Christmas Eve Day Doctor

It would be remiss of me to talk about Christmas before I mention what we did on Christmas Eve day. Which would be take Calder in for his annual check up. Calder, having been present for nearly all of his sister's well-baby checks was aware that there were likely to be several injections in his future. So for two days ahead of time we basically tried to bribe him into not freaking out about having to go to the doctor. I mean, he loves going there, just not for himself. After promises of Happy Meals and monster trucks I finally ran out of ways to get Calder to agree to get in the car without a fight and just said, "You will have to take that up with Dr. Merens." That shut him right up. "I will."  OK then. Weirdo. And true to his word, as soon as she came into the exam room Calder grabbed her by the hand and said, " I get no shots today, OK?" Luckily for him, he is still allergic to eggs and since all  the scheduled boosters have egg in them, we were able to put them off until he has to get them for school. All Calder ended up with was a snootful of deactivated flu virus and and a teensy blood draw for his lead check. I didn't even have to get him the promised Happy Meal he was content to get some stickers and an extra bandage for his finger.

The doctor told us that he seems to be doing well. Good vital signs and motor skills. Excellent language. Duh, he just tried to negotiate his way out of vaccinations. And he is getting huge. Calder is exactly 40 pounds and, uh, some height. We kind of both got distracted at that point by the baby ripping my earring off and shoving it in her mouth so we missed how tall he is. I will be using the super scientific method of chasing Calder around with a tape measure to figure this out later. Dr. Merens did say he was big enough to switch from a car seat to a booster so we will either be converting his current seat, or having read several bad reviews of its performance as a booster, buying a new one and using the old seat in its rear-facing position for Wren so we can stop cramming her into the snap and go.

Were you surprised the doctor's office was even open on Christmas Eve? I was. Even more surprising to me was how busy it was. Although according to my Twitter and Facebook feeds, just about everyone's children has some form of projectile vomitous disease so maybe it's not that surprising. Keep them away from my kids, by the way. They are doing just fine.

Christmas Teamwork

Full Christmas writeup when I get all this crap cleaned up. Holy cow, wrapping paper.

Why Let the Kids Have All the Fun?

One Chicago tradition is the CTA holiday train. It's a dedicated set of el cars that's permanently tricked out for the holidays with a special flatbed car added for Santa and his sleigh. From Thanksgiving until just before Christmas it takes turns running on the various lines with Santa stopping at certain stations for photo ops. Needless to say, kids love it.

I am obsessed with the holiday train. After hearing about it for years, I accidentally caught it home from work last year. It was a transcendent experience. The decorations, the music, the CTA workers dressed as elves and passing out candy canes. People being nice to each other. That's right. Total strangers. Being friendly and cheerful. On public transportation.

If children love the holiday train, adults (ME) go absolutely fucking nuts for it. After weeks of longingly perusing the CTA timetables and trying to coerce Bruce into dragging the kids out on a weekend for no reason, I finally caught the train on its last day of operation for the season, on the Yellow Line Skokie Swift. Normally, this is a two-car, two train shuttle that simply runs back and forth between Chicago and Skokie. A third stop is being added for later next year. As such, the normal holiday train was split in two and Santa forewent his sleigh and rode with the plebes.

The commuting public went wild. I mean, my ride last year was great. Everyone on my car was laughing and chatting, taking pictures with their phones and generally being gleeful. Add close proximity to Santa to the mix and you get, as one mother said to her kid, "These grown-ups are more excited about this than you are." Grey-haired, grey-suited businessmen were giggling like schoolgirls. Hipsterfied twenty somethings stopped pretending everything was so over for 15 minutes and were snapping photos like the paparazzi. And posing for them too. Have you ever willingly handed you $400 phone to a stranger on the train? No, that is stupid. You will never see that phone again. This happened approximately one million times last night. A sullen looking girl with a half dozen hoops through her lip pushed her phone at me and grunted, "Take me with Santa?" Of course I did and she reciprocated for me.

I could have ridden that holiday shuttle back and forth all night long but I had to go home since I don't think "reliving childhood wonderment" is a valid excuse to ignore your children. So instead I waited for my bus in the chilly drizzle and as everyone else got picked up and I continues to wait, I started to cry. Why? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe I was sad because I missed finding Christmas joy to be that easy to come by. Maybe it was because that easy joy on the holiday train makes everyday life outside of it seem so hard. Maybe it was because while I enjoyed the cheer from all those strangers, I would have really liked to have shared those feelings with my family too. And not just Bruce and Calder and Wren. But my whole family, who are once again more than 600 miles away from me for Christmas.

Unintentional Love Poem

This is far more romantic than anything his father has ever said to me.

Can I play with Lupita?

I can hear her voice

Her love

My love

I am in love with Lupita.

Boogie Woogie Boy

Bruce to Calder: What are you doing, digging for gold?
Calder: No, I'm digging for boogers... so I can eat them.

Sigh.

Wordless Wednesday: Baby Crazy Hair

Happy Birthday, Calder

Someone hold me. Today my baby, my first baby, turned four. I'd tell you what Babycenter has to say about this age but apparently they stop at age 3. He's that big now. Sniff.

Seriously, how'd we get from this:

To this?

The only thing those two children have in common is an almost near inability to look directly at the camera. Oh, and a button nose. How seasonally appropriate. Calder is so grown up now it frequently blows my mind. He's just on the cusp of being able to read. He'll sound out letters and like to play little games like naming the first letters of whatever word he happens to be thinking of. Numbers are also starting to have some meaning to him but not too much. His go to "so big, it can't get any bigger" number is currently eleventeen.

Generic superhero theme activate!

Calder still loves his dinosaurs but he has expanded his interests to include monster trucks and video games as well as any and all forms of science. His new favorite show is How It's Made and its various incarnations. It seems the boys has a little bit of his daddy's engineering genes in him. Calder loves his sister. And hates her too. Just as it should be. On the whole he is wonderful with Wren, wanting to include her in his playtime, showing her toys and books and explaining everything that is going on in his matter of fact, bossypants kind of way. He can still be a bit of a holy terror, so much so that I just ordered a new parenting book, something about living with "strong-willed children". Hopefully this won't be a waste of ten bucks. Now if someone would just write a How to Raise Your Little Supervillain and I'd be all set.

Spider-cake, Spider-cake, tastes just like a regular cake.

We had Calder's birthday party last weekend. It was no huge affair due to the fact that we barely know anyone with children and I am terrible at party planning. It didn't even occur to me that he'd need one until Thanksgiving. Oops. Fortunately Etsy, Pinterest and Party City were there to help and I managed to throw together a small shindig for some grown up friends and a couple of little ones as well. 

The kid practically vibrated with excitement making it almost impossible to photograph him.

This year's themes was once again superheroes and I did a pretty good job of avoiding name brand stuff and instead went with a more color-toned approach to the decorations. I got a cool hero themed printable from a neato Etsy shop for most of the decor. Even though I went through two full color cartridges I would definitely recommend this. It was totally customizable and included pretty much anything you'd need for a party from invites to thank you notes and everything in between. I even tried to stay on point with the entertainment and bough a CD of hero-themed music. One track was so catchy it made Calder say, "What's dis song? It's makin' me dance and I don't know how to stop!" 

Hero sandwich bar

Calder's atcual birthday has been pretty low key. Bruce had hockey all morning so we just chilled here all day and opened his presents in the afternoon and let Calder pick out dinner. It was pizza. Shocker, I know. We had some nice phone and video chats with the family, or I should say Calder shouted "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" into the phone (doesn't quite get that part) and then ran away while I talked to Grammie and Grandma and Aunties of all sorts. Our one big activity was assembling Wren's new dresser. With Bruce gone, Calder and Wren were my assistants. While they were very cute, they weren't so much helpful. Pro tip: If someone says, "Do you want me to get the drill?" the answer is always YES.  We were so chill today we didn't even a second cake because we still haven't finished off all the cupcakes from last weekend. How long do cupcakes stay good anyways?

Santa!

Today we took the kids to the dirt mall to get our Santa on. Shockingly neither child freaked out.

Even more miraculously, at the mall and subsequent stops at the post office, shoe store and Target, we got relatively close parking spots with a minimum of fuss. AND! Both Wren and Calder behaved themselves the entire time with a minimum of bribery and threats. I have to say, there's nothing like a Mall at Christmas to make you realize that your kids are not as awful as you might think. There's almost always worse ones out there.

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Creeper

Seven Months

So Wren hit the seventh month mark, what, four days ago? Five? I should probably acknowledge this but I'm terrible at blogging lately. Of course part of that terribleness is Wren and her new awesome sleep pattern's fault. She sleeps through the night now, yay! But "night" doesn't start until 9:30, 10:00, boo! Those precious minutes between putting Calder and myself to bed are my prime getting shit done moments and Wren's desire to stay up late and party has taken that away. Is she hungry? Teething? Just a happy/fussy P in the A? No idea. She seems to have plateaued at just the two bottom teeth, unlike Calder who was determined to sprout as many teeth as he could as fast as possible. And this is OK by me. Actually, I should say my boobs are OK with it since I still get a little bit of PTSD flinchiness due to what Calder and his chompers did to my sensitive bits.This is why, unlike he brother, I am still breastfeeding Wren at seven months and not quitting at five. I am still spending up to an hour and a half every work day hooked up to the pump, still waking up with painful engorged boobs (the only bad thing about the whole night sleeping thing) and still making my daily dressing decisions based upon chestal accessibility. That's not to say the Wren has ever been any kind of exclusively breastfed. Yesterday we bought her third can of formula ever and the first full size one. Regardless of what I do, I am barely keeping up with her insatiable appetite and so, formula. Sorry lactivists, my daughter was not EBF, she was MBF (mostly breast fed). Is that OK? Doubtful.

If I were to list her current likes they would be the dog, the cat, the Christmas Tree, climbing the present pile, chewing on her brother's presents so he can see what they all are and eating. Eating what? What do you have? She'll eat anything. Being an actual food product is only a minor requirement. Bruce and I regularly play a fun new game called "What's the Baby Got in Her Mouth Now?" Hint: It's usually paper. Wren could eat a whole magazine if left alone long enough. Our printed media pile looks as though we have adopted a quickly growing family of rabbits. As for real food, she wants to be eating whatever it is we have, baby appropriate or not. If you don't share, Wren will stare you down from her seat and growl at you. For reals, a low, rumbly, "Rahhhhhhhhhhh." She's been learning from the cat apparently. So we usually give in and feed her small chunks off our plates. I hear this is maybe something called baby-led weaning? Again, though, I am probably doing it wrong and making someone somewhere on the internet angry. I am terrible at following PARENTING doctrine.

Wren will be walking soon. Sometimes when she pulls up on stuff she'll forget to hold on and will stay steady for a second or two before plopping down on her butt. Or face. (Another new favorite game: "How'd the Baby Get a Shiner?") Last night, tired of being clawed at and kicked, I gave up on trying to cuddle/feed the honey badger to sleep and put her on the floor to burn off her extra energy. Wren immediately pulled up on Calder's plastic chair and motored her way around the living room. She looked a lot like the old guy from Up with his walker. Bruce was going to just get out the baby walker we got her for Christmas but that appears to be the only gift she hasn't partially chewed open yet so it couldn't be located.

Mastered Skills (most kids can do): Let's just say "Yes, with vigor" to these.

Sits without support

Drags objects toward herself

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do):

Lunges forward or starts crawling - Yeahhhh. Starts, hah.

Jabbers or combines syllables - Yes. I swear she says "Heeeey, yeahhhh" to people and also possibly a version of Mama. It's more like "uhmmMah MAH" though and it is used indiscriminately.

Starts to experience stranger anxiety - She'll still let others hold her but she is definitely more reserved now. Until you offer her food, then Wren is your new BFF.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do):

Waves goodbye - I am trying to teach her this. I don't think she's getting it. Sometimes she'll throw out an arm in response but I could just be reading into her undeveloped fine motor control.

Stands while holding onto something - Pshaw. With vigor.

Bangs objects together - A recent discovery. It's now like a competition to see who can make Mommy's headache worse up in here.

Begins to understand object permanence - Perhaps. Wren is certainly down with the whole, "Hey, let me toss this toy you just gave me so you can pick it up again a billion times" thing but we tried the whole putting an object under a cloth game to see what she does and what she does ist lose interest and go find a magazine to eat.

Wordless Wednesday: Biker Boy

Because there are very few things meaner than giving a kid a gift he can't use for five months and Chicago winters are long and brutal, a few weeks ago Bruce and I gave Calder an early birthday present: his very first bike.

Oh, Crapsmas Tree

You know how they say that for safety reasons you should tether your Christmas tree to the ceiling so it doesn't fall over? No really, they say that. Has anyone actually every done this? Well, perhaps we should all start.

Tree.0

Sunday night we can home from a successful shopping trip (New sweaters! New phones!) and my goddamn tree had fallen over. Like, a spectacular broken fucking ornaments everywhere disaster. There was crying. There was cursing. There was Calder jumping around in a pile of shattered glass ornaments going "This is awesome! This is AWEsome!" No it's not, you little jerk. The best part is Bruce didn't even notice. I mean, the man walked in the door, went through the living room where Treepocalypse was and straight on to the bathroom and saw nothing. NOTHING. I was carrying stuff in from the car and about ten steps behind him and had this conversation with him immediately upon cresting the living room door:

Me: HOLY SHIT! Did you not feel the need to mention this?!

Bruce (from the bathroom): What?

Me: This! Thing! Here! In the living room!

Bruce: What thing?

Me (sobbing): Snerfling blergly fuckinggoddamnshitholeassface blarglemergle

Bruce: Have we been robbed or something?

Me: In a way. Robbed of Christmas spirit.

Bruce: Huh?

Me: THE CHRISTMAS TREE HAS FALLEN DOWN, YOU GODDAMN IDIOT.

Carnage

No, I have no idea why. The dog was in his crate and Molson, the fat bastard, can barely jump up onto the couch much less take out a 7 ft. tree. Based on my tree autopsy, it seems like the trunk became spongy so the base pins sunk into it on one side and pulled it away from the pins on the other causing it to list slightly. What caused it to finally tip is beyond me. I refuse to acknowledge that too many ornaments might be a real thing. The good news is none of my fancy-ass Hallmarks are damaged beyond repair and only one ornament from my childhood got smashed (and is quickly being replaced via the eBays). I did lose a bunch of vintage decorations that I had picked up at thrift stores and antique malls over the years and one very nice blown glass Stegosaurus. And no, I did not take any pictures of the carnage because I was too busy having a nervous breakdown while Bruce held the tree up and assigned Calder to collect the larger glass shards.

Tree.1

Of course I am not going to let a killer tree stay in my house even if it is mainly a danger only to ornaments and poorly supervised kids. I have both of those in spades. Luckily there's that humongous fake tree from years past and all the remaining ornaments have been swapped onto that one and the fancy real tree has been sent outside, still wrapped in lights, to wallow in its shame. So screw you, Poor Bob, and your spongy-ass trees. Screw you right in the ear. Though I should have known better. Yesterday I realized the sign on the tree lot reads: Poor Bob's Christmas Tree Laned.

I mean, that doesn't even make any sense.

Stocking Stress

So it turns out, if I want to get shit done, I have to take time away from other things like writing here and if I don't get shit done, I have nothing to write about. (Sorry about the cursing. For some reason I am extra cranky lately. Like, I hate everything for no apparent reason and dropping cuss words and f-bombs where Calder can't call me out on it is somewhat therapeutic.)

All that said, I DID SOMETHING!!! I wanted to make Wren her very own Christmas stocking and I totally did! It doesn't even look that awful. Using a combination of tutorials from PrudentBaby.com, I made a this quilted stocking for the baby from using a print I that came in a bundle from Fabricworm. It turns out fat quarters are the exact perfect size for making stockings.

Of course because nothing is ever easy it took me forever to accomplish this and I am maybe sort of put out on the idea of making ones for Bruce and Calder as well. You see, I was taught to sew by my mom when I was about eight. My non-Halloween accomplishments peaked with a patchwork pillow that I made for my aunt right around that same time. Sure, in college I made myself some really slutty tie back tops to wear to the bar where I worked but my normal sewing result is more like the dress I made for Ivy Day my senior year that came out so terribly that I decided to skip the event altogether. And these were all done before I had my allegedly nice sewing machine that is in reality an assy bitch (I told  you I was cranky) with some severe tension related issues. Thread tension at zero? Same sloppy back as when it's set at nine. Four is maybe even worse. After threading and re-threading the machine and cleaning the bobbin for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT, I finally got my recalcitrant sewing machine to cooperated and sew some quilted lines that would not fall apart immediately. Then I realized I had spaced them incorrectly and had to pick them all out and start over. I am not even going to go into the single fold vs. double fold bias tape issue other than to say that I bought the wrong one (twice), sewed some on, it looked horrible so I ripped it all off. In all, I think I picked a spools worth of stitches and now have arthritis in my hands.

So here it is, the stocking that ruined my hands and maybe caused me to cry more than once. Girl better appreciate it or else I might lose my mind.

There's No Doubt ABout It, He's My Kid

Things Calder may have said while he "helped" me set up the Christmas Tree this year:

Sigh. I love ormaments. They are so beautiful.

Sank you, Mommy. I so glad we got a real tree.

You're doing the ormaments wrong! You are RUINING MY LIFE!

Let's put more on.

Wren! Don't eat the ormaments. They are not toys! Or food!

I 'd say the boy is well on his way to being fully indoctrinated into the cult of How to Decorate the Shit Out of Your Christmas Tree.

We set up the tree the day after Thanksgiving, though Calder had been asking for me to get out all the holiday decorations since we put away the Halloween ones. Calder and I went out to Poor Bob's Tree Lot (IN SIXTY DEGREE WEATHER!!! ) and found the most magnificent bastard I thought would fit in our house. The creepy mofo who sold it to me even asked me three times if I was sure it would fit. I was. True fact: I still had to cut off 4 inches from the bottom and about six from the top. Derp. 

It's amazing we got it finished as fast as we did. As soon as Bruce dragged it into the house for me and got it in its stand, he bailed for hockey leaving me with a mobile baby who wanted to eat the tree and a boy who kept asking every ten minutes if I had gotten all the lights on yet. Short answer: No. Long answer: No, and not until the baby takes a nap because I am busy trying to pull individual conifer needles out of her mouth and nose. Once the lights were on I gave Calder the go ahead to start opening and hanging ornaments. I will not lie, it warmed my cold dead heart to see him pick out his favorites and set them up on the table so he could admire them for an extra bit of time before they were placed on the tree. And! He was the one pressing me to keep hanging them when Wren woke up from her nap ("Put her back, I not done yet!) Of course I totally went around later that night and rearranged most of what he hung up but I wouldn't go so far as to say they were life-ruining issues.