Happy Solstice! Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Happy Eid! Merry Kwanza! ( . . .did I forget any?)

We’ve had our Christmas groove going lately – and it’s been good!

I had planned to write this post about the neat events we’ve discovered around Spokane during this season and maybe include pics of a couple of neat craft projects I’ve made for family. When I actually started cataloging things I nearly fell over backward. Holy scheisse! How am I not a total stress ball right now?? I think the key is that I haven’t done a damn thing I didn’t want to. I was determined to simplify the season – emphasize the fun stuff and let go of the rest. I couldn’t be happier with the results. So here’s what we’ve had fun doing:

One Friday, CT and I played hookie from school and work (we were sick, cough cough) and made our way downtown for some fun. First we stopped by the Davenport to check out all the decorated Christmas trees and sip hot chocolate in the posh lobby. Afterward, we ran through the 13 F weather next door to the Bing Crosby theatre to watch a noon performance of Holiday Inn. My parents and I have had a long-standing tradition of watching Holiday Inn  and White Christmas every Christmas eve. Watching it on the big screen with my girl on my lap was really fun. And she liked it! I still can’t figure out how or why CT enjoys black and white films so much, but I can’t say I’m complaining.

The next weekend, while I was busy with CPR/First aid training, CT and her Dad headed to the Davenport for a gingerbread making workshop. Professional chefs competed against each other to make the best gingerbread houses while the Towhead worked on making the best graham cracker “gingerbread” house.  The results, both amateur and professional, were fantastic! The chefs even created a gingerbread pirate ship with hidden items that the kids had to find  – it was a dessert, a game, and a work of art all in one!  Afterward they headed to the carousel and Radio Flyer slide in Riverfront Park. The story of the day though – the one I had to listen to intently as soon as I got home – was about how CT lost her mitten. You see, outside the carousel is a metal statue of a goat. When you hit a button on the rock wall to the side a vacuum turns on inside the goat. The idea is that you can feed the goat the leaves littering the ground; free entertainment for the kids, free grounds cleanup for the city. I think it’s a wonderful concept. Except that the goat does not discriminate. Like any healthy goat he will eat anything you stick in front of his mouth. Including mittens. CT found this out the hard way. 🙂 Luckily, one of the carousel staff was able to extract the mitten from the goat’s innards.

The next event of the season was CT’s preschool Christmas program last Thursday. It was a short half-hour deal where the kids got up on stage and sang. You can tell the kids have been working hard on this for awhile. CT has come home singing all sorts of songs over the last few weeks. And their practice paid off – they did awesome! You can’t help but smile with that many dressed up cuties singing “This Little Light of Mine (I’m gonna let it shine).” I had a silly-stupid grin on my face the whole time. My hat truly goes off to her teachers though. Thirty kids onstage for 10-15 minutes. No one cried and almost every kid actually sang. Now that’s an accomplishment!

The craft-making tally is what has me truly flabbergasted. I’ve had so much fun I don’t think I realized how much I’ve actually done over the last month. I, or CT and I, have managed to produce the following:

• 1 fairy
• 6 bean bags with a laminated list of games
• 2 hats
• 10 pints apple butter
• 3 quarts of applesauce
• 2 apple pies (happily waiting in the freezer to be cooked later)
• 3 pints pumpkin butter
• 1 pint cherry butter
• a bagful of dried apples
• necklaces for CT’s cousins
• books for CT’s grandparents
• a tray with CT’s art modgepodged onto it for the grandparents

The irony, which I’m kicking myself for now, if that we have so few pictures of all of this. Maybe that’s why I’m not stressed – I haven’t worried about documenting any of it. We’ had fun and didn’t worry about how it was turning out or whether we had “captured” the moment. Smiles, giggles, skipping down the street, or dancing through the house were enough. Those images burn brightly right now. I hope the memories don’t fade.

Merry Christmas everyone!

You know you’re an English major when . . .

your almost-4-yr-old uses the words “opportunity,” “required,” and “glimpse” at the dinner table all in one night and knows what each of those words mean.

Look out world! You don’t stand a chance against this one!

Two years later, we finally got a dresser

Mr. A and I have been looking for a dresser for almost two years. We’ve been to tons of furniture stores but either a) they didn’t have anything we liked, b) it was too expensive, and c) it just didn’t feel right buying a piece of mediocre furniture made in China when there is so much second-hand furniture out there that’s better built and more reasonably priced (ya know that whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing).

So we’ve spent the past couple years scouring craigslist, finding nothing. Craigslist here is funny. There are tons of listings for certain items (like beds) and none for others (like bookshleves). We found tons of junk dressers on their last leg, or ones with only one nightstand (we need two). But we finally found what we had been looking for. It was bought brand new in March 2008 and has sat in a spare bedroom since then. It’s in perfect condition! Two night stands and a dresser. Mission style. With a mirror. I told Mr. A, I feel like respectable adult for the first time in my life. We are finally getting rid of almost all of our college-quality, hand-me-down furniture. I’m not sure I’m ready for this 🙂

How to go bald by age 4

Fine hair has its blessings, and curses. I’ve learned to deal with the peculiarites of fine, thin hair that doesn’t grow very fast. The Towhead has my coloring to a tee, and although she got my fine hair, thanks to her dad she has quite a bit more of it. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s very convenient we can use the same clips and rubber bands, but it does feel a bit pathetic in its own way.

I’m not sure if it’s a kid thing or perhaps Fate’s way of punishing me for being proud that I produced a kid with a decent head of hair, but I realized the other night that we’ve had more than our share of hair mishaps this year. I think it all started when she got sap in her hair on a camping trip . . .

The answer: olive oil. Situation was not nearly as sticky as it sounds.

Then there was the incident around Labor Day when she decided to crawl under her art table and create some new bangs for herself after we’d spent the last year growing them out. Luckily, it was not the scalping that many kids give themselves. Just a few strands near her face that went from chin-length to being about even with her nose. Again, not as big a deal as it sounds.

Now we come to the last two weeks (drumroll, please). At a co-workers retirement party she managed to do this:

Yep. Burrs. Hundreds of them. Right up next to her scalp. The next hour was a fun one. My thanks to the other people there who helped us get them all out. The upside is that they did all slide out – no cutting or olive oil required.

But the most recent was by far the worst. What could be worse than sap, worse than scissors and cockleburrs? I must painfully admit that it happened at the grocery store when I wasn’t paying attention. There was a small fan on the end of an M&M Christmas candy tube. You see, the Towhead loves LOVES loves M&Ms (thanks to her Papa). And I mean passed-up-a-cool-doll-so-she-could-get-a-small-package-of-M&Ms loves them. Would-refuse-her-mama’s-out-of-the-oven-cookies loves them. So when we saw a tube of M&Ms in the store with a cool little fan on top I told her we were NOT taking it home but that she could hold it while we were in the store. She was fine, and very well behaved, for a bit. But when I turned my back to grab some rice off the shelf I find her holding a huge chunk of her hair, saying, “Mama, sorry, but . . .”

“What happened?” I asked, wide-eyed. “Did you stick the fan in your hair?”

“No. It just got stuck.”

The worst was not the cut hair though. It was the area above that that had spun itself into small, tight little knots. I laughed. The look I got from her was one one of confusion, like she couldn’t tell whether I was ok with it or I had lost my mind.

Eventually she laughed with me as I untangled her knots and made her answer the question over and over, “What did we learn today?”

“Don’t stick a fan in your hair!”