Sunday, December 21, 2008

Pictures of Us

Girly Fun

I had an appointment with my manicurist the other day. She did a wonderful job didn't she?
Oh, and here she is!

More Narnia

The kids....and Bryan are Narnia fanatics. They read about Narnia every night, they watch "Narnia" (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) every chance they get and they play Narnia all day long. (I am hoping we get some good Christmas toys so that Zetta and Grady learn to play something else!)

Zetta prefers to play Lucy or sometimes Susan and Grady likes to be Peter, but will play anyone.
A few days ago, as far as I could tell, Grady took the part of the White Witch and I, unknowingly, was supposed to be playing Aslan. I was putting laundry away in their bedroom and he came at me with his dagger drawn and in his best wicked, growly voice said, "I am going to cut you on the hard couch!" Thinking I had not understood him, I asked, "On the what?" To which he replied, "Get on the hard couch and I will cut you!" I know I hurt his feelings, but I could not stop laughing when I realized what he was trying to say. If you've read "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe," the White Witch kills Aslan on the stone table. Grady had set the scene perfectly, but had the vocabulary a little mixed up!

He is such a funny boy. Maybe I'm a language-development nerd, but I love seeing how a 2-year-old develops - the concepts he picks up, the words he mixes up and his blossoming imagination! I wish you all could see him!

Friday, December 19, 2008

O Christmas Tree

We have a Christmas Tree. For those of you who know our history, this is a BIG thing! Bryan and I have been married for 8 years and I don't think we bought a tree until 2 years ago. I've always been a real tree girl, but I settled for this poor $16 fake tree because I would have been on my own purchasing, setting up and decorating a real tree every year. I think we made this poor thing look pretty good this time! Thank you for helping this time, Bryan. Oh, and as you may have noticed, it is on the floor this year, not on the landing above the closet (we have a very small living room and very high ceilings.) We'll see if it is still up in June again this year! Since it's accessible and I'm not pregnant, it had better not be. I think I'll shoot for taking it down 2 weeks after Christmas so we can enjoy it for a while after we get back from Kansas. We'll see. It did provide a little comedy for all of our visitors this past year!

Aaaahhh!


Another full night's sleep! I actually woke this morning and felt rested. I love it! This is probably good night #4 for Merrick. By "good night," I mean at least 7 hours. Don't get me wrong, he's never been a bad sleeper. He's been the, go to bed at 10:00 and wake at 2:30 and 6:30 just to eat and fall right back to sleep baby. So, even though he's had a pretty good schedule, I am still very thankful for the excellent nights of sleeping.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Sounds good to me!

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk while it's still snowing...

Monday, December 8, 2008

The toy gun in the van and the wolves.

This is Bryan posting for the first time in the existence of this blog. I thought I'd relay a couple of funny stories.

Grady has this little toy shot gun that he likes to play with. He likes it so much that, whenever he happens to be thinking of it, he begs us to let him take it with him in the van wherever we go. This is harmless enough (he just holds it on his lap - we don't let him take it into stores or restaurants obviously) so we let him do it. Yesterday evening, Grady was piddling around the house playing and the shotgun popped into his head - he said he wanted it. Meg and I had just settled in to some show on the television, so I just told him he could go out to the van where it still was and get it himself, the van was in the driveway and all the snow was melted, so he should've been able to quickly run out there, open one of the sliding doors, get it, then close the sliding door with the fancy button our van has that closes it and run back in. He made it a few steps out the front door, but it was dark and cold, and he came right back in, saying he was scared and cold. I ridiculed him briefly for saying he was scared, then asked Zetta to go help him.

Zetta went outside with him and all seemed well and then she came back a minute or so later... without him. Meg and I obviously noticed he wasn't with her so we sent her back outside to see what the problem was and tell/help him to get inside. She came back a minute or so later and said... "Daddy... he says he wants you." Arghh... so I get up and go outside. He's stranded, just hanging out in the mini van, side door wide open... looking a bit aloof, and maybe like he had cried a little bit - not full on meltdown, but genuinely concerned about something. He proceeds to tell me that he's afraid of the wolves outside. He does have a bit of an imagination, so it didn't surprise me that he came up with something like that, particularly since he was outside alone in the cold and dark (except for the van light that is). So, I tell him there are no wolves to be scared of... and then tell him that even if there were he'd be good to go because he has his shotgun to shoot them with. At this his face - without words - says... "Listen dude, I know enough to know this chinky little plastic toy shotgun isn't gonna do anything against a pack of real wolves, so why don't you just..." - you get the point.

So, Grady and I head back in. I tell Meg he said he was afraid to get out of the van because of the wolves. Grady tells her he was afraid and that he cried because of the wolves. All the while, a devilish little grin is taking form on Zetta's face... and as soon as Grady spits out that he cried because he was afraid of the wolves, Zetta starts jumping up and down and laughing (not so much in a devious, demonic way... more a ornery, mischievous way) and saying... "I told him there were wolves outside when I went out to help him. Ha-ha!" She was totally proud of the fact that she A) got him to believe there were actually wolves outside B) that belief caused him to be paralyzed with fear and strand himself in the car and C) that she left him out there all alone once she had made it far enough out there to ensure that he successfully got to his gun. All of this - Zetta's devious role in the whole episode - was lost on Grady, he was just glad to be inside and away from the wolves.

Also, I'm pretty sure wolves being the animal of choice resulted from the fact that Zetta had watched The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe earlier that day. The wolves are the evil White Witch's secret police.

To end the whole story, I told Zetta - for the Nth time, I've lost count - that Grady will actually be bigger and stronger than her some day, so she better watch out.