Merry Christmas!!!

The BIG SNOW pics!

Better late than never, right?? My good camera died, and I'm not a very good photographer anyhow, so I had trouble catching just how amazing the snow really was. BEAUTIFUL!!!

We have TWO FEET of snow.

I'm going to be lazy and just copy this update from my baby board - awesome pics to come later today!!

It’s insanity here. We headed to Chris’s parent’s house, about and hour and 45 minutes away, shortly after the storm started on Friday. It took us three hours to get there, even though half way there the snow turned to rain. We live in an elevated area that always gets way more snow, so we knew we’d get past the storm, and we wanted to make sure that we’d get to his grandma’s Christmas party, which was supposed to be Saturday. Then his parents ended up getting about ten inches in the night. Then they lost power and they have a well with an electric pump, so we had no water either. No showers, couldn’t wash hands (just poured water over them), couldn’t flush the toilets (they melted snow to occasionally fill them up enough to flush). I knew that having no power was a real possibility, but I didn’t know about the electric pump. Dude, no water is a DEAL BREAKER.

But the road back here is the WV Turnpike. You might have heard how people were stranded on it 18-24 hours!!! We JUST missed getting stranded ourselves. Can you imagine how horrific that would have been with three kids???

Anyways, Chris’s grandma told us not to try to make it Saturday, and we couldn’t get home, so Chris and I decided to go the 45 minutes to my parent’s house, where they had not lost power. The roads ended up being nearly clear by the time we left Chris’s parents. We had to build an igloo first, of course. My aunt had a heart cath on Friday, so she was staying at my parent’s house too, so someone could keep an eye on her, but we all squeezed in, and then on Sunday we were able to go to Chris’s grandmother’s house.

Sunday they also opened the Turnpike back up, so at 6:00 we decided to try to come back home so Chris could get to work today. The roads were fine until we left the interstate. The roads in town are terrible, and the piles of snow are twenty feet high. CRAZINESS. I have never seen so much snow! A bunch of neighbors had gotten together and cleared a lane up our road, then our next door neighbor had cleared our driveway (I LOVE our neighbors!), but it still took us a half hour, multiple attempts, and traction cables to get up the hill. We had to keep trying because the snow was way too deep for us to be able to find a place at the bottom of the hill to park and walk up! Our driveway is fairly steep too and it took Chris many attempts to get out this morning, but he’s at work now. Only about a third of the hospital’s staff have been able to make it in to work.

It’s not unusual for us to get up to five or six inches a snow several times a winter, but this is, like I said, an insane amount of snow. Suzi hates to play in the snow, so after I get her down for a nap today, the kids and I are going to go out to play and get some pictures. It’s gorgeous!!!

Moving up in the family!

Lately, Izzy's drawings have not included Chris in them. Here's his latest case in point:

The tall blue figure on the right is Izzy parachuting. Sophie is climbing up the tree because she's having trouble getting her parachute to work. Suzi is the little blue figure on the left with one curl coming out of her head. She's parachuting as well.

I am the tall green figure to the far left. See how my mouth is an "O?" That's because I'm yelling at them for parachuting. But there is no Chris anywhere to be found.

Anyhow, flash back to this evening where Izzy spent the whole evening pestering me to take him to watch the older kids put on a play at school. I did not, however, receive anything from the school so I wasn't willing to load up all the kids and go see, just in case. I tried to explain to him that it was really a program just for the parents of the kids performing in it, but he was just brokenhearted.

Chris was working late, and walked in at about 5:55 - the play started at 6:00. Izzy pleads with him, Chris looks at me with a question in his eyes, so I shrug back the ol' "you can if you want to" shrug, and they dash out the door.

Luckily, the school is less than five minutes from here, so they made it right before it started. Izzy LOVED it. Chris, not so much, but it was worth it to him to see Izzy so delighted. Izzy was full of thanks the whole time, and kept it up once they got home.

"Does this mean," Chris asked him, "Since I took you to the play, that now when you draw a family picture, you'll draw me in it again?"

With a gleam in his eye, Izzy says, "Sure. But you're going to be a frisbee."

He's a very patient little cat.

Crony Bob, our cat, curled up on the ottoman the other day and one of Isaac's stuffed puppies happened to be laying there as well.

Isaac ran in and cracked up laughing: "Hey mom, it looks like Crony Bob is nursing that puppy!"

He went to his room and quickly came back with the two other puppies, and well, this is what happened:

Poor, poor Crony Bob. First we neuter him, and now this. *snicker*

ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

Honest to goodness, in the brief time it took me to write the last post, she went from happily munching dates beside me, to dragging another dining room chair over to the bar and climbing up so she could lean over and grab a permanent marker and a pad of paper. She then ran to the living room with her treasures, the ones that she then threw at me when I reached to take them from her.

I just felt a little tickle on top of head. Wait, is that..? Yep, another curly grey hair just sprang out.

Tiny Terror

Suzi is the smallest of my children at this age (she'll be 18 months old on Dec. 22), but she is, by far, the most crafty 18 month old I've ever encountered. And by crafty, I don't mean that she can color and paste better than me, although that is most assuredly true as well, but rather that she continually finds new and more interesting ways to get into mischief than my other two did, combined.

For instance, just a few minutes ago she dragged a dining room chair into the kitchen and across the room, where she climbed up on it to reach the snack basket. She snagged a bag of dates and started carrying them around, but she wasn't able to get them open, so back to the kitchen she went, where she opened the silverware drawer, far above her head, and put her hand in to exactly where the kid silverware is kept, and grabbed herself a fork.

Back to the bag she went, where she diligently worked away at trying to pry the bag open with her fork. I watched for a few minutes but when she wasn't able to get it open, I told her to bring it to me and I'd open it for her. She brings me both the bag and fork, and insisted I take both, but when I poured her a few out on the table, she was most annoyed with me that I didn't hand her the open bag instead.

Helping this one to grow up is either gone to make me smarter simply by trying to stay a half step in front of her, or it's going to kill me. If she doesn't start sleeping better soon, I'd put my money on the latter. But at least I'll go with a smile on my face, even if it's a very, very tired one.

Izzy's First Poem

"Why don't I have boots upon my feet?"

Snow, snow white.

Snow, snow white.

Where are my boots white?

Snow, snow white.

Help!

I am drowning in a flood of words and photos I want to share with you all, but I can't get my head above water long enough to type and post them. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...

Dedicated to my husband.

So during a..."discussion" last night, Chris said he doesn't think I put in a full day's work, because sometimes when he gets home, the house is clean, and other times, it's far from it. That proves that I just sit around doing nothing sometimes, he says, because when we were trying to sell our old house, I could have it clean in an hour. Of course, the old house was half the size of this one, and I only had two kids, (kids who usually slept through the night too), to chase then.

All of that notwithstanding, however, this man that I married asked me to keep a list of what I do during the day. Please, ladies, stop envying me so.

So here is a list of what I've done so far today:

7:45 Took kids to the bus

8:00 Got Suzi changed and dressed.

8: 10 Chase Suzi to get my lip gloss back.

8:13 Chase Suzi to get my eyebrow brush back.

8:15 Take Suzi to living room. She bonks her head while running from me, so I sit down to rock her for a few minutes. She brings me two Christmas books and we sit there and read them.

8:45 Put Suzi down for a nap.

8:50 Eat a bowl of cereal.

9:10 Check email, baby board, FaceBook.

9:20 Suzi yells, so I go and check to see if she needs changed. She doesn't. I try to get her to take a nap.

9:30 I give up on Suzi taking a nap. We head back to the living room, where I tidy up.

9:35 Suzi brings me the hand sanitizer and I put a little on her hand, as per her request.

9:40 I tidy up the kitchen and dining room.

9:50 I chase Suzi to get my Ollie's card back.

9:52 I get the dry erase board, the calendar, and all the various notes from school and whatnot, and I fill out the dry erase board for December.

10:15 I get an ink pen away from Suzi and put her in time-out for drawing on the wall.

10:16 I sit down at the computer to balance the checkbook.

10:18 I chase Suzi to get my chapstick away from her, but she throws it downstairs instead.

10:20 Suzi gets out of time out and runs straight to get the plastic Santa from my childhood and terrorizes the dogs with it. I get it away from her. I finish balancing the checkbook.

10:24 I start a response to my Aunt Nancy's e-mail.

10:28 Suzi brings me a bright red marker with no lid on it. She has drawn all over her face. She runs to the sunroom and throws two crayons at me. I get it all put back up, can't figure out where she's getting them from. Then I thank my lucky stars that it's a washable marker as I clean it off the new (to us) cabinet we bought from Chris's aunt Peggy. Then I clean marker and crayon off the little cabinet in which I store Suzi's toys.

10:40 I finish the email to my aunt.

10: 45 I put ornaments back on the tree and take a bright pink marker away from Suzi. She's drawn on the wall in the sunroom at this point. Again, can't find the source of these markers. As I walk out of the room, she runs right behind me and pulls open the drawer on the cabinet from which I'd just scrubbed marker, which is the drawer in which I keep the kids' art supplies. I turn around, tell her NO and she slams it shut. I didn't realize she could get that drawer open, much less close it back again. I park her in the living room so I can start this post while still able to watch her.

11:00 Blog post mostly done, a puzzle, two bags of books, a box of little alphbet book blocks, a robot dinosaur, and all the Christmas stockings are laying in the floor.

11:05 Suzi can't climb up in the recliner, where she wants to read two books she's carried over to it, so she commences loud and annoying fussing.

11:10 I hit save draft because I have to put my sweat pants back on, and a little bit of makeup, to go pick Sophie up from preschool.

11:25 I go to get Suzi from her room to get shoes on her too, and I pick up my coffee mug (which was empty, thank goodness) and carry it and Suzi to the kitchen. We go to get Sophie.

11:45 We're back home again. Sophie has gone shopping for gifts for all of us today at the Christmas Shoppe at school. I get the paper from the garage and help wrap her gifts and spell out her nametags. She does it all by herself with just a tiny bit of help and a lot of supervision. I chase Suzi off the table three or four times while we're doing this. She's fascinated by the candle centerpiece I've put there for Christmas.

12:oo I take the pen and the checkbook register away from Suzi.

12:05 I tidy up the two advent calendars the kids opened up this morning, and the little nativity beside them.

12:07 I tidy the pillows on both couches in the sunroom.

12:10 I fix Suzi's lunch.

12:16 I try to help Sophie get Perfection, the game, out, but we fail. Then I look at her throat with a flashlight because she's says it's killing her. It looks fine to me.

12:20 I come back to the computer and update this blog and decide that I'm too tired of trying to remember how many times I've chased Suzi today already, so I'm giving up keeping track.

Throw in a few diaper changes and you've got a pretty good picture of my morning. Chris does have a good point - some days not a lot gets done around here. This morning, for instance. But I did devote a large chunk of my morning to teaching boundaries to Suzi, whether I wanted to or not. I planted the seeds of a future reader by reading to her when she asked. I helped shape her into a loving little girl by giving her many, many hugs and kisses all morning long.

Is it rocket science? No. Is it terribly hard? No. But I am doing an important, fulfilling job, and I just so happen to really enjoy my work. When the kids are playing nicely, Suzi is taking her naps, and I've gotten more than three or four hours of sleep at night, THEN I have the energy and motivation to be a house chore drone.

Days like today, however....well, I say hooray for staying on top of things! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off the put up laundry, clean up toys, and clean up from lunch...