You Have to Be Kidding Me!

Four years ago a young couple found out they were expecting their first child.  The young couple prepared for the baby, and dreamed of all of the wonderful moments to come in life.  They decided to name the baby "Ian Anderson" in honor of the leader of Jethro Tull but knew their baby would be much more talented than his namesake.  As the young mother pushed in the delivery room, and her husband held the bed pan under her chin to catch the puke as she birthed the child, she knew that every discomfort and ounce of pain were well worth it.  As soon as the parents saw the baby, they were madly in love and finally understood what life was all about.  The baby was the most cherished child in the entire world, and everything he did was remarkable and awe inspiring and fabulous................and then the child turned three.

I am probably one of the most patient individuals on the planet, but today I was pushed to the breaking point.  I almost, ALMOST, found it amusing in a way, because over the weekend I attended a "Living the Faith" women's conference.  The speaker, Lysa TerKuerst, spoke of how easy it is to praise God and to ask for His help.  But in reality, we should be asking God to challenge us so we can prove to Him that even when things get tough, we will still live our lives according to His laws.  By the way, if you EVER get the chance to hear Lysa speak: do it, do it, do it!!!!  She is an amazing woman whether you are the most devout Christian or the most steadfast Atheist.  She is so captivating and inspiring.

So, what actually happened today to push me to the brink?  Well, it all started when Eli requested Ian at nap time.  A couple of weeks ago we moved the boys into the same bedroom.  Now, whenever it is time to go to sleep, they like to talk to each other.  I've stood outside the door several evenings just listening to all of the things they feel are important enough to discuss.  It always makes my heart swell to hear them having their little conversations and giggling at each other.  So, when Eli told me, "Need talk a Ian," after we were finished reading/rocking, I fulfilled his wishes.  I got Ian ready for nap time and snuggled them both into their beds around 1:00 pm.

I went to the living to enjoy a little TV.  We are still on a strict "No TV" policy for the boys, so I turned the volume really low and engrossed myself in a rerun of Intervention.  After about 30 minutes, I heard a very disturbing noise coming from the bedroom.  I marched myself back to the bedroom, thoroughly annoyed by the lack of naps taking place, and opened the door.  Eli was chilling in his crib, and Ian was standing in the middle of the room.  His face instantly took on that "deer in the headlights look," and I knew that whatever I was on the brink of discovering was bad.....really, really bad.  Immediately, my nose was filled with a familiar, yet unplaceable, scent.

"What is that smell?" I asked as I took in the state of the room.  The toiletries basket had been pulled off of the dresser and the contents were strewn across the freshly vacuumed area rug.  Other than that, everything seemed to be okay.

Ian just continued to look at me with that blank stare that ALL males have perfected.

"WHAT is that smell?" I demanded.  Then my eyes focused on the source of the aroma, and I instantly knew that I had two options.  1) Send Ian to my room while I attempted to cool down or 2) Call the police and turn myself in for God knows what.  I, thankfully, settled for option one.  I escorted Ian to my room, pulled the door closed behind him, and sought out my phone.  I had to talk to Cole, like right now, or I was going to wind up completely losing it and going to jail.  Luckily, Cole answered at 1:34 pm.

Cole: What's up?

Me: You have to talk me down.

Cole: What happened?

Me: Ian sprayed baby oil ALL over EVERY surface of his room.  It's in PUDDLES on the floor, the book bench, the rug.  It's ALL over his bedding.  It's ALL over his curtains.  I don't know what to do.

Cole: (Something not very nice)

Me: Don't tempt me.  You are supposed to be talking me down.  (contemplative silence)  He's so lucky you're not here.

Cole: Yep.  He is.

(More talking, more talking, more talking)

Me: Thanks for talking me down.

Cole: Yep.  See ya tonight.

Now, it was time for damage control.  I'm no foolio.  I worked as a T.A. to the head of the Textiles department while I was in college.  I am WELL aware of what oil does to fabric, and at this point I was steaming mad.  I mean, absolutely, positively furious.  Ian had just ruined every single textile in his bedroom!!!!  Including his black-out curtains, which aren't cheap.

Now, I knew what my mom was going to say: "Oil is going to ruin it," but you know how you view your mother.  In the eyes of her children, a mom can overcome any obstacle, for instance, the very basic laws of chemistry.  So, when mom answered the phone with her very familiar and comforting, "Hey, Dani.  What's up?" I knew she wouldn't disappoint me.  I quickly gave her the skinny on the gigantic mess lurking ominously behind the boys' bedroom door.  Her response?  "Oh.  My.  God."  We commiserated briefly, and then mom emerged from her secret hideout, cape fluttering and S-insignia blazing.  Super-mom had managed to scrounge up some secret recipe for battling villains, I mean oil.

The devil-oil, I mean baby-oil.  Not a single drop left of a brand new bottle.

As she read and read and read and read...............I began to think, "Is it really worth all the trouble?" but being the cheapskate I am, I quickly snapped out of my temporary insanity and manned up.  I sent a text to my neighbor, Katie, asking if she had any corn starch.  Corn starch will supposedly pull the excess oil out of the fabric.  It is the first line of defense for a baby oil attack.  I sat my phone on the counter and went to assess the damage.  At this point Ian was still in solitary in my room, and Eli was still chilling in his crib.  I carefully walked into the room because the copious amounts of baby oil on the hard wood floor had turned the hallway into something straight out of MXC.  I flipped on the light to see what I was up against and to remove Eli from the crib.  When I looked down at Eli, smiling sweetly, memories from 18 years ago flooded my mind, and I was frozen in place while I replayed the entire sequence of events in my head.

When I was in middle school, my parents put in a pool.  I was a total water bug the first summer the pool was in.  I spent more time in that pool than I did on dry land.  My mother was also a total water bug, but not for the swimming, for the tanning.  My mother is a sun worshiper.  For the tan, yes, but mainly because she is ALWAYS freezing, and tanning is about the only way she can ever get warm.  Mom's tanning habits really began to irritate dad as the summer progressed.  He was always hounding her about using tanning oils in the pool.  The tanning oils will deteriorate the pool liner and greatly shorten its life span.  They went back and forth about the tanning oils because mom wanted to use them, and dad kept telling her: absolutely not.

During the course of this, ahem, disagreement, my hair began going down hill.  It seemed like no matter what I did, I could NOT get my hair clean.  I would wash it two or three times every day, and still the oil build up kept getting worse and worse and worse.  Finally, my dad had had enough.  We were all in the kitchen, and dad finally had to get his frustrations out.

"Stop using tanning oil in the pool!" he yelled at my mom.

"I did!" she retorted, equally frustrated.

"I don't believe you.  The pool is ruining the girls' hair.  Look at Danielle's hair.  It's disgusting!" he bellowed.

"Well, I don't know why," she fired back.  "I quit using the oil a long time ago."

By this time I was bawling.  I was witnessing a disagreement between my parents, something they always dealt with privately, and my dad had just said what everyone else was thinking: I looked disgusting.  Now it was my turn to defend myself, and try to salvage a shred of my eleven-year-old dignity.

"I have been washing my hair with that Papaya Plus like three times everyday!  I'm using a ton of it.  I don't know why my hair is like this!" I shouted through my tears.

"What are you using?" mom asked.

"The 2-in-1 Papaya Plus," I sniffled.

"That's not 2-in-1.  It's only conditioner.  No wonder your hair is a mess," mom said.

And that was that.  The mystery of my disgusting hair was solved.  For over a week, I had just been conditioning two or three times a day and never washing.  Plus, mom and dad's ongoing argument was finally put to rest.

Back to the present.  Looking down at Eli, and his frighteningly greasy head, I realized that not only had Ian doused every single surface of his bedroom, Eli's head had also been the target of his baby oil rampage.  His hair was like an oil slick!  I was so ticked off because I had planned on skipping baths tonight, out of respect for my poor dry, cracked hands.  That was no longer a possibility, but I couldn't even think about it at the time.  I lifted Eli out of his crib and sent him to play in the other room while I began to clean.

No, that isn't stylishly piecy.  It's covered in baby oil!

As I looked around, I realized the full extent of the damage.  The rug was soaked.  The book bench was absolutely covered in and dripping oil.  The curtains had spots the size of dinner plates and so did Ian's bedding.  I didn't even know where to start.  I decided cleaning up the actual puddles, yes puddles, of oil from the floor would be the best first step.  It took two baby bath towels to sop up the mess, but the floors were still dangerously slick.  Then I began gathering all of the textiles that needed to be cleaned, i.e. everything but one curtain panel.

I went to check my phone to see if Katie had responded to my text.  She hadn't.  I decided to call my neighbor, June.  June only had a couple of tablespoons of corn starch, but offered to go to the store and buy some for me.  Are you kidding me?!?!?!  How awesome is she?!?!?  I gladly accepted such a generous offer because I was in the middle of an oil crisis comparable to BP's mess in the gulf in 2010.  I didn't have time to play the whole, "Oh, I couldn't let you do that" game.  I NEEDED SUPPLIES!!!!  I am so, so, so grateful to June.  If you see June out and about, give her a hug and tell her I let you know what an awesome person she is.  Here's a picture of her so you know what she looks like.........

June

While I waited for my delivery of corn starch, I scrubbed the floor with Dawn for the first of six times.  Yes, SIX times.  The oil was so thick on the floor that one, two, three, four, five moppings were simply not enough.  I will say that I have never oiled our hardwood floors, so I guess that in some strange way, Ian did me a favor.  While waiting for the floor to dry, I lugged all of the oil-laden linens to the dining room.

I spread all of the fabrics out on the dining room table so I could cover the oil spots in corn starch.  Once I had everything in the fish bowl that is our dining room, all of the natural light made me acutely aware of the fact that there were a lot more spots than I had originally believed.  Sweet peaches.

Well, I had already mentally committed to salvaging these fabrics, like a true Supermom, so I needed to just suck it up and get to work.  In the mean time, Ian let himself out of solitary and went to play in his room, slamming the door behind him to insure his privacy.  The last thing I wanted to do was be around Ian, so I didn't even bother to reprimand the door slamming and went back to covering everything in corn starch.

Corn starch is an f-ing nightmare.  Its fine particles lingered for minutes in the air after the slightest disruption.  It swirled around me and slowly covered the floor in a thin layer of fine powder.  I was so irritated by the mess I was going to have to clean up because of a mess I was trying to clean up, that I was ready to throw all of the fabrics into the yard and start a fire.  The incessant yelling, "Help us, mommy!" coming from the bedroom wasn't improving my mood at all.  It wasn't a true cry for help, it was more of a whiny, annoying cry for help.  After I finally had all of the oil spots covered, I went to see what could possibly be wrong with the boys now.

I turned the knob and pushed open the door, only to be utterly confused when it wouldn't move.

"Ian.  What are you doing?  Get out of the way, please," I hollered into the room.

"I'm not," he called back.

"What's in front of the door?  Move it," I instructed.

"I can't," Ian whined.

Now, this is hard to describe, but at the time the closet door was open.  Whenever I pushed on the door to the room, the door to the closet would prevent it from opening.  I couldn't see into the room.  I pushed and pushed and pushed, but I could not get the door to open.  I began to panic.  Even though I couldn't see what was going on, I knew exactly what was blocking the door.  I thought about calling my neighbor, Katie, because I didn't know how I was going to be able to get the boys out of the bedroom.  I don't know what I thought she would be able to do, but it seemed like the best possible idea at the time.  I knew the windows were locked, so the only way into the room was through the doorway or busting out a window.  For the next TWENTY minutes, I shoved with all 125 lbs. (yeah, right) of me.  Of course, I was trying to remain cool as a cucumber as my boys were becoming more and more panicked by the minute.  Eventually, I was able to dig deep for every ounce of strength I had, and I knocked the room door free of the closet door.  I was then able to see exactly what I suspected. 

When I had stripped Ian's bed, I had had to take the mattress off of the box spring in order to remove the fitted sheet covering the box spring.  I had left the mattress propped against Eli's crib and didn't think anything about it when I heard Ian slam the door upon his entry of the bedroom.  The boys had knocked the mattress over and it was wedged longways between the door and Ian's bed.  The bedroom door: Could. Not. Open.

Since I couldn't see into the room, I stuck the camera in the room to take a picture and make sure the boys were alright and out of the way.  Aside from being extremely puzzled by the arm sticking through the crack of the door, they were fine.

I was able to stick my arm in the crack and eventually lift the mattress off of the floor.  It was incredibly difficult because it was SUCH an awkward angle and I had to push the door into the mattress in order for the crack to be large enough for me to maneuver my arm freely.  But, ultimately, my children were freed from their self-created prison.

It was then time to go back to the dining room and begin removing the first round of corn starch.  I had to take all of the fabrics over to the sink, shake them out, scrub all of the sticky starch off with a toothbrush, and then inspect the spots.  If the spot was gone, or at least greatly diminished, the fabric went in the "hand wash with dish soap" pile.  If the spot was still there, the fabric went back to the table for another round of corn starch.  The results were not good.  What do you know, the baby oil did exactly what oil does......stained the fabrics.  

After shaking out the first round of corn starch

I was one curtain panel away from cleaning the first round of corn starch off of everything, when I discovered Ian was being a three-year-old boy.

He had climbed into the chair at the end of the table and just helped himself to a little play time in the last remaining pile of corn starch.  I couldn't believe that I was this close to having the first mess under control, and then Ian had to..........be Ian.  If I wasn't in the middle of cleaning up a gallon of baby oil, perhaps this wouldn't have bothered me so much.  But I gotta admit, I was irritated.  I brushed him off, repressed the urge to scream, and sent him on his way.

I now took all of the still-stained linens back to the dining room and covered them in a second round of corn starch.  The corn starch was still a nightmare, just as it was the first time, but I was hopeful that it would work.  Maybe it's just the tightwad in me, but I really thought that all of my efforts to clean the baby oil would be rewarding or something.  They didn't feel rewarding at all.  All I felt was thoroughly irritated and ready to flip out.  I was also read to call Johnson & Johnson what a gigantic load of bull-corn their "child proof" caps 

were.

While the second round of corn starch absorbed the oil for another fifteen minutes, I returned to the sink to scrub the sheets and one curtain panel with dish soap in HOT water.  This was the most ridiculous process I could have ever imagined.  I finally scrubbed the sheets and the first panel well enough that they were ready to go into the washing machine.  I had to wash everything on warm to make sure I didn't set the stain.  While the washer did its thang and the corn starch absorbed the oil, I went to scrub the floor again.  Then it was back to the sink to scrub all of the linens with a toothbrush in order to remove all of the corn starch.  By this point, Eli's quilt, one more curtain panel, and Ian's pillow sham were ready to be scrubbed with dish soap in hot water.  The fitted sheet for the box spring and the last curtain panel needed ANOTHER round of corn starch.

I got right back to it, submerging my gloved hands in the piping hot water and scrubbing away.  The whole time I was conversing with God.  I kept thinking about everything Lysa had said at the conference.  Talking about facing challenges and behaving according to the way God wants us to behave.  Being calm and patient. Parenting with love and kindness when it is really, really, really difficult.  I could just picture God sitting in a Laz-E Boy, laughing his head off as I tried to remain calm in the midst of my greasy disaster.  What a warped sense of humor.

After I had my starching/soaking/washing under control, I went to scrub the floor for a THIRD and FOURTH time, and I was burning up.  Talk about a work out!  This was insane.  So, I decided to ditch my sweatshirt, and I realized what I disaster I had become.  I was covered in just about as much corn starch as every other piece of fabric in this house.  Gross.  Gross, gross, gross.

 Eventually, things were finishing up in the final step of the cleaning process.  This is the best part. (Not at all true)  You dry everything to see if the whole corn starch/dish soap/washing machine thing works.  BUT.....you can't use the dryer, you have to air dry it because the dryer will what?  That's right, "set" the damn "stain!"  Are.  You.  Kidding.  Me?  So, I now have a gigantic pile of laundry that I am attempting to air dry in my laundry room because you KNOW I don't want to what?  Yes: "Set the Stain."

Once I started arranging the stuff for air drying, I of course went to scrub the floor AGAIN!  Aaaaahhhhh!!!! Are you kidding me?!?!  Damn you, baby oil.  Damn you!

While this entire clean-up effort was under way, I was still "parenting" the boys.  I use that term VERY loosely.  During the clean-up, I allowed the boys to watch TV, which has been outlawed for the past two and a half weeks.  I have no clue what the boys watched.  I'm fairly certain that it was a train DVD, but I'll be honest, they could have popped in Goodfellas and I wouldn't have noticed.  I was just a wee bit busy with something else.  I also managed to feed the boys a snack in the midst of the chaos.  Impressed?  Don't be.  As far as I can recollect, I gave Eli between five and seven Kraft singles, two sticks of string cheese, three packets of Pez, and a Kool-Aid Jammer.  Ian ate one stick of string cheese, three packets of Pez, and sprayed his Kool-Aid Jammer all over the front of the washing machine by accident.  I tossed him a towel, said "Clean it up," and walked back to the sink to hand scrub curtains again.  I just couldn't deal with that mess too.

From discovery to neutralization took three and a half hours!  I am absolutely exhausted.  I can barely walk through the house because my feet absorbed so much oil during the clean-up that it's like walking on ice.  I think that I managed to salvage all of the linens, but at this point I really don't care any more.  I love being a mommy.  It brings me more joy to care for my family than anything else even comes close to bringing.  But, I swear to you, if I have to clean up a full bottle of baby oil one more time...........I'm leaving and never coming back.

This Too Shall Pass

It's Monday.  What better way to start the week than a ridiculous happening at the Anderson house.  This morning after I dried my hair, I was greeted by Ian in the hallway.  The following conversation ensued.

Ian: I got a wheel stuck in my throat.

Me: You got a wheel stuck in your throat?

Ian: Yeah.

Me: Are you okay?!

Ian: Yeah.

Me: What wheel was it?  Where is it?

Ian: (points to chest)

Me: You swallowed it?!?!?

Ian: (nods)

Me: What kind of wheel was it?  Come show me. (walks into toy room)

Ian: (following behind me) I can't show you.  It's in my tummy.

Me: Was it a tractor wheel?  A train wheel?  A wagon wheel?

Ian: I want it out of my tummy.

Me: Well, I can't get it out.  You are going to have to poop it out.

Ian: (looking a little more than alarmed) I have to poop it?!?!?!

Me: Yes, baby.  You have to poop it.  (pulls out box of tractor toys and starts showing different toys to Ian)  Was the wheel like this?  Or like this?

Ian: (drops to knees and begins rummaging through tractors) It came off of my gator.  (pulls out gator and inspects it)  Hey!  This has all its wheels.  (thoroughly confused)

Here is the "fully wheeled" gator.

Me: Well, yeah it does, but was it a wheel like this?

Ian: Yeah.

So, of course, I call Cole to tell him that it's only 9:00 a.m. and we are already dealing with the daily madness that occurs in all households with toddlers.  Cole laughs at first and then says, "I think you should call the doctor to make sure this is going to come out.  That it isn't going to obstruct anything."

(Light Bulb) Ah, yes.  I hadn't considered "obstructions."  So, I called the doctor and the nurse said that if he isn't experiencing acute pain, we should be just fine and it should be out in a week or two.  A week or TWO!

Cole did have something positive to say about the situation.  At least we made it three years before something like this happened.

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone.  Yippee!  It's not that I don't like Halloween, it's that I just don't care.  However, the boys were so adorable!  Ian was a fireman, and Eli was his dalmatian.  On trick or treat night, however, Eli needed to wear a jacket because it was cold outside, so he was like a half man, half dog character.  He was a "mog," like Barf.  Try as I might, I wasn't able to get a very good picture of them.

I, too, dressed up this year for the first time in probably 18 years.  Why, you ask?  Well, if we wore a costume to class on Monday we got 5 bonus points for our test on Friday, so I did it.  I tried to make it something inconspicuous.  I decided on a crayon costume.  I made it by painting on a sweatsuit and made a hat out of poster board.  The sweatsuit was blue, and when trying to think of a name for my "shade" Cole started cracking up and threw out a fantastic idea.  It was crass, but I went for it anyway.  In the end, I dressed up as "Calc III Blue."  I wore the costume for trick or treat, but I wore a jacket so nobody could see what color I was.  I figured what was acceptable, even appreciated, on a college campus was quite inappropriate for a night of family fun.

How cute is he?

Ian was looking for his little firetruck from Aunt Heather.  He was into the whole "fireman" thing.

This looks screams, "I'm mischievous."

Playing ice-cream shop while waiting for Cole to get home to trick or treat

I loved this picture.

How happy is that dude?

Eli just wants to see the loot

The haul

The Happy Halloweeners.  

The Magic of the Season

This post goes over some of the "inner workings" of Zimmerman Christmas magic.  If you ever let your little Believers read along with you, I would advise you to keep this post to yourself.


I know that it's actually Halloween today, but I can't help but think ahead to Christmas.  I can't wait for tomorrow so I can finally focus on Christmas because it will be November 1st!  That's right, once it's November 1st I say that visions of sugarplums are totally acceptable, and at my house, they are wholeheartedly encouraged.  I absolutely ADORE Christmas and everything that goes along with it.  I LOVE the music, the decorations, the excitement, the gifts, the shopping, the wrapping paper, the family dinners, and on and on and on......  But, my most favorite part of the Christmas season, is all of its magic.

When my nephew became old enough to believe and anticipate Santa Claus, it gave Zimmerman Family Christmases new life.  It had been a while since any of us had believed, and Christmas morning just wasn't what it once was.  Evan made the holiday season 1000 times better than I could ever remember it being, and as his enthusiasm grew, so did mine.  And mine hasn't stopped, or even slowed, yet!  One of the key factors to our Christmas enthusiasm is Bernice.  Who is Bernice? you ask.  Allow me to explain.

When Evan was five, my sister Jessica and I went shopping in Tuscola and took Evan with us.  He was really well behaved for the majority of the day, but around lunch time he started getting impatient and his listening comprehension was a little lower than usual.  Jess and I decided we should go eat lunch and let Evan recharge.  We headed over to Pizza Hut to score some grub, and Evan was not in the mood to wait.  Aside from one woman dining alone, we were the only patrons.  Jessica tried to get Evan to sit still and wait patiently, but he just couldn't/didn't want to do it.  I eventually intervened.

I leaned in close to Evan and said, "You know, when it gets near Christmas time, Santa disguises his elves as regular people and sends them out to watch the little kids.  This way Santa knows if the kids are listening to their parents and being good."

His eyes were large and he was as still as a statue, "Really?" he asked in amazement.

"Really," I responded earnestly.  "I think I saw that woman over there has pointy elf ears."

Evan quit moving completely and stared, utterly transfixed, at our fellow diner.  "Aunt Dani, are you serious?" he asked again.

"Yes, I'm serious," I told him.  Immediately Evan dropped down to his hieny and zipped his lips.  He was an absolute dream for the rest of the meal.

After lunch we headed home.  We had been in the car for about 15 minutes when Evan asked from the comfort of his car seat, "Aunt Dani, was that lady really an elf?"

I couldn't believe that we were talking about this again.  It was just a little story I threw out to get Evan to eat well, and now he was really curious about it.  So, I decided to play it up.  I LOVE holiday magic, and getting the chance to create some magic for the most important "man" in my life was a dream come true.  "Yes, buddy.  I know she was an elf," I told him.

"Well, she is going to tell Santa what a good boy I am.  I listened to my mom and ate my lunch.  I'll be on the nice list," he avowed.

As we drove the rest of the way home, I was thinking about how I would continue to grow this little story line.    I finally decided to give Evan a call that night, claiming to be the Elf from Pizza Hut.  I was going to tell him I saw him behaving well for his mother and to keep up the good work.  I adopted a ridiculous "elf" voice so he wouldn't know it was me, and I named myself Bernice, sister of Bernard Elf from "The Santa Claus."

I called Evan that night, and while I praised him and told him all about Santa's helper elves, I never heard a peep on the other end of the line.  When I got ready to tell him good-bye, Evan began rattling off toy requests at warp speed and assuring me that he was an extra good boy.  I hung up the phone and was positively beaming.  Evan had just had a truly magical Christmas experience, and I knew that his head was absolutely spinning with amazement.

A few days later I decided to take the magic to the next level.  All talk around the Thompson household revolved around Bernice the Elf, and while I know that believing isn't seeing for a five year old, I wanted Evan to have solid proof of Bernice's existence.  I bought a kid sized Santa hat and a container of silver glitter.  I then printed out a list of names, Evan's name, Evan's cousins, friends from daycare, etc, and put two boxes next to each name.  One column of boxes were "nice" boxes, while the other column were "naughty" boxes.  I checked the "nice" box beside each child's name, and I left Evan's boxes empty.  I had all of the supplies needed for a truly magical discovery.

I drove to my sister's house and snuck into the yard.  I dropped the Santa hat on the ground and sprinkled the silver glitter all over the hat and around on the ground.  I then rolled up the nice/naughty list and put it in the branches of the bushes below the living room window.  I ran up the front steps and rang the bell.  When I got inside and saw Evan I told him, "You have to come outside!  I was just driving by and you will never believe what I saw!  Hurry, hurry, hurry, let's go!!!"

Evan pulled on shoes and a coat faster than he ever had in his life.  We jumped down the front steps and around to the side of the porch.  I pointed at the ground and yelled, "Look!!!  Look at that!"

Evan was staring directly at the hat, and barely speaking in more than a whisper, "What is that?" he asked.

I said, "That's a real life Elf hat.  I was driving by and saw Bernice outside of your window.  When she saw my car, she just disappeared."

Evan crept slowly toward the hat, and very slowly bent down to gently touch the elf hat covered it glitter.  "What's this?" he asked in reference to the glitter.

"That's Elf Magic," I told him.

"Oh, wow," he said in his small little five-year-old voice.  And oh, so gingerly, he lifted the hat from the ground and placed it on his head.  As he did, the glitter fluttered down around his glowing face, and it was a most wonderful sight to behold.  I directed his attention to the bushes. He carefully reached into the bushes, and using only his forefinger and thumb, extracted the rolled up list.

"What's this, Dani?" he asked in a still hushed voice.

I took the list from his small hands and unfurled it.  "It's a Naughty and Nice list.  It has everyone's name with a nice check beside it, but your name doesn't say anything yet."

"I'm good!  I'm nice!  It should say I'm nice!" he shouted.

I replied, "I know that.  I think I just scared Bernice away before she could check the nice box.  I'm sure she'll be back, so you had better be a good boy all day every day so she can tell Santa what she saw here."

"I will!" Evan promised and started running back inside to tell him mom and dad what he had found.

For the past four years, Bernice has dutifully served Santa by being the Personal Attending Elf to the Thompson Family.  She makes phone calls out of the blue, sends letters as reminders that she is watching, and has even attended school Christmas programs.  Her presence is felt by all members of the Thompson family, and is one of my most cherished elements of the holiday season.

This year will be Ian's and Eli's first year with our Personal Attending Elf, Skippy.  Skippy was assigned to our family, by Santa himself, last year.  Skippy will most likely introduce himself through a letter or phone call very soon, but will become a regular part of our holiday festivities after Thanksgiving.  He will watch us as we prepare for the Christmas season, praising us for our kindness and loving gestures and expressing his concern when we forget to use generosity and patience.  Skippy will visit us, I'm sure, and leave behind a personal effect to make his existence known to all members of the Anderson Family.

Personal Attending Elves are unique to each family, but each child within the family is watched by the same elf.  It takes a lot of time and energy for an elf to keep up with his toy building and the Nice/Naughty watch.  Elves are required to check in several times during the holiday season and each time the elf reports to Santa to tell him what they saw.  A Personal Attending Elf adds so much magic to the holidays it is just unbelievable.  Christmas is only 53 days away, and if you would like for Santa to assign a P.A.E. to your family, let me know.  I've got a guy, and we can make it happen.

I Never Wood Have Pegged You as Crafty

Wow, oh wow, are we having a big week......and it's only Monday!

First of all, Saturday night we decided to move Eli into Ian's room and turn Eli's room into a play room.  I am really not loving the new arrangement, but I'm pretty sure this is just the way it's going to be.  I hate that there is no room for a rocking chair in the boys' room, and it just makes it feel like we are past the "nursery" stage of life.  Now I have to rock them in the play room and carry them into the bedroom, and it's just not as cozy.  It makes me very sad.  :(

Second of all, the boys are not allowed to watch TV this week.  The boys love to get their day going with a little Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and then a little Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but this week they are just going to have to rely on my morning entertainment, Mike in the Morning on 97.5.  I don't really like Mike in the Morning, but my little kitchen radio won't pick up any other stations, so I've learned to appreciate it.

Third, and most exciting, our peg people arrived!!!!  All 136 of them.  They arrived after lunch, so while Eli was napping, Ian and me ripped open the packaging and covered the living room rug in peg people.  I then fetched our washable markers, and we started to decorate.  Ian quit decorating pretty quickly and started requesting characters while he played.  I don't blame him.  Playing was definitely more fun than decorating, but I still managed to make a few cool peg people.

First up........meet the Anderpegs (and pretend I swept the dead leaves off of the porch before I took the picture).

Ian drew "eyebrows" on himself with a pinkish marker.  Not quite the color of his actual eyebrows, but a pretty fair representation of his scar.

Here are the Anderpegs with 130 of their future friends.  Two in the crowd are already decorated.

 Little pegs all in a row

What a good lookin' fam.

This was the original me.  The marker slipped while I was drawing my right eye, and then I tried to make the left eye match.  It ended up looking very "Black Hole Sun," and I was totally freaked out by my appearance.  This particular person might become kindling because I really don't like it.

The new me.  Much foxier, don't you think?  And way better hair!

  

A little construction worker/fireman.

This $30.00 bag of peg people was a GREAT purchase!  There are sooooooo many of them that neither Ian nor Eli can complain about not having enough to play with.  Plus, our imaginations are our only limitation when it comes to what toys we can have.  I'm going to start painting some of the pegs because paint will look better than marker and because I will be able to add more detail with a finer brush.  I'll update as our pegs become more and more interesting and diverse.

Oh, the Pastabilities!

Alright, so I stole the title from that Italian restaurant in Decatur, but it's still cute.  Right?  Right.

I've been wanting to make macaroni art with the boys for a while because I remembered when my nephew, Evan, did it when he was a small fry.  I FINALLY looked up how to do it and this morning I colored the pasta.  This is SO inexpensive.  The box of pasta was $1.00, the vingegar was $1.39, and I already had the food coloring.  In order to dye the noodles, you have to mix food coloring with white vinegar, which I believe is how you color Easter eggs.  I was so bummed out when I saw the directions.  Vinegar smells SO disgusting.

I remember the first time I ever smelled vinegar.  (I have a lot of food memories which probably comes as no surprise considering my, ahem, "pleasantly plump" physique.)  I was at my Grandma and Grandpa Zimmerman's house playing school bus on the open staircase of their 1948 farmhouse, and I know that I was either kindergarten aged or younger.  I smelled something odd, but then the smell went away.  I thought it was gross, but didn't have a clue what it was.  A little while later, I smelled it again but this time it wouldn't go away.  The smell was so disgusting I felt sick.  I walked down the stairs and into the kitchen.  My grandma was in there, and the smell didn't seem to be alarming to her.  I walked around the island to the stove, looked up at my grandma and said, "What is that smell?"  She said, "It's the vinegar I'm cleaning with.  Don't you like it?"  To this day I don't know if she was kidding or serious.  My grandma was a wild woman and it really could have gone either way.

This morning as I was measuring and pouring the vinegar all I could think about were the hours upon hours I spent at my grandparents' house when I was a little kid.  I LOVED it at their house!  My grandpa would pick me up from morning kindergarten everyday, then we would rush home so he could make me lunch before watching The Bold and The Beautiful.  And heaven help you if you dared to ask him a question while his show was on.  He was never mean, but you could tell he was seriously ticked off when unnecessarily interrupted.  I could write about times at my grandparents' for days, but this is about pasta......so......moving on.

I had red, blue, green, and yellow food coloring, so of course we used all of those colors.  Then I decided to make purple.  Well, wonders of wonders, I messed it up.  I am not artsy.  I don't understand "expressing yourself" through anything but straight forward words.  I don't get it.  I don't understand it.  And to be quite honest, I don't even appreciate it.  Art just isn't my thing, so it never occurred to me to check the "recipe" for purple food coloring.  I put in six drops of red and six drops of blue.  The result was disgusting.  It was just really, really, really ugly.  I was so disappointed.  Who would have guessed that you need to mix the red and blue in a 3:2 ratio.  What the heck, food coloring?

So, now we are in a holding pattern.  I dyed one box of Rigatoni, and we are waiting for it to dry.  I think we are simply going to string the noodles to work on hand-eye coordination.  I also have some Trio building blocks that come with tall rods that I am going to put into a base of blocks for Eli to "thread" his noodles on.  I can't wait to see the end results.  For now, please enjoy my attempt of an "artsy" picture of our dyed noodles.  I think they look really great.

I Need....No, You Want

Christmas time is quickly approaching, and I couldn't be happier.  The boys and I have already spent hours perusing the goods at Hobby Lobby, and Ian is just as pumped up for Christmas as I am.  I know that I will have four Christmas trees this year for sure, but I would really like to have two more.  Call me crazy, but I don't think that Cole is going to be on board for trees number 5 and 6.  For our next "Date Night In" I might have to buy him a bottle of wine and discuss it at the end of the evening.  ;)

Anyway, I think that a portion of Ian's excitement stems from the fact that we are now visiting toy aisles in stores and looking at Fisher Price catalogs.  Cole and I do NOT just buy toys for our kids.  That sounds really strange, I know, but we buy them gifts for Christmas (~$75.00 budget/kid), birthdays (~$25-30 budget), Valentine's Day (~$15 budget/kid), and Easter (~$15-20 budget/kid).  They get SO much stuff from both sides of our family, that they have plenty of toys and don't need anything else.  I feel like our house overfloweth with toys, but compared to the majority of middle class households, we have a slight fraction of the amount of toys they have.  The boys never complain about not having anything to play with, and on gift receiving occasions, they are overwhelmed with glee.  We also do a gigantic toy purge before birthdays and Christmas to make room for the new toys.  This is the way we Andersons roll, and we are very, very happy with this.

I love to see Ian and Eli so excited about Christmas because in my humble opinion, it is the most wonderful time of the year.  I adore and savor every minute of it, even when Cole and I are rushing around, with two kids in tow, trying to celebrate six Christmases in a day and a half.  The one thing that has really bothered me about the anticipation this year has been listening to the boys say, "I need that!"  This probably sounds very minor and totally nit picky, but I really, really, really want the boys to understand the difference between needs and wants, and I feel like they should learn the difference from the very beginning.  So, I have been gently correcting the terminology every time I hear it, and Ian has caught on very well.  I am very proud of him.  I find it much more pleasant to look through the toys and hear, "I want that!" rather than "I need that."  I am very, very, very thankful that we have never had to struggle to cover our boys' needs, and their wants have always been fulfilled as well.

So, back to the Fisher Price catalog.  Ian has seen several Batman toys that he really wants.  They are all age appropriate, and I would have no problem fulfilling these wishes except the toys are pretty pricy and would eat up most of the Christmas budget.  Then, today at Mom's Group, I had an epiphany.  After spending the first hour of the two hour meeting in the play room consoling Eli, I came out to hear Kristi, crafter extraordinaire, showing off some wooden people pegs.  Kristi explained that she uses these people, which look exactly like old school Little People, whenever her kids want something like "a Sonic the Hedgehog" toy.  She won't buy those toys for her kids, so she will pull out the peg people and art supplies and her boys will make their own.  BRILLIANT!!!!  I love, love, love that idea!  The boys appreciate the toy more because they put the effort into creating it, and they get exactly what they want in the end.  I mean, seriously, how awesome is that idea?!?!  After Kristi gave her presentation on all of the different things she makes with her kids, we all had a chance to make them ourselves.  Unfortunately, my "pregnancy-nursing-nursing while pregnant-pregnancy-nursing" induced arthritis was wreaking havoc on my ability to hold things this morning, and I didn't get to try making any peg people.  :(  I did make a felt mouse, but it looked horrific as I was not able to use my scissors very easily and couldn't hold onto the small pieces.  Oh, well.  It was early, and I don't try to be dexterous until afternoon anyway.  That's what "elevated hormone levels" for three solid years will do to you.  Thank goodness my kiddos were worth it.

After I got back home, I was so pumped to check out the website for the wooden peg people.  They were all less than a dollar a piece with most costing in the 20 cent range.  Plus, if you order in lots of 25 or more, you start benefiting from quantity discounts.  I checked out the peg people and decided they were a must have.  I ordered, geez I hope Cole doesn't read this, 136 peg people for $30!  To me this is an absolute steal.  I got peg men, peg boys, peg construction workers, and even some peg females.  I think this will be a perfect way to satisfy Ian's "wants" for new toys and different characters.  I know that Ian will need a little more help in creating his people than Kristi's oldest son, but I think he will get a real kick out of it.  He loves "doing a craft."  We will be able to make his Batman wishes come true, but he will also be able to have Joker, Penguin, Robin, and whoever else Batman associates with (even though I don't know who else that may be).  Plus, we can have a Bob the Builder, Sir Topham Hatt, maybe the Super Why Super Readers, who knows.  The point is, I'm excited for this fabulous idea, and I can't wait for the bag o' wood to arrive.

The OTHER thing I saw on the website was wooden Christmas bulbs.  How adorable would these be all painted up with green and red glitter paint and strung as garland?  Uh, try super duper adorable!!!  I didn't order the wooden bulbs yet because I don't have a tree with coordinating decorations, but hopefully after next Wednesday's "Date Night In" I'll have one in the works.  :)