Santa Success...Sort of.

I've been intending to post Jonathan's lone Santa portrait, so y'all get a double post tonight as I wanted to take care of it before we travel to WV. We were at the mall last Sunday trying to finish up buying gifts for Bryan/Daddy. Jonathan saw Santa and wanted to sit on his lap. The line was forever long but he was insistent that he wanted to do it. I was secretly happy because it was completely initiated by him and we were at the mall with the Santa with the real beard, the same Santa Jonathan was photographed with for his first Christmas in 2005.

Jonathan did great standing in line and was perfectly fine chatting it up with Santa about Thomas while he was waiting on the photographer to get ready. However, after one picture was taken, he was done and wanted nothing to do with Santa, declaring that he "needed some Mommy." Since the price they charge for Santa pictures is akin to the proverbial highway robbery, I am posting it here. Maybe next year we can have no crying AND looking at the camera!



Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas to Me!

Jonathan and I were recently talking about Santa and Christmas. He's really into the whole Santa concept this year. He's got the "ho, ho, ho" down and he understands the concept that Santa brings presents. When I asked him for whom Santa brings presents, he says "for me." I followed that up with asking him "what about Mommy?" To which he replied "no, for me." So I said "who brings Mommy presents." He thought about it for a while and replied "maybe Daddy?"

Well, I should have forgotten about Santa long ago and looked to Daddy instead because Santa never brought me anything as great as this:



My lovely husband has spent an inordinate amount of time and effort so that I can have the vehicle I've wanted for some time, a Honda CR-V. He spent all day yesterday at three separate dealerships just to bring me happiness. In exchange, he inherits my Honda Civic. Great deal for me, less than exciting for him.

I, of course, GREATLY APPRECIATE his generousity and selflessness, so much so that I may even allow him to drive it sometimes. ;) Thanks, honey, you're the best!

Christmas Preparation

This is what happens when Jonathan and Daddy put lights on a Christmas tree. I suppose this is one way to keep them from getting tangled:





And THIS is what happens when Daddy gets bored with the lights and decides to play with the camera:



In light of Andrea's recent post regarding trying to find the Christmas spirit, I have a few examples of my own to add after a weekend of Christmas shopping. First, thank you to the lady at Kohl's who very patiently walked behind us as Jonathan dawdled and wanted to look at every item in the store on our way to the cash register. Second, thank you to the very nice Target employee who pulled out numerous red plastic carts, trying to find one that was dry for Jonathan to sit in. Both of these folks made my miserably cold and rainy shopping experience a lot better!

'Tis the Season

Related to my last post, I picked up Jonathan's holiday pictures today, taken by none other than Jon. It is so great that they come to school so all I had to do was dress him in the appropriate attire and wait a week for this:



Oh, and I had to pay, but it was SO worth it:



Coy much? You'd never guess that when he first saw this hat he announced "I hate it."



Guess which picture made an appearance on our Christmas cards, said cards to be picked up and mailed this weekend. This will be a spoiler for some of you...



Happily, despite the fact that it was a record-breaking 74 degrees in the 'ville yesterday, we finally got our Christmas tree up. Some fun pictures of that coming soon...

We're Famous!

OK, not really, but my friend Jon, whose work you can see directly above, has a new website and some of Jonathan's pictures are on there. You can see Jonathan under the section titled "environmental portraiture."
I know most of you do not live in Louisville, but for those of you who do, please check out Jon for your photography needs. He is a really nice person and he does a great job!!

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

I realized today that I haven't taken any pictures of J-man for awhile. I guess he did, too, as he asked me to take his picture tonight as he was taking his bath. He was very happily lining up his bath toys and, when I asked him what he was doing, he said he was having a party. Notice how everything is lined up like a "choo-choo."



When I asked for clarification on the party, he told me it was a "nakey party." Apparently, when you are two, this is the best type of party.



He totally cracked me up when he spontaneously burst into a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday." He got all the words right (of course, there are not very many) and the tune was dead-on.He kept putting "Mommy" in the song's name slot, but I am trying to get him to insert "Daddy," seeing as how Bryan's birthday is a mere one week away.



A couple of funny Jonathan-isms from the past week or so:

1. He only refers to himself by his last name. If you laugh, he is offended.
2. If you ask him what Santa Claus says, he stops whatever he is doing and says "Ho, Ho, Ho" just like the Santa from "A Christmas Story."
3. He loves to look at the ads, particularly the toy sections. He points out all the things he likes and says that he "needs" (fill in the blank).
4. When he gets mad, he stops his feet, jumps up and down and collapses into a puddle. It's endearing, really.

We definitely have our hands full with this one!

A tisket, a tasket...

...a flower making basket. Does anyone remember that toy from the 80s? It was a basket that you used flower scented Play-Doh in and somehow or the other made flowers? I know my sister and I really wanted one but we never got one.

Well, that product's jingle went though my head as I made the following cake. I had my final cake class in Course Two and here is the finished product. I am embarrassed to admit how much time went into this cake, but I am psyched about how it turned out. If only I could make money off this sort of thing as it is much more laid back than being an attorney, at least most of the time!

Oh Deer...

While Jonathan and I were in West Virginia for Thanksgiving, my dad participated in his favorite pastime--deer hunting. Mom and Dad live on two wooded acres, allowing my father to enjoy his hobby literally in his backyard. I'm obviously not a hunting chick and I don't really get the attraction to the sport, but Dad loves it. Since the moment we told Dad that the ultrasound revealed that we were having a boy, Dad started dreaming of the day when he would finally have a hunting buddy.

Well, all that time he patiently raised my sisters and me has paid off. Jonathan at two years old has already expressed a love of fishing and, as of Saturday, an interest in dead deer as well. He had his first encounter on Saturday morning when Dad killed an eight-point buck and brought it back to the house. He wanted to take Jonathan to see it and Jonathan was nothing short of fascinated, walking right up to it and sticking his finger in its eye. He enjoyed the dangling tongue, too. I was a bit grossed out but it was already dead and he IS all boy when it comes to this sort of thing, so I just went with it.

So, pursuant to Dad's request, here are the pictures. In case it was not clear already, there is a dead animal in them in case anyone reading this is squeamish about that type of thing:







I may have a little outdoors man on my hands. I suppose before I send him off in the woods, however, he may need something other than a Ralph Lauren sweatsuit. I suspect, however, that my dad will take care of all of the details.

Bye, Bye Binky

I hope I am not speaking too soon but the days of this:





may be over! Jonathan is almost two and a half years old and, before tonight, Bryan and I were fearful of the day that we would take the binky away. Jonathan gave up the binky fourteen months ago at school. Embarrassingly, we have not taken it away completely at home, although its usage has been limited to naps and bed time. I was talking to Bryan last night about moving Jonathan to a "big boy" bed after the holidays and that I thought it would be best to break Jonathan of the pacifier habit first. So, Bryan, who normally puts Jonathan to bed, said he would just tell him he couldn't find the binky and see how it went. I was not aware, however, until I actually heard Bryan say the words, he decided to try it tonight. Jonathan has, as I type this, been in bed an hour and a half and not a peep. I am afraid to say that it worked, but maybe...

Seriously, though, if it was this easy, I am totally going to kick myself in the you-know-what for not doing this sooner! If it IS successful, though, we just may be making a trip to Build-A-Bear this weekend!

At Long Last...Another Cake!

I took a hiatus of sorts from cake decorating. I really enjoyed the first Wilton's class but it was a lot of work to get everything ready for each of the classes. However, I decided to take the second course this month. It's a bit easier to prepare for class; since the focus is on flowers, we only have a make a cake for the final week. However, we are supposed to practice the flowers we learn, so I volunteered to make the birthday cake for one of the girls at work. Last week's featured flowers were apple blossoms and violets:





If nothing else, it will really stand out amongst the pumpkin and pecan pies that people are bringing for tomorrow's Thanksgiving lunch!

CHOMP!

First off, everyone must check out this website. It allows you to generate a whole array of fun things--alphabet soup, fortune cookies, etc.

The point of this blog, though, is biting. I need some input. Here is the situation: Jonathan is by far the smallest kid in his class. The fact that neither Bryan nor I break the 5'4" mark obviously was the cause of that. It does not seem to bother him in the least. For the past three consecutive school days (Friday, Monday and Tuesday), his teachers have reported to me that he bit a kid in his class. Each time, it was while they were playing in the block "station." This concerned me because I thought he outgrew the biting phase long ago. Each time, I talked to him about it, as did Bryan. We explained that he needed to tell the other kid to stop or that he didn't like it and, if that didn't work, to tell Darla or Deborah. He understood and repeated it back to me.

This did not seem to work in practice, however. Yesterday, Debra stopped me on the way out to tell me that it happened again. But this time she told me it was the same kid all three days, which we did not know, and that Jonathan was, in fact, using his words to tell the other kid to stop. He even told Ms. Debra after that was not successful. But then she reported that as soon as he went back to the area, the same kid started bothering him again and so he bit him. Bitten kid apparently screamed bloody murder but then returned to the same thing--pestering Jonathan. Debra told me this other kid just would not leave Jonathan alone.

The reason I need input is that I felt oddly comforted by the knowledge that my son was not the instigator but rather was trying to defend himself. I obviously do not want him to bite, but I likewise do not want him to be the whiny, crying kid when some other child pesters him. My dad, when told of this scenario, seemed quite proud of Jonathan's self-defense mechanisms. I am not really proud, but I am also not as bothered by the situation as I was before I knew all the facts.

So, do any of you have any thoughts on this?? Any opinions or tips will be appreciated!

Geocaching

As some of you already know, Bryan and I are geocachers. Shanna-Lynn did such a good job of explaining what geocaching is HERE. The only think I would add is that anyone interested in learning more should check out the official geocaching website. I have not gone nearly as much in the past two years for obvious reasons, but it is an activity Bryan and enjoyed pre-parenthood and one that I have anxiously awaited Jonathan being old enough to enjoy as well.

We had a nice (at least for November) day today and decided to head out to E.P. Tom Sawyer park with Jonathan to introduce him to the activity. It was the perfect place to start as there were several easy caches hidden in the park a few weeks ago for a sort of introduction to geocaching event that was held there. The terrain was pretty easy, too, and Jonathan was fascinated with the leaves everywhere.

Here we are headed out:



Jonathan immediately took to a stick:



Daddy and Jonathan find their first cache. It was a nice moment:



Daddy was nice enough to let Jonathan carry his super-expensive GPS as we walked. He kept checking back every so often to be sure that Jonathan hadn't decided to pitch it into a pile of leaves:



I just love watching the two of them together:



All that walking makes short legs very tired:



I think I may use this one on Christmas cards:



Our first experience as a threesome was great so I know we will be full-on come spring time!

Dinner Date

Saturday night we had a dinner date, but not the romantic kind. It was more of a play date with dinner thrown in as a bonus. One of Bryan's high school friends, Julie, and her family recently moved back to town after living in Indiana. They have two lovely children, Emma, who is five and Gael, who is two, just a few months older than Jonathan. Another of Bryan's friends from high school, Sean, came, too, along with his adorable kiddos, Cate, four, and Henry, who is a mere eleven days younger than Jonathan. It was really nice to see them play together! Jonathan was particularly happy that there was a train table involved, validating my Jonathan-needs-a-train-table-from-Santa obsessiveness.

The three amigos:



Jonathan and Emma riding around on a semi truck. I am sure it wasn't designed for this purpose, but they enjoyed it nonetheless:



Jonathan pretending to eat dinner while actually holding out for dessert:



Jonathan and Henry watching what I think was Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. At least I HOPE that is what it was as I am a huge Snoopy fan and Jonathan really seems to be enjoying it:



And here is how you get five children under six to sit still while five adults try to eat dinner--mass quantities of cookies!!



We had a great time and hope that Julie and Leonel will be kind enough to invite us again! Thanks guys!

What the ????

For some reason, although it is four a.m., I cannot sleep so I am doing a double post. This one is more of the venting variety so please bear with me!

As most everyone who reads this blog knows, Jonathan is in daycare. Before he was born, I laboriously chose a child care center where, I hoped, he could stay through preschool and until he started kindergarten. But for a few glitches along the way, I have been completely happy with my choice, although I have recently considered looking around at other preschool programs just to see what else is available.

All that was true until yesterday when I picked Jonathan up at school. They have little mailboxes in each classroom where you pick you your child's stuff at the end of the day--care sheets, artwork, announcements, etc. Yesterday in Jonathan's mailbox was a simple typed letter from the school director wherein it was announced that, starting April 1, 2008, they would require tuition paid in monthly installments due on the first of each month. Accompanying this letter was a list of tuition rates for 2008 which, like every year since we started at the center, have gone up, this time to the tune of $8.00 a week.

I was floored. I know it's not PC to talk about money, but I am going to be honest with everyone here and tell you that we do not have $836 a month just to throw out in a lump sum starting April 1. I know it is the same amount of money as paying it in weekly installments but since we each get two paychecks a month, it is at least manageable. I almost started crying. I wanted to go and talk to the director who, shockingly, was not there. I called Bryan and then my mom to vent and I have been stewing about it ever since.

First, I think it is pretty crappy to announce this on a Friday afternoon via a slip of paper tucked into a mailbox. Second, I think the director should have been there to talk to myself and other parents for whom I am certain this is going to cause financial difficulties. And last, I just do not get why this change is being made except for, perhaps, accounting purposes. Overall, I am left with with feeling that the center is too corporate oriented such that it just may not be the right place for our family.

So, starting Monday, I am going to start looking for a new place. I do not want to overreact and say we are moving, but this is definitely motivating me to look around. There are a couple of places I have in mind that are particularly attractive as the have two no-pay weeks a year (where we go currently, you pay the same tuition every week regardless of school closure, vacations, etc). If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest and I'm going to try to go back to bed now ;)

Trick or Treat

We met up with our friends Joe and Cindy this week for trick or treating as their neighborhood is the perfect locale for this event. Another couple and their three children came too so we had six kids total, ranging in age from five to sixteen months. A bit chaotic, but a lot of fun!

Jonathan and I practiced beforehand and he really seemed to have it down. But then, for some reason, the day of the event, he regressed to "candy, please" instead of "trick or treat" and "open it, please" instead of "thank you" after he actually received the candy. Luckily he's little and cute, so no one really minded...

Before we headed out, Cindy had a water bottle sitting around to use to fix her girls' hair. Jonathan, being a huge fan of anything that squirts water, was immediately entranced. Real postmen carry mace so I considered this a child-friendly version (I should note here that that the photos on this post are courtesy of Cindy and her Cannon Rebel, which is why they are much better than my typical feeble photography attempts!!):



Here is everyone in front of the house before the candy-gathering began. Needless to say, it is nearly impossible to get six children under the age of six to stand still for a photograph; one of the children is actually missing from this picture. Oh well:



And here we are at our very first house. Jonathan was unsure of the situation at first but he quickly warmed up to the whole walk-up-to-a-house-and-get-candy idea:



Walking to all those houses makes a kid tired, so Jonathan needed to kick back and chill in the wagon for a bit. No, that is not his wine...



Most of the time, he wanted to hold my hand, but when he walked with Daddy, it was entirely too cute:



In true Jonathan fashion, once it got close to eight and past his bedtime, he announced he was tired and ready to go home. We knew it was coming when he insisted on being carried. So, just like that, Halloween was over and we came home and he went right to bed. Onward to Thanksgiving...

This is the Face of Too Much Candy...

...and we don't even trick or treat until tomorrow! Only on the day before Halloween do Eggo Mini Pancakes, half a banana and a strawberry Airhead make a balanced meal!




Oh, and Happy Birthday Dad and Janice!!

The World's Largest Halloween Party

Yesterday we took Jonathan to the Louisville Zoo for their self-described World's Largest Halloween Party. I don't know if that is accurate, but there are a lot of flippin' people there. Particularly if you went yesterday, which was the last day for it (it's every weekend in October until Halloween) and even more so because it was sunny for the first time in five or six days.

The concept is pretty simple--dress your 11 and under kiddos in their Halloween costumes and take them to the zoo for trick or treating and train and carousel rides. Since we are zoo members, the event is free so there really wasn't any good reason not to go (but for the three million other people, of course). Here is my precious little mailman standing in the massively long line of people waiting to get in. This was around 3:40 and the event started at 4:00.



Here are Daddy (dressed again in his overalls--he loves those things!) and Jonathan waiting to get started. Both of them were amazingly patient.



We headed to the train first, which was Hogwart's Express themed. The train is one of Jonathan's favorite things at the zoo; I find it a bit boring, but I was looking forward to it this time because there was a headless horseman:



I like Jonathan's face in this picture, even if there is some odd purple bluriness at the bottom. This is what he looks like every time we ride the train:



After the train, we headed into the trick or treating part. They have different themed areas--Shrek, Snow White, Willy Wonka, etc.--and stations along the way where you get candy. Here is the entrance:



Jonathan sat very nicely in his stroller and calmly held out his pumpkin for candy each time. I forgot our Pottery Barn Kids felt pumpkin so we borrowed this from Nana. It wasn't quite as cute, but it did the trick:



Each time Jonathan got a new piece of candy in his pumpkin, he would hold it up, look at me and say "Open that?" Each time, I told him to wait until we got all the candy and then we would pick a piece to eat. IT WORKED. I guess he missed us on Saturday and thought he'd better behave or we were going out of town again!

We completed our visit with a ride on the carousel. It was pretty much the same as usual but it was "spooked" so it ran backwards. The kid riding next to me told me that the zoo people had just hit reverse. I thought that sounded like as good an answer as any!



This trip was good practice for the main event--real door to door trick or treating on Wednesday night. I don't know about Jonathan but I can't wait!

Anniversary Trip to Berea

Bryan and I went to Berea, Kentucky for an overnight on Saturday. We packed Jonathan off to Nana's and headed to breakfast early Saturday morning. Bryan is NOT a breakfast person, but since it was our anniversary weekend, he agreed to go to breakfast at this new place in town called Wild Eggs. After a delicious meal of eggs benedict for me and biscuits and gravy for Bryan, we armed ourselves with Starbucks and got on the road.

Berea is an arts and crafts community about thirty miles south of Lexington. It is centered around Berea College which, founded in 1855, was the first integrated college in the south for almost forty years. Today, Berea College admits only low income students who, in exchange for full tuition scholarships, are required to work 10-15 hours per week in order to offset a portion of their college expenses.

Neither of us had been to Berea before, but we were very happy with our trip. We stayed at the Boone Tavern Hotel and Restaurant. One of only two Kentucky hotels on the national historic registry, the hotel was very nicely located within walking distance of several very nice arts and crafts shops. The room on the second floor and on the right-hand corner of the building was ours.



We learned by talking to the person at the front desk that our room was the only room with a queen sized bed until fairly recently. We also learned that the hotel is closing for renovations next month and is aiming to gain four-star status. I hope they don't do too much to change the rooms. All of the furniture has been made by Berea College students over the years, a fact that I find fascinating.



It was really cool to know that our room was decorated thanks to the generosity of a fellow Louisvillian.



There was even original artwork hanging in the room. Over the bed hung this picture, which, as the story hanging beside it advised, is a picture of the lady who donated the money to decorate the room. It was commissioned by a soldier that she and her brother met on a Greyhound bus trip to visit their grandparents.



Also cool is the fact that the hotel still uses actual keys:



The one unfortunate thing about Berea is that is a dry county, meaning no alcohol. Luckily Bryan and I found this out ahead of time and packed our own. Here is a self portrait of us breaking the law and enjoying wine:



And here we are after figuring out for the first time that our camera has a timer. This is despite the fact that we have had this camera for almost three years:



The hotel had a restaurant where we ate dinner. What should have been a lovely steak dinner, however, turned into a disaster. Apparently some sort of service breakdown occurred, leaving Bryan and I with no entrees an hour and fifteen minutes after we ordered. We ended up pretty much ignored by our server (and we were sitting in the middle of his pathway) and decided we'd waited long enough (particularly considering that we were talking $30.00 per person for an entree). We ended up being met by the manager who gave us all our food including dessert for free. The food turned out to not be so great anyway, but it was still better than the Cracker Barrel we were going to eat if our food had not been ready right when we were leaving.

Overall, definitely a nice trip. I purchased a hand knit bright pink hat as an anniversary gift to myself. I am sure it will make an appearance on here at some point...