Christmas

From the Mouth of Babes

Two very appropriate remarks came today from our daughters when Steve and I turned on the presidential speech tonight.

Allison’s reaction: “Monkey” She may have been trying to tell us to change the channel to Curious George, or maybe she just thinks George Bush is a monkey.

Katherine’s reaction: “His face looks red.” We explained that with our new TV we would see things that we hadn’t seen before and that the red was from his makeup.

What Else is New?

Over the course of four weeks, we’ve had a 8 night power outage followed by Christmas, New Years, The Flu (Christine), and then The Snowstorm. Newspaper articles claim this is because of El Nino and not global warming…I think it’s all of the above and plus some bad karma.

1) The 8 Nights Without Power. Outside of family in Duvall, we seem to have set the dubious record among friends for the length of time without power before Christmas. In a nutshell, everything was fine except for no laundry, oven and no high-speed Internet connection. Oh, and Allison had a nasty cold and couldn’t breath or sleep without a humidifier, which we couldn’t run at night (since we tried to turn off the generator before 10PM each night). So we shipped her off to my mom’s for a couple nights. We were starting to get a bit worried when we STILL didn’t have power as we headed to bed the Thursday before Christimas. Thankfully all was restored that evening before Sharon and Jamey arrived the following Friday night. One last aside: we lost a rather large pine tree in our back yard which didn’t hit anything.

2) Christmas. We have many stories which I’ll take the time to writeup later.

• We only broke four cheap and one really expensive glass ornament this year putting up the tree. I view that as rather a pleasant surprise – but then again we put all the ornaments in the top half of the tree!
• Katherine was extremely disappointed that we didn’t have lights outside the house. Given the state of our power and having just watched “An Inconvenient Truth”, Christmas lights just didn’t happen this year.
• The girls had fun playing with their pink advent calendar, wrangling over candy for the gingerbread house, and going to Seattle to see the Christmas sights. It may have been day 6 or 7 of the outage when I told Steve we needed some holiday spirit. We bundled up the kids, dragged them to see the gingerbread houses built by architects, the Teddy Bear Suite (“where are the sweets??”) and the holiday carousel.
• Sharon and Jamey stayed in town for 3 days. We made pies, took the kids for a long walk, had hot pot, watched a Seahawks game, made oatmeal cookies for Santa and generally played with Christmas toys and gifts.

3) The Flu. I also managed to come down with a mysterious 30 hour flu. There were no symptoms otherwise – fell asleep in the playroom while the kids were running around and then started to feel chilled. Steve had just shipped Katherine to my mom’s house for a sleepover. When he came home, I gave him Allison and then went into quarantine in the bedroom for 2 days. The kids were great. Katherine wrote a get well card (mom, we will take care of you!). Allison charged in whenever she could find the door open. I would see her bounce up on to the bench and shout “Mama!” with a big smile. Steve took care of the kids (with help from my mom and Patty) and provided bus service for Tylenol, water, etc. All is well now. Fingers crossed no one else gets this very strange bug.

4) The Snowstorm. Tonight we learned a valuable lesson – to not procrastinate before snowstorms. Steve and I had an errand that had to be completed before dinner. Well, we didn’t head out until 4PM, just as the snowstorm started to hit. We had some difficulty coming home, steering around cars stuck in ditches, accidents, cars parked on the side of the road. And, this was all on a 1 mile stretch of Union Hill Road! We were very glad to pull into the driveway unscathed. I suspect tomorrow will be full of snow day activities – snowmen, food dyed snowballs, tromping around the neighborhood.

“I’ll get it”

Allison’s development continues at a rapid clip; she’s now 20 months old. Rather than editorialize, I’ll just give some sample conversations from the last day or so…

Mom: “Allison, I think some of the missing puzzle pieces are in your sister’s room. Shall we go upstairs and get it?”

Allison “I’ll get it.” (crawling up the stairs)

———-

Dad: “Allison, did you go pee-pee or pooh-pee?”

Allison: “I did.”

————-

Mom: “Katherine, would you like apple juice or orange juice?”

Allison: “apple juice”

—————-

Dad: “Allison, what comes after sixteen?”

Allison: “Sefenteen”

———-

Other items of interest

• Regularly we hear 2 word phrases like: “Daddy’s coffee”, “Sister backpack”, “Get it”, “Coming!!” She can repeat almost any word reasonably well. She also has been heard to holler for her sister, “Sister…Sister…Kathfrine!!” or the dog “Bico!”
• She can count up to 20 in English now and tries to count all sorts of things including pieces of food, stairs…anything!
• She also intersperses Chinese in her conversation, letting me know “maola” when she’s finished her food or “hi yow” when she wants more or “diowla” when she’s dropped food. Hopefully, our little conversations will have affect with Katherine too.
• If I had to guess, because I’ve totally lost count, I’d say she easily has a 250-300 word vocabulary. She can sing the ABC song start to finish including “LMNOP” and is trying to learning the Leapfrog alphabet song from Katherine and me.
• She visits the little potty seat in the downstairs bathroom once or twice a day with clothes on. She will also get herself a bit of toilet paper and pretend to wipe herself when she stands up.
• Allison loves to play with the alphabet wooden puzzle. She can put all the letters in their correct spot and say a few of the letters unprompted and correctly.

All in all, the girls are doing really well. Katherine continues to love full day at Eton. Lots of works fall out of her backpack each day – and the stories are really too precious.

I’ll sort thru pictures tomorrow night and post before the weekend.

She Said What?
Allison’s vocabulary continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Now at 19 months, she surprises us with new developments every day:

We often hear her singing the ABC song to herself. Very clearly she will sing, until L (mumble…) and then picking up again at QRS. She sings this to herself, to us, to anyone who will listen. Often she accompanies herself by swinging her two arms back and forth. Part of this I suspect is to get our attention, because we will often stop our conversation to listen to her singing. Other times, she just seems to sing for the joy of it.

She also sings: Itsy Bitsy Spider (with hand motions), Twinkle Twinkle, Rain Rain Go Away, and Rock a Bye Baby. In the evenings, she’ll request songs for bed by putting her hand on my face and saying “Tinkle” or “down rain” or “bye.” If I don’t hear her, she’ll keep patting my cheek. Other times, she’ll say “Allison!” so we’ll sing her name as part of the song. Katherine loves to participate in this routine by sitting her her little rocking chair next to ours and singing along – solo or as part of the chorus.

She astounded me today as I heard her counting in Spanish as she climbed the stairs. According to Patty, Allison can count in Spanish from 1-10. On her way to Toby School, she watched the UPS trucks pull out of the nearby depot, and she started to count them in Spanish! And, I’ve also heard Allison many times counting in Mandarin from 1-10 – and English…She truly is a trilanguage kid.

Thanks to her sister, Allison loves Leapfrog. Occasionally they’ll watch the Letter Factory – which appeals to Allison because of the music. When Katherine is at school, Allison will climb on the sofa, and say hopefully “QRS?” or “ABC?” If I don’t accede to her request, she’ll find the remote and point it at the TV. I also found her once putting the Leapfrog DVD in our DVD player! Has this had any affect? Well, tonight, she sang “The A says Ah, the A says Ah….” I tried to sing along with the “The B says…” and she said “Ah!!” Thankfully we’ve got a while to learn phonetics!

I would say that her vocabulary now exceeds 150 spoken words. She’ll blurt out two words at times, like tonight when she said “Got it!”

Much of this credit should go to my mom and Patty who have been immersing Allison in Chinese and Spanish. I also know that my mom has been drilling Allison with numbers and letters, and she’s been absorbing it!

Sibling Dynamics

I shouldn’t paint too rosy of a picture at home because we certainly have our challenges. One of the big challenges is managing Allison’s belief that everything is MINE! And, Katherine can’t figure out how to work/share with her sister who doesn’t understand sharing. It results in toys going away, items being removed from a very unhappy Allison and generally normal but not fun sibling dynamics. Thankfully we have a few concrete rules which the kids follow:

• No one has to share their lambies. Have I mentioned that Allison adores and sleeps with mama lambey, the gigantic version of Katherine’s stuffed Amela lamb?
• If they can’t share, it goes up. (I believe that Katherine works this rule at times though.)
• Toys with small pieces get played with when Allison isn’t around. Allison unfortunately loves to play with chokable items, like the cherries in Hi Ho Cherrio or puzzle pieces or game pieces…

FINALLY FULL DAY

Katherine is now a full day kid at Eton. This means lunch at school and pick up mid afternoon. This is really convenient given Allison’s mid day nap. Katherine is also really proud and happy to hang with her friends the entire day. She’s even mentioned wanting to be at Clubhouse (daycare after school) so she can be with friends the rest of the afternoon. Her work production is certaining going up now. Her backpack is chock full of stuff from two work cycles – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Unbenowst to us, the teachers had started Katherine on simple reading of three letter words. (This is all good since we’ve been playing reading games with her too…) She showed Steve on Saturday a work in which she pulls out three letter words, sounds them out and then puts the item next to the word. For instance, sounding out l-o-g then a picture of a log goes next to the word card. Writing continues to develop as well. She can now write a wobbly Katherine in mixed upper and lower case, which is kind of legible in a preschool kind of way. She also showed Steve during Father/Daughter Day a work in which she took two baskets of items with two items each and added them up to produce four.

Katherine is very proud of her works. Today she burst in the house waving a book at me. “Look Mama at the book I made.” She flipped thru to show me the 5 senses of Christmas which had a jingle bell, candy cane, fluffly beard, etc. I expressed admiration with only a slight caveat “It seems to be Veronica’s book. Do you think she has yours?” “Oh Yes, Mama” We tucked Veronica’s book in her backpack. I hope she comes home with her work on Thursday so she can admire it more over the holidays. 🙂

She’s increasingly getting attached to her teachers. For the auction, she insisted that we try and buy her teacher experience – time spent with her teacher learning about horses. Katherine also told me very clearly that her teachers HAD to have Burts Bees for Christmas (we did that last year for her teachers at MCH) and a gift card. So, she came with me to the store and picked out their gifts.

Katherine really is growing up very quickly.

The Trip Trap Chair

I caved this month and told Steve that it was time to buy two of these rather expensive chairs. Allison (aka Danger Girl) had developed a habit of climbing on the kitchen chairs and standing up to eat! Despite us telling her “tushie or knees” we’d find her standing up, waving her food at us. This of course resulting in several tumbles onto the floor.

I was convinced the only way to deal with this was to buy this chair which allows Allison to sit at the table while belted in. She generally refuses to sit in a high chair for more than say 5 minutes…So, tonight Steve came home with two chairs – one to keep Allison seated and the other to ensure peace among siblings.

The kids love the chairs! So, did the purchase have the desired results? Yes, until after dinner. While we cleaned, Danger Girl climbed the chair and sat on the bottom ledge playing with the straps on the top ledge/seat. I explained that it was unsafe, peeled her off the chair at least 3 times with much crying. I guess we’ve solved one problem, standing with eating, and introduced another…

Visiting Santa

We may get one more year of Santa Claus with Katherine, before she figures out what’s up. This year she’s started to ask some hard questions like “how does he open the door to the fireplace?” and “how does he get back up the fireplace?” Not as familiar with the Santa lore, I defer these questions to Steve who explains, “it’s magic.” Ha!

She may have also noticed this past Saturday at the Toby School party that Santa was wearing tennis shoes.

Katherine did express her concern that she needed to visit Santa for two reasons.

1) Santa gives out candy canes. Katherine is obsessed with candy canes.
2) Santa apparently doesn’t know what she wants unless she tells him (or so Steve says).

So, we dragged both kids to Santa at Redmond Town Center last Friday after school to see the big guy. He was very nice. Allison predictably wouldn’t go near him. So, we now have a picture of our entire family with Santa. Katherine explained to Santa that she wanted a watch and a wallet for Christmas. She was stymied when he asked what kind of wallet. It will all work out – princess digital watch and a hello kitty wallet.

Why the princess watch? For my birthday, I asked for two things – a cheap Timex watch and a coupon holder. I explained to Steve my new rule – the cheaper the watch the longer it lasts. This is evidenced by my Ebel, which now has to go back for repairs AGAIN and my Timex running watch which still works after 8 years. Steve dragged the kids to Target and what did Katherine see in the watch department? A cheesy, pink watch with a princess on the band.

The Blog Lag

Everyone has been most kind in not pointing out that I haven’t blogged in ages. The lag can be attributed to the Eton Auction – specifically the silent auction. We had the auction on Sunday the 3rd, and the house is finally settled back down. It was a pretty crazy November, but all is now back to normal just in time for the holidays!

Tis the Season

Katherine has been so excited about Christmas, in part because of all the activities that are becoming family tradition. We started the weekend after Thanksgiving with a trip to the Christmas tree farm. Katherine ran around pointing at trees for about five minutes – at which point she got impatient and all the females in the family retired to the warm minivan. Decorating was a success again this year; Katherine helped me unpack the ornaments and put them on the tree. Our damage…only one ceramic ornament was broken. Allison wasn’t sure what to make of a tree in the middle of the living room and lights all over the tree!

That evening we went to an annual cookie exchange – where Santa made a star appearance. Katherine was a bit surprised and apprehensive about sitting on his lap. We asked her what she wanted and she said “a candy cane!” She ended up sitting on Steve’s lap and telling Santa “I want a candy cane. I have all my stuffed animals already.” Since then, she’s elaborated on her wish list, saying she wants: a candy cane, a new Lambey (hmmm), a new Carl book (Carl’s Sleepy Afternoon) and one other thing I can’t remember! She insists “I’m a good girl” and fully expects Santa to deliver on these items. She is also very concerned about Allison – telling me that Santa should not put a candy cane in Allison’s stocking because she’s still a baby.

Early the following week we decorated a gingerbread house. This is our third year of doing so. The first year, our friends the Sarins brought over a house. Tina glue-gunned the house together and we made a beautiful house. Last year Katherine was an active decorator, placing candy all over the tree. This year, I bought a kit and she was just beyond herself – holding the kit with a firm grip and telling Steve when he got home that we HAD to decorate the house that I had managed to glue together. Funny enough, Katherine understood that the candy was for decorating. She found Steve with candy in his mouth several times and admonished him “candy is for decorating, not eating!”

Steve went to LA to visit his grandmother just a few days later. I tried to stick with our planned activities and took Katherine to a cookie decorating party for a little friend. She did amazingly well – telling me when she needed my help (for frosting), and asking nicely after decorating if she could eat a cookie! The cookies were laden with frosting, marshmallows, jelly beans, chocolate chips and M&Ms. She was in cookie heaven! The decorating was followed by a beautiful lunch – and the kids at the party did a great job behaving at the restaurant.

We discovered a new tradition yesterday with my mom who had visited the local nursery (Molbaks) and wanted to take pictures of the kids there. Molbaks is celebrating the holidays with a Festival of Poinsettias – literally hundreds of plants and a gigantic 10′ tree made of poinsettias with benches in front. A woman walking by was thoughtful enough to volunteer to take our picture – and the resulting picture was wonderful. I have a feeling this will be a new family tradition. Allison loved the colorful flowers as she kicked all the way through the visit. We finished up our visit picking up some new clothes for the kids and headed home for cookie decorating with Grandma.

Finally Eating!!

Allison is Finally Eating solids. It’s really been touch and go for the last month. While she’s eating only say a teaspoon of food at a time, she’s getting the hang of eating and getting really messy! Our first technique (courtesy of my mom) was to wait for Allison to open her mouth while she played with her own spoon and to gently jam a second spoon in her mouth. I learned that she loves to hold spoons and try and get the food in her mouth herself. She also LOVES finger food – namely the Whole Foods organic equivalent of Cheerios.

Allison now eats sweet potato, apple, bananas and a bit of peas. She still doesn’t eat cereal…Oh well.