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.