deal with the details later.  I just heard, "Yayyyyy!  I peed on the potty!" Then, like an interesting bit of trivia, "Mom, I made a little 'plash on the wall." Sometimes he chooses to sit for the task and forgets about the aiming part. I think the puddle in the potty was incidental.

There's A New Chef in Town

I struggle with thinking of what to cook for dinner. However, when I stumble into a good-looking recipe, I'll go all-out to make a tasty meal for my guys. Frequently, the boys will poke at it if it appears too healthy or unexciting, or eat whatever part strikes their fancy. One evening, while finishing up some Christmas shopping, I'd ended up getting the boys some hot dogs, and I wasn't feeling particularly hungry. Brian was totally cool with that when he got home, because he prides himself in being able to fend for himself. On this particular evening, Ian climbed up to the table to inspect & sample Dad's wares and I heard Ian say, "Mmmm. I like this meal!" I simply had to know what had captured my son's heart, and to my disbelief, it was a sandwich consisting of a soy sausage, vegemite, probably some other condiments, and a can of beets. Apparently, only a true bachelor-at-heart can appeal to the delicate culinary sensibilities of a baby man-in-training.

I will have to say, Brian does have his strokes of genius. Perhaps this next "recipe" speaks to my own highly-refined tastes. We recently discovered the creamy goodness of Greek yogurt. After we polished off a pint of it in one sitting, Brian went to the store and returned with an additional half-dozen pints of plain Greek yogurt. He began experimenting with flavoring it, using various sweet condiments. Thus was born [insert chorus of singing angels]: peanut butter and jelly yogurt! To clarify, this is a puddle of peanut butter yogurt in a bowl beside a puddle of yogurt flavored with Brian's very own muscadine jelly. Scoop a little of each on a spoon, and voila - my heart melts. It seriously almost tastes like a pie filling. Maybe I'll try it on a graham cracker next time.

On a side note, I wrapped up a bunch of stocking stuffers for the boys. This weekend I started letting them open 2 each night (since we will do our GA Christmas sometime this week) - based on a Skinner family tradition. One of the gifts for Isaac was a pointer. It looks like a pointing Mickey Mouse hand on a stick. I'm not sure why this cracked me up so much, but I was in stitches watching him walk around pointing to things with it. He first went to the Christmas tree and gently touched a few ornaments. Our rule for the boys is, when they are near fragile things in a store, "One finger touch." That lets them satisfy their curiosity and greatly reduces the damage potential. This seemed the perfect device for the job. Ian begged a turn, and his first undertaking as Pointer-in-Chief was to aim the finger at his Dad and say, "Go out." Isaac took the plastic digit back and tried his 'hand' at banishing his father. Soon they turned to other tasks, such as pointing out imaginary bicycles and buses. Now begins the countdown until it gets lodged in a nose.