Author: Pam

…we will make our own fun! L referred to the laundry hamper as “my boat”, but the rides that he was getting from his Dad looked more like sledding. I won’t complain about the rain and the plus zero degrees, but it would be nice to play in the snow.

I can’t believe that it is the second week of Advent already! Advent is the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, in which you anticipate the birth of Jesus. True advent followers don’t put up their Christmas trees until Christmas, but I do. Growing up, we always put the tree up in the beginning of December so to me putting up the Christmas tree is anticipating Christmas.

L was excited to see the big tree take shape in our living room and of course he had fun putting the decorations on. He started with the gold balls, then realized that there were red balls that he could put on. The trouble was that the gold balls were all hanging on his favourite 3 branches, so he took them all off to make room for the red balls. In the end all of the decorations made it onto the tree with a little bit of sneaking from me.

Sunday we woke up to this year’s first snowfall. Of course it melted, but there was more snow this morning. Now it really does feel like Christmas is in 2 1/2 weeks.

I ‘m supposed to be working on a write-up for work while Daddy and L occupy each other, however I couldn’t resist peeking in the living room when I heard a little soprano join the bass. Then I had to capture the moment with a picture. L informs me that it is nice music.

Today L and I baked some Christmas cookies. The last couple of years I have baked a sweet that is traditionally Christmas to me once a week leading up to Christmas. We then enjoy the baking all week and put some away to have at Christmas. We eats sweets all the time anyway so why bake something else earlier and expect to eat all of the “Christmas baking” in the few days that we are around here over Christmas itself. The cookies although tasty do not have a Martha Stewart appearance, though they might be good enough for the “Family Fun” magazine. We definitely had fun making them.

At the beginning L had fun with the sprinkles and seeing happy faces take shape, but in the end it was more immediately satisfying just to eat the candy and the little bits of cookie dough that mom let him have.

I am so glad that Lowell has handed his starred paper in, not just because he is around a little more, but for now the stress level has decreased. Lowell’s paper was due Friday but I had to work Thursday and Friday nights, so Lowell had to babysit as well. Desperate times call for desperate measures so L got to watch alot of TV. Friday morning after I woke up L and I went for a walk in the rain to burn some energy (I needed him to nap in the afternoon). We had a great time.

Curious George came to Barnes n’ Noble on Saturday. He is one of L’s favourite characters so we made a trip there Saturday. L seemed quite thrilled to see George, as long as he was free to observe from ontop of Dad’s shoulders.

Today I did some sewing. L was quite content to sit beside me and work on his own projects, today he was fascinated with the scissors. Since he is the only kid around and I do have a blunt pair of scissors L got to practise opening and closing and cutting paper. Once he got over the fact that cut paper can’t go back together he had fun.

I was actually working on a little backpack for L. I wear a backpack often and L has started tucking a rectangular piece of wood into his waistband and calling it his backpack. Well I thought I could do better than that; I recycled a pair of ripped jeans and found some Thomas the Tank Engine fabric from Helen in my fabric drawer. Many thanks to Helen for passing along your “scraps”, one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.

He was very excited! The plan is to put it away until Christmas, hopefully he doesn’t look around for it tomorrow morning.

L was looking through the photo album this morning and came across the photo of baby L sleeping in the laundry basket. I am doing laundry so the basket is out and L putting two and two together climbed into the laundry basket, requested his blanket and declared that he was too biggy.


It doesn’t seem like he could have ever been that small.

I fear that we may have been a little hard on poor Gam’ma. If I am correct, on her arrival here, she was happy to say that she had once walked 10,000 steps in one day. Well we then made her walk 11,000 steps and then the next day 12,000 steps. Yesterday she was a really good sport and managed 19,000+ steps. Most of those should have counted double since they were up hill and down hill.

So three cheers for Gam’ma!

HOORAY!

Yes, we’re still here, funny faces and all. Life has been busy for me. Life is always busy for Lowell. Lowell babysat L Thursday and Friday so that I could renew my Advanced Cardiac Life Support license. Here is some free advice so I don’t see you in a cardiac intensive care; a baby aspirin 81mg a day has been shown to reduce the risk of heart attack by 23% in men over the age of 50. It is not quite that effective in women but has been shown to reduce female’s risk of stroke (don’t have the numbers).

L has decided that he doesn’t want to sleep under the covers at night; he throws them off. He then wakes up crying in the night. I think it is because he is cold. He sure feels cold to the touch. So I made him a pair of pajamas with feet. He isn’t very impressed with these feet that don’t come off. We will see who will win out. Here he is looking all cute and innocent pretending to nap in his new pajamas.

I don’t think that Lowell and L are spending alot more time together now that I am working, but I guess it is of a different quality. Lowell decided that he should buy L a piano. You will have to ask him what his motivations were. I came to the conclusion yesterday that there are some things you help develop and some things they discover all on their own.