Names have been changed to protect the innocent

The kids are playing a new game they got for Christmas, in which you have to roll a single die to determine what your next move is.

Child 1: "What did you roll?"

Child 2: "A nine."

"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas..."

(one of Lauren's stocking stuffers from Noni and Papa, who always sing the song to her)

Naughty or nice?

Uncle Bud celebrating Christmas Eve:

Crowded house

While the kids were over at my parents' house today they were playing in the spare bedroom and turned on the electric blanket on the bed. When my mom noticed this she had a talk with them and told them not to turn it on because no one was in it sleeping and if it was on all day it might burn the house down. She asked them where would they (Noni and Papa) sleep if their house burned down. Here are their answers:

Lauren offered them our futon.

Owen offered the middle of Mama and Daddy's bed - his favorite place to sleep!

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas edition

(Wordless, schmerdless: These are just the picture cards we've received. And in the last two days we've gotten enough more to warrant another ribbon column, but I'm too busy (read: lazy) to get them up.)

Polar Express 2009

Whoa, it seriously seems like JUST yesterday I was posting the pictures from last year and here we are again. We joined a big group of friends yesterday afternoon for our annual ride. We've usually gone earlier in the month, but I think it was more fun this time because of how close we are to Christmas. Afterwards, instead of going out to dinner like we usually do with a bunch of wound up kids, we came back to our house for pizza. And the kids were wild indeed! We then ventured out past bedtime in the drizzly night to see some Christmas lights. All in all, a fabulous family evening!

It's tradition - new jammies! (notice the matching kicks)

Owen's got his ticket to ride

Enjoying cookies and hot chocolate

Santa gave Lauren the first gift of Christmas - a bell from his sleigh!

Adam let Owen snap a few shots using his new toy

Buster. Dirt buster.

I can't decide if my favorite part is where he gets twitter-pated that I'm recording him and he does a little dance or near the end when he's trying to turn it off and it keeps sliding away from him!

"Time for school, go buckle up!"

Martha Jr.

Owen (AKA Mr. Cranky Sick Pants) went to bed early and fell fast asleep. I thought Lauren would enjoy helping me wrap some presents, and boy was I right! She helped me trim old Christmas cards to use as name tags, choose which boxes to use for whom, cut ribbon, and write out everyone's name. She loved helping and when we were done she ran to ask Daddy to take her picture with all of her creative products.

I've been saving Christmas cards for years (it's a sickness, passed down for generations) and wanted to figure out a way to use some of the most beautiful ones. I finally went through them this afternoon and cut the fronts off of the ones I loved. I trimmed them into shapes for name tags. I think this is the most creative (hands on - the blog doesn't count) thing I've done in years - pretty sad!

Stable upgrade

Totally them

(taken with Daddy's new camera, a Nikon D90)

Self medication, preschooler style

So I've been a parent for over five and a half years. Owen will be exactly three and a half next week, and I only just this morning had to make my very first phone call to poison control. Pretty good, eh?

Backstory: He's had a cold and wicked cough for a few days, ever since helping Adam put up the outside Christmas lights in frigid weather on Sunday afternoon.

He crawled in my bed this morning around 2:00 and said he was sick and coughing a lot. Adam was still awake (but that's a story for another day), so I sent Owen out to find him to ask for some medicine. I heard him shuffle down the hall in his footie jammies, so I rolled over and snuggled back under the warm covers.

A few minutes later he came shuffling back and crawled in bed with me. I asked him if Daddy got some medicine for him and he said, "No, I did it myself." I sat straight up in bed and asked him to repeat himself. "Daddy fell asleep on the couch, so I did it myself." I immediately ran out and grabbed the bottle of Triaminic so see how much he'd had. I woke up Adam and we both went back to cross examine the boy.

We asked him how he got the bottle open, since yes, it does have a childproof cap on it. He said he pushed it down hard and turned it lefty loosey (no joke, the kid is smart) and he grunted when he was showing us, to emphasize how hard he had to turn it. We had him try it in front of us, and he couldn't repeat the feat.

I asked him how much he had had, and he said, "Mama, you only give me one, but I'm three, so I had three." Judging from how much I remembered being in the bottle at bedtime, he was right - there were about three teaspoons missing. I went back out to the kitchen and found the little dosage cup in the sink. He certainly knew what he was doing!

I called poison control and relayed the details to them. They calculated the active ingredients, milligrams and his weight and said it was not a toxic amount and assured me I had nothing to worry about. Adam slept with him the rest of the night, just to make sure.

We always keep the medicine up high, I had just left that bottle on the counter since we used it at bedtime. Who knew a three year old could open a childproof cap? Our ways have been changed!

Moral of the story: Kids are determined, that's for sure. And so much smarter than we give them credit for!

Tropical boy

This morning while driving Lauren to school the kids were counting the lawns in the neighborhood that were still frosty white from last night's freeze. Out of nowhere, Owen asked, "Mama, when are we going to Hawaii?" The child has never been there, nor is it something we've ever discussed!

Is this familiar to anyone else?

The day before the snow

*S*N*O*W*

I know, I know, not much, hardly enough to photograph. But it never snows here, so it's worth recording. I vaguely remember one other time, maybe about 14 years ago, and there was less on the ground than this.

Beyond her years

We've been listening to Christmas songs all week, at home and in the car. This morning the song "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" came on and I was singing along. Lauren, listening intently to the words, chuckled and said, "Well, that was an unusual song."