Being Thankful

Had I thought about this blog post before 10:00 tonight, I'd have taken more pictures to document the day.  As it stands, I figure I'll just toss out some of the random memories I have from today.  Background: my sister Jill and her boyfriend Joe came to have Thanksgiving with Sean, the kids, and me.  Ainsley and Xander dressed for the occasion.  Ainsley's shirt says:  I'm thankful for 1. Mom and Dad 2. Yummy Turkey 3. Football.  Xander's onesie says:  Daddy loves me more than football.  So, yeah, football is integral to our holiday.

Two Green Beans
I made two different green bean dishes today.  Jill and I love the classic green bean casserole.  Joe and Sean do not.  Beyond the green beans, our menu consisted of turkey, Stove Top, yams, mashed potatoes, crescent rolls, cranberry jelly, and gravy. Sean requested another vegetable beyond potato/potato.  Can't say I blame him.  So, I made all-day green beans and green bean casserole.  However, I forgot to pick up the all-day green beans fixins--all of them.  Even the beans. So, I sent Sean to the store to get the fixins while I worked on turkey prep.  When Sean goes to the store, we generally exchange several texts.  His text to me today: "Ah, Thanksgiving. The only day of the year you see this many men shopping for groceries."  Hee! To the right is the meal that my daughter ate.  Or should I say didn't eat.  She was so excited by the visit, all she wanted to do was show Jill and Joe her toys.  See commentary below.

Smurfs and Snoopy
While I was getting the food together, Xander slept in his swing and Ainsley watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  She was particularly drawn to Snoopy.  I tried to get her to check out the Smurfs, but she didn't really care.  She did keep pointing out the "chickens" every time a turkey appeared on screen.

JOE!  JILL!  Come on, guys!
When Ainsley has company (and make no mistake if you come to my house, you're Ainsley's company), her main objective is to boss her company around.  Because she's cute, she gets away with this.  But I find it particularly charming when it works on people who I normally wouldn't expect it to--like Jill's boyfriend Joe.  First, it must be known that Joe is an awesome guy.  He's kind, polite, funny, and, most importantly, loves my sister and treats her well.  Ainsley loves Joe.  When he's around, she'll make him play, read, rough house, whatever she wants.  And Joe's a willing participant.  It was sweet to watch her give him hugs.  It was hilarious to watch her discover his cartilage piercing.  She was fascinated that he had one ear pierced and the other not.  She just kept running her fingers along his ear back and forth from ear to ear.  He let her do this for about 5 minutes.

Mmmm cookies!

When we were decorating our Thanksgiving sugar cookies (turkeys, owls [Ainsley's choice], and acorns), Ainsley sat in Joe's lap...where she proceeded to sneak bites of cookie.  I'm no fool; I knew that she'd get a cookie in the decorating endeavor.  She snuck two for sure.  Also, Ainsley "decorating" cookies entails her dumping the small bowl of sprinkles onto one cookie.  I like to think of it as the Super Cookie.  Joe deemed it necessary that the Super Cookie be eaten right away.

Jill brought Ainsley some books that she'd gotten from a friend.  The most valuable of these books was a magnetic Barbie doll set thingy.  Basically it's modern paper dolls set but in magnet form.  Ainsley deemed this AWESOME.  Notice how she's holding the book away from Xander.  She does not want him near it!  Xander, of course, doesn't care.  Mr. X spent most of this holiday giggling, MMMMMMMmmmming, and nomming.  He had his first bite of non-rice-cereal food: mashed potatoes. He ate two or three small bites, but he wasn't really into them.

After Jill and Joe left to go home, I put Xander into his Thanksgiving p-jammers.  At this point, Ainsley decided it was time to play Tickle Tickle with Xander.  Of course, anytime A gives X attention, he goes C-R-A-Z-Y!  He'll giggle and giggle.  I was able to catch some of it.  Her method was to take her Lorax (Ax) and Seabee and tickle Xander's belly.  He would then laugh hysterically.  It was genius.



The visit really tuckered the kids out.  They had such a good time with Aunt Jill and Uncle Joe.  The playing and the laughing and the tickling and the couple bites of turkey we could convince A to eat should make for a wonderfully restful night.

Water Bottles and Growing Up

Summer 2009

Ainsley has had an insane obsession with water bottles since she could crawl.  Alysse documented this in Destin last year.

Nom nom nom

She would crawl after water bottles.  She would chew on water bottles.  She would cry if you took a water bottle away from her.  Water bottles made awesome swishy noises.  They felt good on her gums.  And, most importantly, they were nommable.






Well, now she's graduated to drinking from the water bottles.  She won't drink water in a sippy cup.  If we offer it to her in her cup--or even if her juice-to-water ratio isn't to Her Highness's liking, she'll defiantly dribble it out of her mouth.  As a matter of fact, one trip A and I took involved my not getting the ratio right as I gave her her cup in the back of the van.  Upon our arrival home (thankfully home), I discovered her cup empty and her outfit completely soaked.  She'd dribbled the whole damn cup all over herself.  Thanks, kid.

However, if the water is in a water bottle (like Daddy drinks), well, then all bets are off.  She'll drink tons and tons of water.  And after each drink, she'll narrate her action; this pleases her ENDLESSLY.  Please to enjoy:

In Xander news, Mr. X has become quite ambulatory.  He's been skooching and creeping all over the place.  His aim?  Things For the Nomming.  This is the face he makes when he goes in for a nom:

He's also becoming quite the big boy.  Want some perspective?  The picture on the left: Xander, 10 days old.  On the right: Xander, 5 months, 6 days old.  Really, he's too big for that bouncy seat, but he still loves it. For now...he gets to stay in it.  Until he realizes he's not going anywhere in it and declares it Dead. To. Him.

On the topic of his getting bigger, I have to say that I'm typing this blog as he sleeps in my lap at 11pm.  It's awesome because everybody knows a baby doesn't sleep any better than it does in its momma's lap.

It's also kinda bittersweet.  I'm really torn.  A part of me knows that he should be sleeping in his bed--and he would if I put him there.  But he's so warm (I get cold in the basement) and, more importantly, I'm cognizant that, barring unforeseen events, he is my last baby--and I want to cuddle with him as much as possible.  Too soon he'll turn into the snotty toddler telling me, "NOOO!"

Another part of me misses the independence of putting the kiddo to bed and chilling with Sean.  So, there are pros and cons for Xander and there are pros and cons for me.  Ugh.  I've been mulling this around in my head for the last couple of weeks...I've been erring on the side of cuddling.  I figure that's the best way to go.

Blood Draws and First Foods

I love my husband.  I particularly love how in our parenting, as in most aspects of our lives, we pick up each other's slack.

Today, Ainsley had to have her blood drawn.  Now, I'm a pretty strong woman.  I can deal with just about anything.  The items on my list of exceptions: 1) bodies of water that can support life beyond humans, 2) roller coasters, 3) blood draws.  Luckily, Sean is able to handle all three of these with ease.

Apparently, the only thing that could solve Ainsley's blood draw trauma was McDonalds.  Oh McDonalds fries.  How delicious they are!

So, how do I pick up the slack?  One of Sean's weaknesses is messy baby eating.  Luckily, I'm quite skilled at the using-the-spoon-to-wipe-the-face maneuver.  Xander has recently started eating rice cereal from a spoon.  He's not too good at it yet, but he really enjoys mushing the cereal around in his mouth then pushing it out all over himself.  Evidence below--and this is after I'd cleaned him up a bit. Also, if you don't believe my kids are siblings, check this.

Ainsley Has Emotions

As I'm drinking my morning coffee, Ainsley stumbles up to me, whimpering and pouting.

"What's wrong, baby?" I ask her.

*Whimper, whimper* "I'm sad," she, well, whimpers.

"Why?" I ask.

She then just looks at me. Her whimper stops. She then places her face in my empty yogurt bowl, lifts it out, and walks away.

So, Xander May Be Bulimic

Xander pukes. A lot. One time I came home from class and Sean said he was wearing his fifth T-shirt of the day--I'd only been gone an hour or two.

Today, about 10 minutes before I had to leave for class, Xander spewed about 1/2 a bottle of formula all over me. Sean found this immensely hilarious--I imagine it's because I was now feeling his pain. Of course, even though I'm slowly losing weight and getting to expand my wardrobe into some non-moomoo (and yeah, I feel the spelling of moo moo is more appropriate here) options, this was one of my last clean work shirts. Frustration did set in. Luckily, Xander has an innate survival mechanism to grin and be super cute right after spewing whatever liquid from whatever orifice.

Now for those of you unaware, Xander is a bit of a Hoss. He's moving into his 6-9 month clothes and he's only 5 1/2 months old; he wears size 4 diapers while his two year-old sister wears size 3. Don't get me wrong Jerry Springer won't be sending us to Disney World. It's probably because Ainsley is so pocket-sized, that Xander seems so big, but this kid can eat. And eat he does. A lot (as I said before). And quickly.

Before Ainsley was born, Sean and I watched some show that involved a baby pooping on someone. He shuddered at the fact and hoped we wouldn't have to deal with that with our kid; I told him that we'd be doing well if we didn't get poop in our mouths. I also live under no delusion that I'm not going to spend a majority of the next years with vomit, spit, pee (Xander peed in my face today and then GRINNED--refer to the previously mentioned survival mechanism--at me this morning), poop, blood (or blud-uh) all over me. That's what I signed up for when I became a mom. I can take it.

But I wonder if X really needs to binge on a 6oz. bottle so that he can Exorcist it all over me or Sean. And I don't mean to mock boys who actually have eating disorders, but, seriously, WTF, kid?

I've Been Inspired! Also, Ainsley Is Literate.

So, Erin Banks Kirkham has this blog...the Wiferly Project and she's been posting a lot about her newly married life. And it's inspired me. So I'm going to post more...I figure even if I'm only diligent for a few weeks, it'll make my grandma happy--cause I know she checks this (Hi Grandma!).

I'm taking this literacy class right now and we're talking about how children acquire literacy and all that good stuff. Of course, it gets me to thinking about my own literacy and how I honestly don't remember learning to read (and I'm going to mix literacy and reading a lot in this blog--literacy scholars, step off)--and not in the "I don't remember much about my childhood" way because I remember a good deal about my childhood. I distinctly recall being in kindergarten and everyone learning to read (cat, dog, boy, etc.) and being IMMENSELY bored because I already knew that stuff. Sean's also a pretty avid reader--he probably reads 2-3 books a month (fatty sci-fi books too..so that's impressive to me anyway). With this in mind, I shouldn't be all too surprised that Ainsley is a reader. See photographic evidence below.

The other day, Ainsley was quiet. I assumed she was doing something awesome, like putting a whole roll of toilet paper down the toilet. Instead, I found her reading to Dora. *squee*

I haven't been a reading Nazi like some of the UberMoms I've met or heard of...I don't make sure I read to her for 20 minutes every night. But I do read to her a bit most days--and I'm sure Sean does too. This morning I was reading for my literacy class when Ainsley came up to me and said, "Whatcha doing there? Reading?" Then later as she played with the foam letters Sean bought her for the bathtub, she meticulously placed each letter in a tile and named the ones she knew. "A" "R" "H" "I" "E" "M" "X" "G" "L" "O" "9" (yeah, there are numbers too) I was stunned. Ainsley knows almost 40 percent of the alphabet--and she just turned two. I have to admit, I had a few preening moments in the bathroom as she found the letters.

Ok, this isn't the normal cute anecdote that I hope to post more regularly, but it's what I've been thinking about today.

In Xander news: his tooth is more prominent. Photos as they become available. Until then, feast your eyes on some Halloween cuteness.