This year we almost didn’t make it to the Santa Train. Tickets sell out SO FAST, and the place that had tickets was only open from 9-5. I’m at WORK from 9-5. So yeah, I didn’t get tickets, but THEN! Craigslist to the rescue! Did you know that you can put in a search on craigslist, and then subscribe to those search results’ rss feed? GENIUS I TELL YOU! So, late last Friday, I popped open Google reader to see a woman in centreville selling 4 tickets. I quickly emailed her and begged. Beggging in email entails the use of many exclamation points, but not too many, because you don’t want to come off as crazy. I also tried to use PLEASE in a variety of ways. In fact, I’ll dig up the email I sent:

Oh lord, I would LOVE to have these!! Please oh pleasity please please!

Please let me be the lucky buyer!

PLEASE!!

So desperate sounding yes, but also a touch of cuteness with the pleasity please please, don’t you think? Well, whatever, it doesn’t matter what you think because I GOT THEM WAHOO! I didn’t dare utter a word to the kids until after I had the tickets in my hot little hands, because you never know with craigslist buying/selling, but I did get them, and they were so tickled. And I must admit, so were James and I.

So enough with the jibber jabber, fool. On to the photos!

Waiting for the train to arrive.

Jocelyn looks like a big poofy pink marshmellow.

I have taken pains in teaching my children how to make faces when someone points a camera at them.

Look! Look! The train is finally coming to get us!

Yay! We finally get to get on board! And sit for another 10 minutes before we actually get to move!

But then we DID move! And excitement ensued!

I don’t think Ethan will ever not love being on a train.

This isn’t the santa train for nothing — Santa made an appearance. Ethan was excited. He exhibited his excitement by hiding and grinning a lot.

Jocelyn sat on my lap and hardly took her eyes off him once.

That look that could be constipation is actually lots of smiling and shyness and just utter cuteness!

Santa asked her what she wanted, and for a second I thought she didn’t have an answer, but then she grinned and said, “Woody. And Jessie. Dolls.” and then looked constipated some more.

We waved goodbye, Ethan pronounced the rest of the trip “Boring,” and soon we arrived back at the station and headed home.

Santa train 2007 – big success.

So, Thanksgiving, huh? What a weekend! It was wonderful, my brother and his family came over for the day (instead of the several days earlier anticipated) and it was great fun. I got most of the cooking out of the way the night the night before, so it was truly a nice, relaxing day. The food all turned out great, the kids were all behaved (with the the exception of Ethan, who kept wiggling and kicking and showing the food in his mouth to everyone, luckily the 3 little ones were at the “kid table”) and then naps, monopoly, Wii, pumpkin pie and chocolate cake ended the day. It’s so nice having some of my family near by! This was a first for me!

The rest of the weekend was nice too, I had visions of getting the tree and decorating it Friday, but the actuality of it was less appealing than the idea of it. I did take Jocelyn and get a tree on Sunday however (let her pick it it, because my track record isn’t that great) and so it is up, but undecorated.

Lots of craftiness ensued, the kids and I painted butterflies, hearts, and christmas trees — all things you cut out on a fold, paint, and then fold again for symmetrical paint blobbiness (and then when you’re done with the paint, that’s when the glitter is sprinkled) – it was great fun. My kitchen floor is all glittery now 🙂

We also did some gumdrop sticking, and I made some Martha Stewart paper ornaments, and a couple of hot pads. I need to take pictures of everything to show off.

My gumdrop wreath:

Ethan’s gumdrop tree:

Jocelyn’s gumdrop tree:

Grumbling (from Ethan mostly) came along with Monday morning, but the promise of taking detours on the way home to see people’s christmas lights helped to assuage that.

There was also lots of shopping done, and despite my wish to make it low key and do lots of hand made things, there are closets stocked with presents already. On the plus side, I think we may be done! Waiting for a few things to be delivered, and need to go over all the lists, but largely, I think the shopping is pretty much done.

It was a lovely holiday.

Hard to believe such an AWFUL picture of Ethan…

Could be SO DARN CUTE.

Jocelyn’s didn’t turn out quite so well… I need to retake her picture and make sure her body is turned also. Still cute though:

I don’t know why I freak out about this every year (and it always seems to be right around this time of year, too) but Jocelyn is freaking tall. SHE’S TAAAALLL. 4T pants still fits her, but it seems like her tummy (still big baby tummy) is showing from all her shirts being just a bit too snug, so I got her a bunch of new 5T shirts when I was at Target the other day. FIVE-TEE. SHE IS ONLY THREE YEARS OLD! The kids had a “thanksgiving brunch” at their school last week, Ethan’s was on Monday and Jocelyn’s was on Tuesday. The parents came, everyone eats some fruit and cheese, and then each age group got up to sing some Thanksgiving songs. Jocelyn was a good FIVE inches taller than anyone in her class. My sweet little amazon! 🙂

I also got her hair trimmed by a professional this weekend. I seem to weeble wobble between wanting to get her hair cut into a short bob and leaving it alone, and I don’t make anything better by constantly asking her (constantly = once every couple weeks) if we should cut her hair. She really goes with however I phrase it (Should we cut your hair?-YES! Should we leave it long?-YES!), but I think she likes her hair long, so I am trying to restrain myself. The trim did her a lot of good though, the ends were getting a bit ratty, and Mommy doesn’t do the best job at trimming the bangs. It looks much cleaner and the slightly too-short bangs (which will be fine in about 2 seconds, her hair grows so fast) is very sweet.

More on Thanksgiving later!

flower stitch detail:

Also made a pillow:

and 2 christmas pillowcases

feeling kind of down on myself right about now.. i’m trying to think of the usual reasons i might be feeling depressed, and while the sleep hasn’t been great lately, nothing else is presenting itself.

working full time has done something to me i think. i just don’t have the infinite mommy patience that i used to have. it’s gone so quickly now that tasks i used to perform with little effort have become dreaded and disastrous. i can’t blame myself entirely though, it’s a different family dynamic now (5 year old and 3 year old) than it was when i was at home full time (3 yr old and 1 yr old), but the patience thing is still a factor.

i’ve been screaming lately. to be exact, it happened last night, and last sunday. too often. way too often. it starts with a squabble. ethan power-tripping about some toy that jocelyn wants a turn with. jocelyn not bothering with any sort of niceties and demanding it, her voice rising into whining and temper tantrum. ethan locking down into stubbornness and me trying to talk everyone down in a normal tone until i can’t even hear myself think as it all escalates in emotion, volume and tension until i crack and then i screech something insanely momish, (“that’s it, i’ve had enough!”.. “if you guys can’t work it out, NO ONE will get to play with it..”) these items aren’t yelled. they aren’t even hollered. I scream them at the top of my voice.

why? why can’t i hold it together? i am not even home with them where this is a whole day of thing upon thing piled up to this “last straw” sort of moment.. I only have an hour or two with my kids at the end of each weekday and i can’t have an ounce more patience? what is with me? i used to be able to handle way more than this and keep my cool. is it just the lack of day to day patience trying that’s making me lose it or is there something wrong with me? i think it’s the former, but i’m scared it might be the latter.

i made a real dinner once this week, where we all sat down and ate together. One. Time.
i stopped at fast food on the way home for kids’ meals twice this week.
i made just the kids scrambled eggs once, while james picked up burritos for me and him to eat after the kids were in bed.

walking from the car to the store is such a pain in the ass. ethan runs ahead and my mind is filled ith the fact that someone looking out their rear window as they’re backing out of a parking spot (if they even bother looking) will only see the top of his head and so i’m constantly trying to scan for red tail lights while trying to get jocelyn to stop staring at whatever is in her hands and keep up with me, while hollering at ethan to stay next to me. one runs away and the other straggles behind. both holler and yell if i take up their hands to keep them next to me.

ethan has a habit of hiding and trying to scare us. when he hears daddy’s car drive up, he doesn’t run to the door. he hides.

this is not a good thing when you’re in target.

this evening, i had to pull a “OK I’m leaving! Bye!” and walk away way too many times just to get my kids to tear themselves away from the toys/christmas decorations/ spider man shoes. ethan of course, hiding, trying to scare me with a boo, no matter how many times i tell him “no more trying to scare me. especially when we’re in a store.”

I feel like Jocelyn gets the short end of the stick often, just being the younger child and I’ve been trying to give her some special attention. But now I feel like it has backfiring and I’ve been neglecting Ethan.

this mom stuff sucks sometimes. we can do it all, but don’t anybody try to convince me that it’s supposed to be easy.

especially this week.

Pillowcases for the kids using this fabric from reprodepot:

Lollipop cookies from Me and My Girl:

An advent calendar from allsorts, which I know realistically I won’t ever make, but isn’t it lovely? I can dream can’t I!

(taken place around the dinner table in the last week or so)

james: knock knock
jocelyn: who’s there
james: interupting cow
jocelyn: interupt–
james: MOOOOOOOO!

Ethan: Knock knock!
me: Who’s there!
Ethan: apple!
me: apple who?
Ethan: Apple fart-head!

me: knock knock!
ethan: who’s there!
me: boo!
ethan: boo hoo!
me: aww, what’s the matter, why are you crying?!

Jocelyn: knock knock!
james: who’s there
jocelyn: interupting cow!
james: interupting cow who!
jocelyn: interupting cow macaroni and cheese!

ethan: knock knock!
james: who’s there
ethan: interupting sheep!
james: in—
ethan: BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

jocelyn knock knock!
me: who’s there!
jocelyn: bowl!
me: bowl who?
jocelyn: apple in the bowl!

me: knock knock
jocelyn: who’s there
me: interupting cow
me: inter–
everyone: MOOOOOOOO!!

jocelyn: knock knock!
ethan: who’s there!
jocelyn: MOO!

-fini-

Jocelyn was thumbing through the Toys R Us Biggest Toy Book Ever! (preferred reading around our house these days) and saw a kid’s guitar, and started talking about how she wants a guitar when SHE’s a big girl. James caught wind and told her, “I have a guitar. Do you want to see it?”

Well, they were off and downstairs in a jiffy. And now, here’s the video of our budding super star!

Oh. My. Lord.

I just died. From the cuteness. My favorite part, the first 3 seconds when she’s struggling just to sit on the couch with the guitar on her lap. The rest is awesome too though. Especially the end, where she’s states, “That’s the END.”

-amy