Thanksgiving 2009

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Hope you did too.

Thanksgiving on the Guadalupe

Little Hobo Baby explores outside

Omi helped Anna make the hand cookies that she'd been talking about for weeks.

Jack was diggin' on Aunt Cammi's quiche lorraine for Thanksgiving breakfast

...and he enjoyed some turkey at Thanksgiving dinner.

Anna was very excited to go and visit "Cowboy Santa" in Gruene. She had big plans to tell him all about the dollhouse that she wants for Christmas. However, once we got to Gruene and she spotted him, she chose to keep her distance. We'll write him a letter instead.

Anna Spots Santa

Jack was sceptical of Santa as well
Please note Anna in the background, still keeping a weary eye on the Jolly Old Elf

My boys (and a dirty trashcan) in front of the Gruene General Store

We've done gone and Elfed ourselves...again.

Oh, come on now. You know I can't NOT "Elf" us, at least once each year. I only wish that I'd saved each of our "Elfed" videos over the years.

Also, (and I say this with the utmost respect and love)...um, Kevin? Do you have something you need to tell me? No straight man that I know can dance like that.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Anna quote of the day

Backstory: We have two cats who vomit frequently, so watching out for piles and puddles of cat vomit is a way of life in this house. So...

Tonight, as I was giving Jack his bedtime bottle, Anna walked over to a spot in the living room--where I couldn't see--and said the following:

"Oh no! Someone crowed dup!"

Sure enough, one of the cats had "crowed dup" right in front of the tv.

Thankful Tree

I got the idea from Not That You Asked to do this Thankful Tree (downloaded from Nick Jr.). While, I'm sure that Thanksgiving and the concept of being "thankful" has been positively rammed down Anna's throat at school, (like so much pumpkin pie) she was a good sport for Mama and sat down for 5 minutes with me to label the leaves with things that she's thankful for.

The things that she's thankful for all turned out to be relatively normal...such as "playing with blocks," "friends" and "playing outside". What's decidedly not normal however, is the next picture...

Here, Anna puts her own sexy spin on Thanksgiving. She insisted upon posing only this way, after I snapped the one innocent, normal picture. Just what is Dora the Explorer teaching my daughter besides how to speak Tex Mex at eardrum-piercingly loud levels?

Jack: 9 months old!

Jack is 9 months old today. He went to the doctor for his well-baby check up which, in our experience with Anna, was trauma-free--no vaccinations, just a simple weight, length, head circumference check and the thumbs up to start table food.

Well, poor Jack's visit wasn't as trauma-free. He ended up getting a flu shot (not H1N1, yet) which wasn't too terribly bad but the worst part was having to have his ears cleaned. It was horrible. I had to hold him down while the doctor went after him with this tiny, crochet hook-looking instrument. He cried so hard, that after a while, he just sort of gave up and went limp. It broke my heart into 6 little pieces.

He's right at the 50% mark for all measurements of growth. That's my boy--completely mediocre.

He now weighs 20 lbs. Do you think these cords make his butt look big?

At 9 months old, Jack is the happiest baby on the planet (when he's not being held down, getting his ears cleaned). People come up to me on a daily basis, remarking on what a happy baby he is. He has the bluest eyes, with the longest eyelashes and what's looking more and more like blond, course hair with curls in the back. While all of these characteristics aren't genetically impossible, he's just not at all what any of us expected...he's way better.

Goodbye Puffs...

Hello to Baby Mum Mums! Jack loves them!

(To me, they look just like those Cuttle Fish bones that you put inside of a bird cage, but whatever. He loves them. He ate two packages of them in the span of 30 min! This is gonna get expensive.)

Anna Quote Monday

I had to go and pick up something at Walgreens this evening. I decided to see if Anna wanted to go with me--just the girls. You should know that Anna LOVES Walgreens. If you ask her what her favorite store is, she'll say, without hesitation, "Walgreens!". So, she was very excited to go with me tonight for our quick trip to her favorite store.

As we were walking in the front door of Walgreens, Anna exclaimed rather loudly:

"OH WOW! This is gonna be sooooo awesome!"

Everyone in line at the register, as well as a lady who was walking out past us, positively died laughing. I just shrugged and said, "Walgreens is her favorite store.".

First Things Wurst

The kids (Anna, Jack and Aunt Julie) all experienced their first Wurstfest last weekend.

Anna's first funnel cake. She didn't come up for air for quite some time.

Jack's first sausage. He gummed it into oblivion. Good little Czech baby.

Jack's first polka dance. That band was really great!

Exhausted in the Wurst way...

Edited to add: There were other firsts that weekend such as...

• Anna's first public performance of the Chicken Dance
• Anna's first ride on the Ferris Wheel
• Julie's first bee sting, so serious that it necessitated a trip to the New Braunfels ER, where she sat alongside all of the people who OD'd on sausage at Wurstfest.
  

In which I have my mellow harshed at the library today

We go to our neighborhood library's storytime most every Monday. It's a good outing for the kids. Anna gets to sing her favorite songs and do a craft project; Jack gets to watch all of the big kids do their thing and Mommy gets to see some of her friends too. There's typically the same crowd of parents and kids there every week. Well, we went today and lemme tell ya, someone let the crazies in. There was a mom's group there today who apparently had planned to meetup at this storytime. They were definitely an "attachment parenting" group--and I say this because I recognized one of the moms there today and she'd "witnessed" to me on the benefits of attachment parenting a year or so ago, while at the park and all of her other cohorts there today were cut from the same cloth.

Let me back up a little: I've got absolutely nothing against attachment parenting--in fact, I think that, overall, it's a good way to parent. Unfortunately, it's not something that would really work in my family. This is not to say that we don't borrow some of the ideologies of the parenting style--I just 1. Refuse to pigeon hole my parenting style as a "style"...I prefer to be more fluid and do what feels right (even if that means swatting my toddler's hiney after being a total turd and running down the middle of the street last week--here's the number to CPS: 1-800-252-5400, go ahead and call because I'm sure I deserve it) and 2. I've got a pretty strong-willed child on my hands and, so far, a "warm fuzzy" approach to teaching right from wrong isn't working so well. We're also big 'ol meanie pantses because our children both sleep in their respective bedrooms. They also both sleep upwards to 11 hours a night with little to no issues.

Anyway, so besides the one AP mom that I recognized, the others were all new to me. Their children all had names like Serenity (which, if Serenity is anything like the toddler that lives in my house, I can't imagine that name suiting her..."Serenity, we don't growl at our neighbors!") and Harmony. While I sat in the chair, holding Jack and quietly singing along to The Wheels on the Bus and The Hokey Pokey, these new moms flailed about wildly, putting their whole damn selves in and their whole damn selves out and just really seemed to groove on what it was all about. Then, when their kids would lose interest in the story and run amok around the room, they'd sit back and "let the child explore their surroundings" while my kid, who's been drilled about "using a 'library voice'" while at the library and "sitting quietly and listening to the stories" looks around in disbelief at the mayhem that was ensuing.

Then came craft time. One of the crafts involved Cheerios, but not for eating--for using in a drum-like, paper plate doohickey...I don't know. All I do know is that Anna wanted to eat the Cheerios, but, with all of the hands going in and out of the Cheerio bowl, I just couldn't let her do it (especially since we have 100% Swine Flu-Free Cheerios at home that the child won't eat to save her life). Well, the AP moms were busy little bees, helping their kids with their crafts, with much of the same levels of enthusiasm that were displayed while doing the Hokey Pokey. At one point, one of the AP kids was melting down, while his mom was diligently stapling his paper plate instrument together and I heard her tell another AP mom, "This is really stressing him out." I can't say that I blame him because I walked away from today's storytime pretty stressed out too. On the way out to the car, I asked Anna if she had a good time and she said, "When we sing at the library, you need to stand up."*

*Meaning, maybe she wants me to be a little more wacky during storytime next time. In my defense, I do usually try to participate in the songs, but couldn't today, due to the flailing about and rampant running amokedness coming from the AP mom and her kid next to me.