She's (1)3 year old!

Holy craptastic brain fry. Seriously, someone, get this kid a sibling because her momma is done played out!

The Christmas guitar

please excuse the mess in the background as Christmas sort of threw up in our house today!

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Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Whew ... this momma is tired! We've had quite the busy two days. This was such a fun Christmas. Lucy is at such a perfect age to really enjoy the activities. She hasn't yet developed any insane need for "stuff", so her joy is not really about the gifts, it's about being with all the people and parties. Lucy shines in a crowd (unlike her momma). Christmas Eve we celebrated with my dad's side of the family. My aunt and uncle have a new house and it held our family quite nicely. We arrived home in time to play with some new toys, have a snack and head out to church. Lucy danced and danced at the rockn' candlelight service. She took her responsibility of carefully sharing the lit candle with momma very seriously. Lucy went to bed very very late on Christmas Eve. Grandma and Grandpa spent the night at our house so Lucy was in heaven when she woke up on Christmas morning. We opened stockings, had breakfast and played a little before heading over to my uncles to celebrate my mom's side of the family. We were a little burnt out tonight and Lucy was a kid on the edge until I got some real (non cookie) food in her! I'm currently on edge a little as my house is overwhelmed with new stuff and packaging but I am trying to enjoy the moment.

Christmas part 2

Tonight we celebrated with Mel and Morgan. We opened gifts, had homemade pizza and homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. If we go by Lucy's outrageously swinging moods today I'd say we have quite a long couple days in store AND hope that someone is bringing Bailey's to Christmas Eve because mommy needs a drink! Once again, I say bring it on, bring it all on ... Morgan and Lucy were precious little angel/demons tonight and although perfect children would be easier, they'd sure be boring and they definately wouldn't be ours! I can't believe how much there is to be thankful for.

Christmas with the boys ...

Every year we get together with the boys to celebrate Christmas. We have appetizers for dinner, open gifts and drive around drinking coffee and looking at Christmas lights. One day, darn it, all the kids will appreciate this wonderful tradition and will refrain from: 1. falling asleep the second we get in the car to look at lights, 2. high pitch screaming 3. yelling at the screamer 4. playing video games instead of looking at lights 5. spontaneosly deciding that she's not going to be anyone's best friend.

didn't matter though, the chaos, the noise, the defiance ... I love these guys and all of the chaos is a small price to pay for the blessings that these four kids bring to our lives and to each others lives.

and they all gave us the gift of eventually falling asleep so we got to skip bedtime routines. Nathan gave us the gift before we pulled out of the garage!

more festivities coming

Saturday

Today we braved the snowy weather to drive the few blocks to The Braid Factory and get Lucy's hair professionally braided for the first time. She was so sweet and so brave.

Sometimes it hurt and she held onto my head for support, I felt really bad.

She sat so nice, and people commented on how cute she was and how well spoken (she gets a lot of practice since she talks from the second she wakes up until the second she falls asleep)

She kept moving her head as far away from the lady as she could.

After the torture we went to Matt's Bar for "Jucy Lucy's". Her hair looks so cute!

This Morning ...

Lucy: momma, MOMMA, MOMMA, MMMMMMOOOOOOOMMMMMMAAAAA!!!!!!!!!



Momma: stumbling in her room, half asleep, sorta limping ... Lucy you have to give me a second to respond!

Lucy: OH were you sleeping momma?

Momma: yes honey

Lucy: oh ok

one more day one more day

one more day until I start holiday break! Two weeks and one day of free vacation time. I love it. Tomorrow is an extra long day, working until 7:30 pm and busy too but it'll make me appreciate the time off that much more. Today with Lucy was practically perfect in everyway. The not perfect part was that she wet the bed last night, but hey, it was the first time she ever wet the bed since going pull-up free about a month ago. She handled the abrupt stripping really well (usually she fights getting out of pj's in the morning). She slept late, woke up happy, and sped through the morning routine in a really cooperative fashion. They reported that Lucy had a great day in preschool. We had a spontaneous change of plans as a friend needed help getting her son from his preschool so off we went and Lucy was compliant about the whole thing. Lucy was really sweet to Nathan when he was sad that his mom didn't pick him up, and the two of them laughed during the whole car ride. We met up with my friend and her other kids at mcdonalds and the kids played hard for a while, Lucy even met a couple new friends there. It was just really nice with no complications and no drama. I think I was her "friend" all night long.

Cyber-Caroling

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Sunday night ...

Heading into the last week before winter break! This year both Lucy and I have the same two weeks off of work/school. Here are some photos from the weekend:

OUR FINISHED GINGER BREAD HOUSE

LUCY WORKING HARD ON DECORATING

JACOB WANTS TO EAT IT!

BUILDING THE HOUSES

OUR SNOWMAN

This morning ...

I witnessed one of Lucy's little preschool friends being mean to her. OMG I wanted to kick that little kids' *ss! I am not trying to pretend that Lucy is a total pacifist when it comes to peer relationships BUT the sad sad look in my sweet girl's eyes brought out the mother lion in me so I turned my back on the little bully and gave my girl
kisses and told her she was sweet and loveable and a friend to all. Seriously this stuff starts when they're 3? Ugggh. Don't mess with my kid people. Don't do it.

Friends ...

It is great when your kid and your friend's kid can find friendship!

Decorated with Glove

Those of you who know Lucy or who have read the blog for some time know that our Lucy has a certain fetish. She still loves her gloves. She has different kinds now, snow gloves, chemical gloves and doctor or "poking" gloves. The chemical gloves are her new favorite. Although her most chemically chemical right now is a few drops of dawn and water in a spray bottle she needs those gloves (if you add Trader Joe's tingly tea tree oil body wash, it's even more chemical excitement because it smells "dangerous"). My child is a little odd, but she's a cheap date. I brought up a little christmas tree for her room and looky look at the lovely tree topper.

Countdown

Less then 2 weeks until the holiday break!!! I get two "free" weeks off at the end of the year and fortunately (or unfortunately depending on the moment) Lucy's preschool is closed those exact two weeks. Everything happens in this last two weeks of work. Setting up clients to have resources to deal with the closure, the holiday store, the holiday parties, graduation and terminating with some clients. WHEW and that's just on top of the normal stuff that goes on at my agency. OH wait, there's also my personal shopping and holiday preparations. I shake my head and my fist.

Today Lucy was getting a little fiesty when she was "helping" me make pancakes. With her, the "you give an inch, she takes a mile" situation really really applies. She started messing with "transferring" pancake batter from the plain batter to the blueberry batter, totally missing and moved on to tasting the batter which freaks me out since I am convinced she'll get salmonella or something (I am not a germophobe but am a bit of a freak about food borne illnesses). Anyways after chastising her and getting to the "final warning" she looks at me and says "uhhhgggg, mom you're really bringing me down". WHERE in the H E double hockey sticks does she get this stuff from?

This morning ...

For some reason in my "didn't sleep well all night" haze I thought that Lucy was calling for me at 6am. That being a fairly unacceptable hour these days I went into her room to ask her to rest for a bit longer. She was chit chatting away at me and I just said firmly "no talking now, I need to go back to bed!" As I headed back to my room I noticed that my cousin was up for the day. She usually doesnt make it up the steps until it's fairly close to leaving time so I was very confused. Peeking around the corner I saw that it was in fact 7:15. I popped back into Lucy's room and said "guess what, I was wrong it's time to get up!" and Lucy said "ohhhh ok, so it ISSS a good day then". Cute cute cute.

There is quite a bit of snow falling and we cancelled our babysitting gig as I am getting less and less inclined to take risks as I get older. It was probably good we stayed home (for us, not for the family we cancelled on) as Lucy was rock solid tired, whew.

The new reality ...

Ugggg a short post here about social services now that Bush has had eight years to mess with us (and not to gossip but it never occured to me that the man might have fallen off the wagon but apparently he has ... but not to gossip). Our agency has for years done some tremendous work with at risk clients. Seriously good work. We work with families who have generations of abuse, poverty, addiction etc under their belts and if that wasn't enough add racism, fear of deportation, domestic violence and whew ... thing is, until recently it never exactly seemed hopeless. Seriously we at our agency could aid and nurture at least some of the layers of hurt away while assisting with physical needs. After many years families leave with a resiliency that they just couldn't see before. Thanks to Bush's new laws on reducing the deficit (wasn't that his creation???) our agency has now been mandated to limit our service time to two years. Now for almost every other agency out theere, this might seem like a long time but for these families it's barely enough time to take a breath some years (key the hopeless feelings).

So now on top of trying to make sure our families have happy holidays, have safety nets during our closure we are also hosting graduation parties. We all feel a bit bitter about these graduations (normally such a celebration). It seems like things will only get worse ....

what a downer.

Some days ...

I like to pretend that Brad and Angelina are reading this blog and like they totally wish that they could invite us over for playdates but ya know, they're a little shy and insecure and wouldn't want to be turned down.

Dudes, I'd totally say yes. We'd like need you to provide transportation to and from the play date and I totally call dibs on holding the babies.

I am not weird.

Emergency responders and my bad timing ...

I just wanted to write this down so that one day Lucy doesn't make the same mistakes as her mother ....

I have had an unstable relationship with emergency responders in the Minneapolis area. First, if you are a single person who prefers men in the Mpls area you are well aware of how fortunate we are in our firefighting force (they are very very nice). SOOOOOOO one would not want to make the following two mistakes when one has them knocking on ones door:

1. when you call 911 to report a fire on your neighbors stoop put your glasses on first or you'll totally be embarrassed when the firemen come up your steps (as you're shouting, "no it's ACROSS the street!!!!" to inform you that it's a BBQ that is burning ma'am"

2. after Christmas if your grandma gives you and your cousin Jen and your baby Lucy matching pj's, and you decide to take a group photo to give grandma just KNOW that that'll be the moment when some dude racing down the street flips his car in front of your house smashing into said cousins car ... and when the emergency responders come to your door and you're all wearing matching pj's you can skip flirting with them, your fate is sealed!

ADDITIONALLY, it's always nice to know that you have someone's back ...

3. in the dead middle of the night when the cops come pounding on your door asking for your cousin Jen you won't "rat her out", for some reason your first instinct will be to protect her and hesitate UNTIL you realize it's the cops and you'd better tell the truth. Honestly I don't know what I think she did that I felt the need to hesitate in telling the cops she was here. Turns out her car was once again smashed into but this time the smasher got away.

our evenings at home ...

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redemption

I know I don't have to blog every day now that it's December. Just wanted to say that Lucy redeemed herself this afternoon. She was a joy to be around and very nice to her friends (Isaac, Nathan and Jacob) as we babysat this afternoon/evening. Good girl Lucy-Lu.