What a little man! Five things I love about Emerson:
1. He's the huggingest, smilingest little guy you'll ever meet. He'll squeeze the life out of you if you give him the chance.
2. He pops up like popcorn in the morning to get dressed and get all his chores done on time. Sometimes he's done before I even wake up! What a great example to his little sister . . . and his big brother and sister too!
3. Emerson is smart smart smart! He's always sidling up to me to let me in on something new he's figured out. Like how a roller coaster works, or how to spell some new word. He's also figured out the reading thing, with surprisingly little help from me. He can read all of Go, Dog, Go! by himself now.
4. You won't meet a more enthusiastic guy than Emerson. He started T-ball this season, and he pretty much glows through the entire game--running to grab balls somebody else hit, or hitting the life out of the ball when it's his turn.
5. Emerson is so creative! He makes really creative things with legos--like a car with an elevator inside and a drill on the side, and is always coming up with elaborate (and silly) "what if" scenarios. "What if I was the dad and Sera was the mom and everyone else was all dogs?" He and Sera dress up their stuffed animals in their own clothes almost every day, sometimes in Halloween costumes, and treat them like real kids (except that Sera puts them in time-out constantly). I love seeing what comes out of that little brain!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Humorous Happenings
I love Sera's words: she calls the toaster a "roller coaster," granola bars are "monkey bars," and she doesn't believe in "big" and "small," only "hoonge" and "teeny." She also loves eating CHLOCATE, which she always talks about in big letters.
When the kids were informed of my new responsibilities in primary, Emerson asked, "so, when are you going to cancel church?" "What?" I asked. "You're the canceller [counselor], so when are you going to cancel church?"
More than once we've told Sera that she's a "smart cookie." But she insists that she's Sera, that she's "cuter than pie," and that we shouldn't eat her. And let me tell you, she's pretty hard to resist with those cheeks!
For the longest time we kept hearing Emerson and Sera carry on these convoluted discussions about "person walking," "hand, hand, hand," and "stop hand." It took quite a while for us to figure out that they were trying to figure out how the cross-walk signals work.
Theo's favorite activity lately is making iPods. And iPhones. And netbooks, Blackberries, PSPs, and DSIs. He studies them in minute detail whenever we get an ad for an electronics store, then cuts out little rectangles of cardboard from whatever cardboard boxes he can find around the house (sometimes he sneaks out of his bedroom in the middle of the night to get his favorite cardboard-cutting scissors, my kitchen shears). Then, in pen, he fills in every key and application that he can identify. As a result of all the repetition (he's made about a hundred of these, literally) he randomly recited off the computer keyboard for me the other day: QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM. He got them all right without looking. I've been typing for a lot of years, and I can't do that.
When the kids were informed of my new responsibilities in primary, Emerson asked, "so, when are you going to cancel church?" "What?" I asked. "You're the canceller [counselor], so when are you going to cancel church?"
More than once we've told Sera that she's a "smart cookie." But she insists that she's Sera, that she's "cuter than pie," and that we shouldn't eat her. And let me tell you, she's pretty hard to resist with those cheeks!
For the longest time we kept hearing Emerson and Sera carry on these convoluted discussions about "person walking," "hand, hand, hand," and "stop hand." It took quite a while for us to figure out that they were trying to figure out how the cross-walk signals work.
Theo's favorite activity lately is making iPods. And iPhones. And netbooks, Blackberries, PSPs, and DSIs. He studies them in minute detail whenever we get an ad for an electronics store, then cuts out little rectangles of cardboard from whatever cardboard boxes he can find around the house (sometimes he sneaks out of his bedroom in the middle of the night to get his favorite cardboard-cutting scissors, my kitchen shears). Then, in pen, he fills in every key and application that he can identify. As a result of all the repetition (he's made about a hundred of these, literally) he randomly recited off the computer keyboard for me the other day: QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM. He got them all right without looking. I've been typing for a lot of years, and I can't do that.
January Jammin'
(scroll down for pictures)
So good. January has been so good to us.
I guess when your expectations are somewhere south of a bottomless abyss, there's nowhere to go but up. Last winter was pretty much the coldest, most dismal thing I've ever experienced. So I spent a fair amount of time and energy dreading/preparing for this year. For one, we fixed up lots of the things that drove me batty arount the house. Admittedly, our kitchen cabinets are still only half-painted after six months, but our bathroom problems have been remedied, and new carpet in the basement and new linoleum in the bathrooms and kitchen have made a world of difference. Add to that the decision we made to get out (of the city) occasionally this winter, and already things are looking brighter. But even without any of that, we had something that made it all bearable. Which made it really rather nice. Which made me think (me!) that possibly I actually like winter a little bit!
It's amazing what a January thaw will do. That's right, I said "thaw." For like a week it got so warm that some of the snow and ice, a very little bit , melted! Not so much that we couldn't go sledding and ice-skating of course--those we did pretty much every day. Just enough for us to go outside and say to ourselves "Wow! What a gorgeous day!"
I'm not sure if I can attribute all my warm fuzzy feelings to the weather, though. A couple of other little changes that have improved my attitude as well. For one, Aaron convinced me to start taking fish oil, since a bunch of studies show that fish-eating populations have lower incidence of winter-time blues than other northern populations. Although I love fish, especially salmon, I hardly ever buy it here, because the price is through the roof, and frankly, fish on the prarie will never taste as fresh as fish in New England. Though I was skeptical initially, the first change I noticed after I started taking the fish oil, was that my skin started looking smoother and nicer--double win! The other big change for me is that, for pretty much the first time in the last, oh five years, I've been trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour (you know, pre-2 am). My adjustment was lousy--I woke up constantly the first few nights--but since then, it's been great! I have energy when I wake up, and apparently my lack of grouchiness (for the record, I never thought of myself as grouchy in the mornings before) has rubbed off on the kids. We're almost always at the breakfast table on time these days, and there has been a steep decline in the number of forgotten mittens and agendas in the backpacks.
I think our theme for the year has made a difference too: Peace, Pass It On. It was a much needed theme, as the fighting and arguing and screaming and yelling and tattling and wrestling were driving me mad. For a very long time I felt a certain amount of pride in the fact that Theo and Addy rarely had cross words with each other, and were so fast to make up if they did. But for the last year or so, it seemed all anyone did was argue until they were screaming, and then come tattling to me. I'm a huge fan of having kids work out their problems themselves, but most of the time their solutions involved more fighting and maybe a good crack to the head. Since we've started focusing on Peace, Aaron and I have made an effort to acknowledge the kids' efforts to improve peace in our home during our family councils on Sundays, and to try to tie more Family Home Evening lessons back to the theme. That, along with me helping the kids work out every detail of their arguments with them (they still have to work it out, but I feed them words or ask leading questions along the way--it's exhausting, but worth it) has really improved the atmosphere. The number of times I notice the kids playing nicely together or reading to one another has increased, the number of fights has decreased . . . though they haven't disappeared yet! It's a work in progress, but luckily we have eleven more months to work on it!
Emerson's party, which has been on his mind for about six months now, hopefully met all his dreams and expectations. It was a "Monster" party, complete with a home-made pinata, and the game he insisted we had to play (months ago), "Hide the Monster." After that and "Pin the Eyeball on the the Monster" (how I love butcher paper!), more play-doh rounded things out, along with the best cupcakes I've ever made--not to brag or anything. While I'm on the subject, his birthday cake was pretty sweet too. I'm telling you, "monster" opens up a whole new world of creativity. He was delighted with his family presents of Legos and a Diego toy that I saw for $24.99 at Toys R Us, then snatched up for 5 bucks on clearance at Wal-Mart. Woo February clearance at Wal-Mart! While we're on the subject, Sera is rather fond of her present, a new stuffed kitten, "Taffy," which we were lucky enough to forget to give her for Christmas. All in all, the birthdays turned out great, and we did a good job of spreading the love out over all of January--yay for avoiding holiday overload!
Last, I never got to mention our own little Christmas morning celebration. I did a horrible job of taking pictures of toys and everything, although we squeezed in a bit of filming, I think. The gist is that we strung the present opening out over a few days, Hanukkah-style (a holiday I think I'd prefer if it weren't for the whole actual meaning of Christmas thing), and here's what the kids were most thrilled with: Theo--guitar, Lego King Arthur's castle, and headphones that go over, not in, his ears; Addy--a stuffed dog named Caramel, ice-skates, and My Little Ponies; Emerson--a Mr. Potato Head family and a huge stuffed horse; Sera--a Mega-Bloks fire-house and a pull-string dog. All the kids are pretty excited about some new dress-up clothes I picked up on sale after Halloween--a knight, a fire-fighter, and a princess; and of course there were plenty of new books. They also love the toy food they got from Grandma Donna, the framed train painting and aprons from Grandpa Jerry, the fantastically stuffed stockings and goody-bags they got from Grandma Michelle before we left Utah. Thanks!! It was a more present-heavy Christmas for us, but after the initial craziness, Aaron and I are enjoying their enjoyment of their gifts. Still, next year I'll try to remember to keep it simple again.
Okay, sorry that was so long, but we hope you had a fantastic January as well!!
So good. January has been so good to us.
I guess when your expectations are somewhere south of a bottomless abyss, there's nowhere to go but up. Last winter was pretty much the coldest, most dismal thing I've ever experienced. So I spent a fair amount of time and energy dreading/preparing for this year. For one, we fixed up lots of the things that drove me batty arount the house. Admittedly, our kitchen cabinets are still only half-painted after six months, but our bathroom problems have been remedied, and new carpet in the basement and new linoleum in the bathrooms and kitchen have made a world of difference. Add to that the decision we made to get out (of the city) occasionally this winter, and already things are looking brighter. But even without any of that, we had something that made it all bearable. Which made it really rather nice. Which made me think (me!) that possibly I actually like winter a little bit!
It's amazing what a January thaw will do. That's right, I said "thaw." For like a week it got so warm that some of the snow and ice, a very little bit , melted! Not so much that we couldn't go sledding and ice-skating of course--those we did pretty much every day. Just enough for us to go outside and say to ourselves "Wow! What a gorgeous day!"
I'm not sure if I can attribute all my warm fuzzy feelings to the weather, though. A couple of other little changes that have improved my attitude as well. For one, Aaron convinced me to start taking fish oil, since a bunch of studies show that fish-eating populations have lower incidence of winter-time blues than other northern populations. Although I love fish, especially salmon, I hardly ever buy it here, because the price is through the roof, and frankly, fish on the prarie will never taste as fresh as fish in New England. Though I was skeptical initially, the first change I noticed after I started taking the fish oil, was that my skin started looking smoother and nicer--double win! The other big change for me is that, for pretty much the first time in the last, oh five years, I've been trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour (you know, pre-2 am). My adjustment was lousy--I woke up constantly the first few nights--but since then, it's been great! I have energy when I wake up, and apparently my lack of grouchiness (for the record, I never thought of myself as grouchy in the mornings before) has rubbed off on the kids. We're almost always at the breakfast table on time these days, and there has been a steep decline in the number of forgotten mittens and agendas in the backpacks.
I think our theme for the year has made a difference too: Peace, Pass It On. It was a much needed theme, as the fighting and arguing and screaming and yelling and tattling and wrestling were driving me mad. For a very long time I felt a certain amount of pride in the fact that Theo and Addy rarely had cross words with each other, and were so fast to make up if they did. But for the last year or so, it seemed all anyone did was argue until they were screaming, and then come tattling to me. I'm a huge fan of having kids work out their problems themselves, but most of the time their solutions involved more fighting and maybe a good crack to the head. Since we've started focusing on Peace, Aaron and I have made an effort to acknowledge the kids' efforts to improve peace in our home during our family councils on Sundays, and to try to tie more Family Home Evening lessons back to the theme. That, along with me helping the kids work out every detail of their arguments with them (they still have to work it out, but I feed them words or ask leading questions along the way--it's exhausting, but worth it) has really improved the atmosphere. The number of times I notice the kids playing nicely together or reading to one another has increased, the number of fights has decreased . . . though they haven't disappeared yet! It's a work in progress, but luckily we have eleven more months to work on it!
For fun this month, we've really immersed ourselves in winter Canadian-style. I mean, as Canadian as a former Southern Californian and his very wimpy Utah wife can go. We went sledding--multiple times in one day, even! I, yes I, took the older kids skating at one of the rinks they have set up around the corner at an elementary school. And it was fun. Granted, I wasn't actually the one skating. But Addy got to break in the new ice skates she got for Christmas, and Theo got to show off his skills--and let me just say, he has skills. There have been multiple snowmen made and destroyed, and lots and lots of tromping around in the snow that poured in over four days last week. I was a little shocked at just how much such a big snowfall shut down life here. I mean, we are in Canada, aren't we? Since when does it take a full week to get the roads clear and the buses running again after a foot of snow? It was only about fourteen inches. We didn't mind too much though, because on principle, even if the school buses stop running, school is never cancelled here. Ever. Theo and Addy had a blast on the Monday after the storm, being among only a handful of kids who made it to school and going crazy on the sledding hill during recess.
As for my little guys, well January has been a bit of a mixed bag. Joy School sort of fell apart after the holidays, with one mom feeling overwhelmed with a new pregnancy and another losing steam over the driving in the snow. We've decided to scale back to a play-group-type ativity once a week, to see how that goes. The nice part of that is that Emerson and Sera have lots of time to play together and I have a bit more time to try to get our house together after the holidays. The not-so-nice part is that I'm trying to figure out something else for Emerson for the rest of the year--he's five now and really misses having some kind of pre-school going on. I've applied for him to attend the all-French (like if your primary lanuage is French and your parents are French and all that) preschool across the street from us, but I have no idea yet if they'll let him in (I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we are sadly non-French). Cross your fingers for us!
Aaron is back in the swing of rehearsals, with his choirs preparing Faure's Requiem this spring, one of my absolute favorite works of all time. They sang a couple of weeks ago for the Olympic Torch relay (we can't wait to watch the Olympics here in Canada next month--we wish we could go in person!), but between the cold and the crowds and Sera peeing her pants, we managed to miss seeing both the choir's performance and the actual arrival of the torch. Complete parenting/wife failure on my part, for sure. Next up, the choirs will be performing at the Canadian National Choral Convention in May. Aaron is ridiculously awesome at snagging these gigs, and he could not be more popular at his University--they're even considering him for super-early tenure this year!
Our big events in January, though none have been particularly exotic, have been so fun! Obviously we had two birthdays to celebrate, and celebrate we did. Sera's birthday, because of the way the holidays fell, came on the last day of winter break. We took the opportunity to visit Chuckie Cheese's for the first time ever, as a combined birthday dinner for her and Emerson. Again, a matter of expectation: I've never been particularly impressed with Chuckie's, and in my mind it was nothing more than a few outdated video games and ride-on ponies that came with cheese on an oversized cracker, marketed as "pizza." When we got there, of course, the kids were overjoyed (we surprised them), but I was impressed too. The carpet was clean! Some of the rides and games had been updated since my childhood! And the pizza, while not fantastic, featured actual cheese and green peppers that were actually green! It ended up being a really fun night. Theo had a blast trying to get tickets from all the games--only to be beat out by Addy when she happened to land on a really good spot on this lottery ball-drop thing (we thought we'd start her gambling career while she's young). Emerson and Addy pooled their tokens so they could ride on more rides, which we thought was pretty creative, and kept them going for a long time. Sera loved all the rides--except the ones she was scared of.
Their actual birthday parties, as has become Mitchell tradition (especially for these two post-holiday kids) were delayed by a couple of weeks, but were still tons of fun. Sera had her first "friends" birthday party--a "Jungle" party--and I have to say that finally, after four tries, I've figured out how to celebrate a three-year-old's big day. We cordoned off the kitchen and living room with green crepe paper, kept the games to "Ring around the Jungle" and "Jungle Hokey-Pokey," then broke out the play-doh. Sera loved being the center of attention, and was really so cute when she handed out goody-bags and said "thank you for coming to my party."Emerson's party, which has been on his mind for about six months now, hopefully met all his dreams and expectations. It was a "Monster" party, complete with a home-made pinata, and the game he insisted we had to play (months ago), "Hide the Monster." After that and "Pin the Eyeball on the the Monster" (how I love butcher paper!), more play-doh rounded things out, along with the best cupcakes I've ever made--not to brag or anything. While I'm on the subject, his birthday cake was pretty sweet too. I'm telling you, "monster" opens up a whole new world of creativity. He was delighted with his family presents of Legos and a Diego toy that I saw for $24.99 at Toys R Us, then snatched up for 5 bucks on clearance at Wal-Mart. Woo February clearance at Wal-Mart! While we're on the subject, Sera is rather fond of her present, a new stuffed kitten, "Taffy," which we were lucky enough to forget to give her for Christmas. All in all, the birthdays turned out great, and we did a good job of spreading the love out over all of January--yay for avoiding holiday overload!
Last, I never got to mention our own little Christmas morning celebration. I did a horrible job of taking pictures of toys and everything, although we squeezed in a bit of filming, I think. The gist is that we strung the present opening out over a few days, Hanukkah-style (a holiday I think I'd prefer if it weren't for the whole actual meaning of Christmas thing), and here's what the kids were most thrilled with: Theo--guitar, Lego King Arthur's castle, and headphones that go over, not in, his ears; Addy--a stuffed dog named Caramel, ice-skates, and My Little Ponies; Emerson--a Mr. Potato Head family and a huge stuffed horse; Sera--a Mega-Bloks fire-house and a pull-string dog. All the kids are pretty excited about some new dress-up clothes I picked up on sale after Halloween--a knight, a fire-fighter, and a princess; and of course there were plenty of new books. They also love the toy food they got from Grandma Donna, the framed train painting and aprons from Grandpa Jerry, the fantastically stuffed stockings and goody-bags they got from Grandma Michelle before we left Utah. Thanks!! It was a more present-heavy Christmas for us, but after the initial craziness, Aaron and I are enjoying their enjoyment of their gifts. Still, next year I'll try to remember to keep it simple again.
Okay, sorry that was so long, but we hope you had a fantastic January as well!!
Winter Celebrations
I think these guys enjoyed their first visit to Chucky Cheese, to celebrate Sera's and Emerson's birthdays!
Sera's Jungley zebra cake was cooler inside than out
Emerson's monster cakeMonsters leave lots to the imagination--I had so much fun making this!
It was warm enough to go sledding, so sledding we went!
These guys burned some serious energy
They don't stay outside as long, but these guys enjoyed the warmer weather too
So far I think these guys have made and wrecked about 20 identical snowmen this winter
Another week I took Addy and her friend Lexi sledding
Hot cocoa with the girls at the Chapters' StarbucksNext came the birthday parties:
Blowing out the candles on her jungle cupcakes (tigers, giraffes, and zebras)
Happy Birthday, Sera!
Ready for his party (more little monsters--I highly recommend the monster theme)
Happy Birthday, Emerson!
What do we do inside all day? Here's what:
If only he'd be so gallant all the time
I can never get enough of this face!
Blowing out the candles on her jungle cupcakes (tigers, giraffes, and zebras)
Happy Birthday, Sera!
Ready for his party (more little monsters--I highly recommend the monster theme)
Happy Birthday, Emerson!What do we do inside all day? Here's what:
If only he'd be so gallant all the time
I can never get enough of this face!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)