It was wonderful Christmas

Ok - here goes nothing.  Christmas 2012.

 

The weekend was a bit of a blur.  I tried to go work out after breakfast, while Sam helped his Dad with yard work before the party that evening, but there was no child care.  Boo.  And I really needed RPM for my sanity that day.  Oh well.  It did provide extra time at home to get through all the other million tasks that needed to be accomplished that day.  Namely - making cookies for the party.  William was a big 'help' and Patrick had a great time wandering in and out of the kitchen.  I was rolling the dough out on their blue table so it would be at a height they could easily reach.  William had fun helping me cut the cookies out, even if he was using the cutters upside down and would move them after half cutting them, etc.  God sure does like to teach me patience....

We decided to go see Santa at Columbus Park Crossing (free!) before we went to the party and William was super psyched!!  We let him go by himself first and he had a lot to say.  He told Santa he wanted cars, planes, and tractors for Christmas and Patrick wanted trains... (noted - stocking shopping later)  Then it was time for Patrick to meet Santa.  He was none too pleased about the ten second experience.  William tried to hold his hand to make him feel better, but it didn't work.  Atleast we got a picture of them with Santa.  Success.  And plenty memorable.

The Christmas Party at B&B's was that night and the boys had a super wonderfully wild time.  William ran around the house like a banshee and Patrick was just a sweet (sleepy) doll baby.  Our friend finally got him to sleep on her shoulder (MIRACLE!!  In the middle of the party no less - I couldn't get him to nurse to sleep in the dark!!!) and Sam took him upstairs.  It was the perfect amount of friends that we actually got to have conversation with people, instead of just flitting around and not really saying more than hello.  I hope William continues to be adorable and charming as he grows up or he is going to have to learn to calm down!!  Seriously, rain circles, dodging people, tables, and other children... Hilarious and kinda feeds my anxiety.  LOL

Sunday we went to church.  I had never heard the new pastor and he's top notch.  I like that he includes an insert in the bulletin to take notes.  My church at home used to do that I think, and I liked it.  William marched right in to Sunday school and Patrick fell asleep in the swing.  Perfection.
After nap time.... I have no idea what we did.  Seriously.  Probably something fun because I was determined to have a fun Christmas.  Or I cleaned the house.  It's a toss up really.

Monday was a good day.  We headed out early to pick up the grocery items we needed so we wouldn't run into the masses.  Got that done, finished stockings, and hunted down the last present we needed for William.  Then we made and painted ornaments for this year's crafty gift (Daddy - I need to mail y'alls...sorry).  William though that was the greatest and Patrick enjoyed painting the table...ha!  He did get a bit of paint on to the ornaments though.... so that's good.  Then we had a pillow pile and played all afternoon until it was time for Christmas Eve service.

That went pretty well.  The boys were relatively well behaved, thanks to some snacks... William of course had to go potty in the middle of the sermon, so I missed all of that because he wouldn't let someone on the end of the pew take him... So I got to squeeze out of the pew and walk in front of the entire church.  yay... (whatever, it took me an hour to pick out something to wear and I'm not so confident what I ended up with was a good choice... oh well... )  Anyhow.  Patrick enjoyed flipping through the hymnals and bible, William wanted to sing hymns with us, and they were sweet.  William even got to hold his own candle during Silent Night at the end, my favorite part, and he was way too cute.  And so proud of himself.

as dictated by William....

Then it was off to B&B's for soup with the family.  We had told William that Silly Willy would meet us there with a special present from Santa - so he took off trying to find him.  He found Silly Willy pretty easily, but then completely missed the presents...ha!  Santa sent the boys new matching 'jamas for Christmas and William found that REALLY exciting!! (Literally - he didn't take them off until maybe 3pm the next day!)  The boys stayed up playing with everyone and then when we got home, we wrote a note to Santa, left out some cookies and off to bed they went.

We were all up at 545 to open presents and William was kinda in a foul mood....until he saw that Santa came.  He, of course, commandeered Patrick's Santa presents immediately, completely ignoring his chair for a couple moments.  Once he saw the 'horse cowboy' gear, he was all ready to go!!!  he galloped around with his horse (who has now been named 'Bullseye' thanks to the hours of Toy Story we have been watching) and his hat on.  He's been killing everything in sight with his shooting gun, even though we tried to limit it to just the 'bad guys'... Best laid plans.  Patrick was pretty quiet about Christmas morning, but he played with his new trains, cars, and firetrucks.  Lots of buzzing around.  :)

Then it was back to B&B's for Christmas there.  I think it was raining, so the boys were stuck inside, much to their chagrin, but I'm sure they found something fun to play with.  William had picked out a nativity set to buy with his own money the day before, so they played with that.... new legoes that Laura & Kurt gave the boys, and a cool little train set that B&B got Patrick that is living at their house.  We put them down for early naps, so they wouldn't miss lunch (not like they ate a lot anyway) and when they got up, most of the family was there.  It was a good laid back day... We watched one of their new movies when we got home, skyped with Mima & Grandaddy, and then went to bed.  Lucky us still had to work in the morning.

We are so blessed with such sweet little boys and wonderful families.  How could we not have a wonderful Christmas!?!

Loves.

Merry Christmas to All!!!

Much love,

The Rumers

Loves.

The Island of Misfit Toys still lives.

Whew - We made it.  It is Christmas Eve and really - the only thing left on the to do list is to send two pictures to Walgreens so we can fill the photo ornaments that I bought a month ago...  Not too shabby.  I truly hate having such a long to do list.  Maybe next year I will have the forethought to spread it out a bit.  Though, it's not like baking can be done a month in advance.. so there you go.  It has certainly been a busy week though with crafting and cooking and prepping for Christmas.  I can hardly remember what happened with the boys...

William has embraced Silly Willy and Santa.  He was even excited about talking to Santa and a slight mention of Silly Willy would get him to stop his misbehavior.  I'm not wild about using the threat of Santa knowing he's behaving badly to turn around his behavior, so we try not to take it TOO far - but goodness it sure does work.  He was running away from me in Target and all I had to say was that Silly Willy was magic and could see him even though we weren't and home and back he came.  I'm just saying...it kinda works...  He's really had fun looking for him every day after he comes back from the North Pole.  Silly Willy isn't very naughty at our house, but he does find himself in interesting spots around the house.  My favorite was on the kissing ball... Sweet Willy indeed.  :)

It is now confirmed that Patrick says "thank you".  VERY CLEARLY sometimes.  He's also pulled out 'All Done', 'Sit', and 'Mama' is now super clear and defined.  He says Daddy - but it's more like 'Da.......Da'.  Still counts, but obviously he loves Mommy more.  LOL

OH!!  We now have a THREE tooth wonder!!  Patrick finally got one of his top teeth to come through!!  Which might help to explain the constant fussiness and lots of nursing during the night.  He's a cutie and clearly enjoying his new found biting ability.  Thankfully, he's only discovered that while nursing one and a half times so far.  He has some serious piercing abilities now and it's not fun.  Just putting that out there.

The boys are now rough housing TOGETHER.  Patrick is fully participating and giggling the entire time.  William has a ball and is relatively gentle for the most part with him.  They are even both beginning to play nicely together and independently.  That's kinda huge for Patrick who used to follow me around screaming to be picked up constantly.  But now he's been driving his cars around the road rug and picking out books and being a generally happy kid.  He still wants to be held a lot but we're getting slight breathers more often now.

William is doing a much better job of listening more often when we are out in public.  Today we had to run errands early to beat the crowds and he pretty much stayed right with one of us the whole time.  Patrick has even almost managed to wrap his head around the 'holding hands in the parking lot' rule and fights it less often.  We talk a lot about 'good idea/bad idea' and sometimes William even gets it right. LOL Most of the time we probably don't agree on what is a good idea though... silly three year olds.

Sam DVRd Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie (the one with the Island of Misfits) and we have watched that movie pretty much twice a day this entire week.  He's a little obsessed... haha!!  We finally went and rented another Christmas movie just because WE were tired of watching it.  So we pillow piled it up Friday evening and had a picnic of summer sausage cheese crackers in the living room.  I think Patrick only ate cheese.  haha

I've been trying to do really fun things with the boys since it's Christmas and all...  Friday before the pillow pile we decorated the leftover snowman cakes.  There were marshmallows and sprinkles and sugar crystals and lots of fun colored frosting.  William had a great time.  I think Patrick did too, but I'm pretty sure I ended up decorating his cakes.  We completely forgot to eat them.. but it sure was fun.  William helped me cut out the cookies for the Christmas party at B&B's Saturday night (the boys had a great time running absolutely WILD -haha!) and IF YOU ARE A GRANDPARENT THEN STOP READING NOW :) then we painted ornaments today.  It may not be much, but it definitely helps to assuage some of the mommy guilt of not having that much time for this kind of stuff normally.  Really, I just need to start ignoring the massive amounts of crumbs and toys all over the house and play a little more....  2013 resolution maybe?!

So, here's to us actually being excited that the boys are going to wake up at 5am to see if Santa came tomorrow morning!!!  I can't wait!!  (watch them both sleep until 7am...)

And super quick, just so I don't forget what sweet boys I have....  Sam had a slight freak out about the sheer number of broken, nonplayed with, disaster of toy cubbies on Saturday and IMMEDIATELY felt the need to clean out.  We ended up getting William involved to pick out ones he doesn't play with to give to the boys and girls who don't have as much.  He got really in to it and started picking up stuff that he AND Patrick currently play with.  So I don't know that he quite understood the whole point, but he was being awfully sweet and generous about the whole exercise.  Maybe we are raising non-greedy, UN-entitled children afterall.  Time will tell I suppose.  We'll see how they act at 13...


Loves.

Santa came early to Cleveland

Wow.  That weekend flew by.  Three days in Cleveland is just not long enough.  Just saying.  We had a great time though and so did the boys.  Gotta love family.  My favorites.

Friday was pretty relaxing I think.  The weather was really nice, so I think we spent a good bit of time outside letting the boys run and ride bikes and do whatever they wanted.  We had to wait for the sun to come up and that frustrated William.  He's not used to CHILLY mornings and he wanted to go outside immediately.  Silly William.  And Uncle Bildy showed up that evening.  But he didn't stay long, which disappointed everyone.  Apparently Duncan Phyfe sofas were calling his name in Alpharetta... Whatever. ha!

Saturday was full of fun.  It was Cookie Party day.  Which really means that we watched Daddy & William have the most fun ever.  Seriously.  William thought that cutting out cookies was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.  He was so focused!!  Though, Daddy let him have a teeny taste of the sugar cookie dough and then he became obsessed with pulling out the dough from the crevices.... so he could eat it!  Stinker!!  Meri finally made it to Cleveland after a night of Hobbit watching with friends and it was SOOO good to see her!!  She's pretty awesome and super handy to have around when Patrick's exzcema (sp) flares up and looks like it's eating his body...  Just putting that out there.

Pizza night!!!!!  So much more fun than a stuffy traditional Christmas dinner.  I think we should make it a new permanent tradition.  I wish that Kat could've been there.  We probably would've gotten raucous then.  As it was, I went to bed with the babies and I think the whole house nearly followed suit.  We were beat.  The boys had been getting up at 5am and could not be persuaded to go back to sleep or sit quietly in the bed while we slept some more.  So down to the basement we went every morning far too early.  I don't know why we were surprised.

Sunday morning was Christmas!!!!!!!!!  Woohoo!!!  I played Santa with the help of the two cutest 'elves' of all time.  William was really great at helping and Patrick was great at 'redistribution'.  haha!!  They had so much fun though - Christmas could have stopped there.  Absolutely adorable.  What a gift those two are!  It was fun watching how excited William got over his favorite movies and Patrick toodling around amidst all the fun only kinda knowing about the excitement.  They got some great books and Twas the Night Before Christmas read & recorded by Uncle K has already become a favorite.  So neat!!!

Patrick pulled out some vocabulary while we were up there.  He said "Thankyou".  It wasn't super clear or anything but it was obvious enough that Sara and I looked at each other like "DID YOU HEAR THAT TOO?!!".  Funny boy.  He's gotten good at signing 'more', especially now that we are recognizing the signal.. ha!  He used it a lot when I made baked ziti for dinner on Friday.  He is a bottomless pit when it comes to meal.  :)  Ooh - and he's started following directions - he puts his clothes in the hamper every night before bath and every morning after getting dressed.  It's great.  And he's so proud of himself.

I think William is having a hard time being the big brother.  He wants to be picked up and carried a lot and I think it is mostly because Patrick is held a lot of the time.  It's silly, but before I would carry him up the stairs, he'd have to say that it made him feel special...  I'm trying to get him to verbalize his feelings so we can work through the big ones.  I don't know if we're really making any headway... he's  having a really rough time.  I feel bad and it's difficult to figure out how to help him best.  Yay for parenting.

Now, I'm just trying to logically work through the massive to-do list before Christmas.  I didn't think I left too many things until the last minute... but the list says otherwise.  Oh well.  It will all happen... or it won't and it probably won't matter either way.  haha!

Loves.

Not enough hours in the day

So I finally got a haircut.  It was only 8 months of denial in the making.  Ha!  And I got it all cut off.  Seriously it is short.  But I love it.  My mornings are definitely better without 15-20 minutes of painstakingly blow-drying my hair with a round brush trying to not have a nappy head.  Light spray, quick tousle with a blow dryer and I'm done.  It's awesome.  And even though it was totally evident that my oldest son was coached, nothing beats walking in the door and having William tell me that I look beautiful.  So sweet.  Especially since at that moment, I kinda hated my hair.  ha!!  I always do.... and then within 24 hours I'm in love.  This time it only took me fixing it to love it.  I like it messy - not quite perfect.  Ok.  That's enough about my crazy red hair.

William has decided that he absolutely positively HATES tags in his shirts.  This poses quite a challenge.  I cut one tag out and then when we realized he was going to pitch a fit about every tag on principle - we stopped.  It's getting out of hand.  He asked me to cut out a tag on a shirt that was tagless this morning.  I think he's hoping I'll let him stop wearing shirts...  Naked William is cute but shirts are unfortunately required at school.  Well, I'm assuming they are.  I've never tried to send a half-dressed child to school...

Patrick is a hoot.  I can't get over him.  Such a happy joyful child.  Makes my heart so happy.  And he is far too big.  He now gives hugs and kisses to Sam and I in the morning, waves goodbye and then happily goes off to play.  Not a tear or frown in sight.  I'm not ready.  Just one sniffle is all I need - but nope - he's much too cool and well-adjusted for that.  Sam tells me to be proud that I am raising such a great independent happy kid.  I'm trying.  Honestly.  But I still kinda want him to be my baby.  Yes, at the ripe old age of 15 months - I'm afraid I'm losing him.  When he finally becomes a teenager, I might just have to crawl in a corner, huddle in the fetal position and having a coming to Jesus moment & good cry to get through it.  haha!!!  My sweet baby is growing up.  I do not approve.

We leave tomorrow night for Cleveland to do Christmas with my family.  It's going to be awesome.  It will be just us.  No extended family, just my brothers & sisters.  I can't wait.  And I talked Daddy & Sara into doing pizza instead of a traditional dinner.  I'm so pumped.  I foresee a new tradition.  Atleast I'm hoping for one.  And we're having a cookie day on Saturday.  Just like when we were little.  Sara would throw a huge neighborhood cookie party.  Everyone would look forward to it each year.  Then we all grew up, moved away, and scheduling became impossible.  William is going to love it.  So... lots of Christmas fun next week.  Hopefully I can keep myself sane enough to blog it a little so I don't get totally behind...  Best laid plans right?!

So I did some math - really simple counting but still...  On a good week day, we see the boys awake for about 3.5 hours.  How crazy is that?!  How wonderfully unfair that in order to put a roof over their heads, clothe, feed, and provide for their basic needs - we have to let someone else spend the majority of the day with them?  I really try not to think about it too much because it just makes me sad.  It also makes me want to try even harder to make sure that those 3.5 hours matter and that I'm doing my absolute best as a parent.  I also need to figure out how to make the hour-ish in the morning count a little more.  Not sure how with showers, getting ready, packing lunches, etc. but I definitely need to squeeze in some more quality time with them in the morning besides being silly while I get them dressed and shuffled off to watch Super Why.  Maybe extra time will suddenly appear now that I don't have to spend all that time on my hair.... LIGHTBULB!! haha!!!

Loves.

Mostly sunny with a cloud or two

Positive parenting requires an awful lot of patience. (though, raising children in general requires a lot of patience as well...)   I know that the end result will be worth it.  I know that I want my kids to grow up without voices raised, without punishment in the traditional sense, definitely without spankings, and with a lot of empathy, trust, sincerity, and love.  Most days I have the patience required.  I can help William through his big feelings easily and get him turned around into doing what is asked of him without a fight and becaue he is willing.  But then there are the days like Saturday, when I am just missing the coping skills to deal with life.  Saturday was rough.  It was hard.  And all I really wanted to do, what would have really made me feel better was to yell at someone and get it out all the frustration.  But I didn't.  Because that wouldn't have made William or Patrick feel better.  Just thought I'd lay that out there.  It's not all rainbows and sunshine around here.  I mean, it is a lot of the time - the boys' sweet faces melt my heart - but yeah, I'm all for being honest.  

The boys both love reading books.  It's really kind of awesome.  We brought home a TON of books from my Dad's house the last time we visited.  Really great stuff - like Disney stories, etc.  William's favorite of the week has been "Ferdinand and the bullies".  There sure are a lot of words and pages in the books we are reading now.  I am finding it such a relief when Patrick brings me a six page board book that is mostly pictures.  LOL  Patrick's favorite books right now are animals.  He really enjoys the Wake Up Little Animals book.  It must be working too - he totally 'baa'd' with a sheep at school.  Smart boy.

We finally put lights and ornaments on the tree after it being in the house for a week.  We just took our time summoning the energy to brave the attic for the boxes buried deep beneath far too many half full (with junk) boxes.  On that front - there is a large pile in front of our house for trash day tomorrow and Sam made a giant haul to goodwill.  One side of the attic has been attacked.  Now to figure out what to do with the couple of things I actually did manage to save from Sam.  haha.  Ok.  Back to Christmas.

Patrick was a pro at taking ornaments off the tree.  William did a great job of finding all the ornaments we didn't want him to touch because there were VERY breakable.  It was interesting decorating the tree with the two of them.  The Irish sheep still hasn't made it onto the tree yet thanks to William's wild imagination.  There are worse things I suppose.  We were getting close to done, so I took a step back to admire our handiwork... Realizing that the top half of the tree was practically BEYOND capacity and could hold no more ornaments, but 3' and below was a little scarce... haha.  We dug deep and found the last of the non-breaking ornaments to fill in some of the gaps.  It's a good tree though.  Completely imperfect and full of sentiment.  We love it.

William is a pretty good helper in the kitchen when he wants to be.  Those moments usually happen when I decide to make cookies or cupcakes or something sweet.  He really likes to pour the milk.  Maybe next week I'll let him use the sifter.  It's a pretty big deal though - we'll have to see.  haha  Patrick likes to sit on the counter and 'help' too.  He's not as useful,  but I can blame some of the mess on him, so he definitely fulfills a purpose.  :)  Sam hates it when I bake because flour and sugar and everything goes everywhere.  But who can be frustrated with the mess when such a cute little boy made it...?!  Though, unless you're the one cleaning it up, I don't think you should  get to be frustrated at all... just my opinion.. teehee

We are back on the "get Patrick to sleep in his own crib" train.  We definitely backslid for a week or two...  He's slowly getting reaccustomed to not nursing all night, and Sam said he didn't pick him up last night.  So maybe we'll get him back in the groove just in time for ... HOLIDAY TRAVELING...  And I'm sure we'll successfully mess it all up again.  haha  And so it goes.  He did sleep through the night earlier in the week though by fluke.  It was glorious.

Oh!! 15 months in and the boy has a lovey.  We've been forcing showing Walter the pig to him his whole life and this week he decided that Walter was worth big hugs and lots of snuggles.  I'm relieved that he finally decided to latch on the piggy instead of an uglier stuffed animal.  My second choice was Moosie, but it didn't come to that... haha  Walter has been taking naps and going night night with P for the past couple days and it's the sweetest thing to see him pull the pink piggy close.  And of course, he is definitely a Rumer boy.. First trip Walter made out in the world as an official member of the family and he got covered in chocolate milk.  So he is up for a bath.  William's Hilbert has had MANY MANY baths...  I just hope that Walter doesn't end up on as many "errands" as Hilbert does...

We went to the Christmas parade Saturday morning after breakfast.  The boys had a wonderful time!!  Even Patrick loved it - I was afraid he would be too little - silly me.  He had the best time waving to every car, firetruck, clown, soldier, and child that came by.  William loved waving his flag and yelling Merry Christmas. He got especially into the festivities when he realized that some people were throwing out candy.  Nothing like a Rumer on sugar high... LOL  The best part was, of course, the horses at the end of the parade.  We couldn't stay the whole time last year and missed Santa & the horses, but it was a major hit this year.  William wanted to know why he couldn't ride them!!

Loves.

Mini-people are funny

When William sings the ABCs and gets to L M N O - it sounds like he is saying 'animal'.  And only sometimes does he make it to X Y Z before skipping to 'sing with me'.  He also likes to make up songs like his Daddy.  The last gem was about the things he loves - starting with the most important - "cheese".  Definitely my kid.

 Tonight, while eating an absolutely delicious meal of baked penne (as evidenced by the lack of pasta left on the plates by everyone at the table), William said "Thank you for dinner Mommy".  I don't know where he learned that one, and I don't care.  Sweetest little boy.

Patrick slept through the night Sunday night.  That makes twice now.  It was glorious.  They both also slept until 6:15.  We might need to buy an alarm clock afterall.  I won't hold my breath though.  Or get cash out.

I have discovered that my OB/GYN is not very PRO breastfeeding -- I hesitate to call it 'extended' breastfeeding, but we'll just say breastfeeding past a year.  This is very disheartening because I love her.  But the solution to every 'issue/concern' I brought up at my annual check up was to stop breastfeeding.  Well, quote "I'm not telling you to stop breastfeeding... BUT........... XYZ will go away when......."  Yeah.  So, I know I'm not a doctor, but with a little bit of reading (extensively) online, my 'issues/concerns' could be attributed to something else.  And she didn't give me science, she gave anecdotal evidence.  I'm sad.  I have a whole year to decide if I'm going to switch doctors though I suppose.

 Patrick got his first bite.  Apparently it was over whether a play kitchen door was going to be closed or not.  What silly little disagreements.  Didn't break skin.  I hope we don't have serial biter situation like we did when William was his age.  That wasn't fun at all.  Though, I am a little more relaxed about it now.  Or, since it's just one isolated incident at the moment... We'll see how this pans out I guess.

Patrick has officially become big enough to climb INTO the playground at Chickfila.  Makes me a little nervous but he sure has a great time.  He also enjoys climbing UP the slide.  Goodness.  What a mess.

Patrick has decided he has opinions and he's not afraid to tell you about them.  Specifically when he is displeased.  He has a 'great' scream/cackle when he doesn't like something.

William has been doing a really great job at going potty since we bought the 'special' Mickey underwears.  He's only had two accidents in two weeks.  And tonight, after we'd put him in a diaper for bedtime, he still told us he needed to go to poo-poo and went to the potty.  Lots of high fives in the house!

I've been reading trying to figure out a way to better help William through his tantrumming.  It seems that they have been more frequent and more passionate lately.  I happened upon www.ahaparenting.com.  It's kind of awesome and you should go check it out.  Sam isn't 100% on board yet, but I think the empathetic (and there's more than just that - go read) approach is going to be just what the doctor ordered for William.  It's about validating their feelings but still setting limits....  It's good.  Feeds right in to attachment parenting as well.  And we ALL know how I feel about that! :)

Loves.