Saturday, January 01, 2011

Happy New Year

Christmas was great after all. Thanks to those of you who shared some Christmas cheer with me. I was able to put my scrooginess behind me and focus on fun things. I made lots of yummy food. We attended a great Christmas Eve party with a lot of our good friends. We Skyped with Spiff's mom on Christmas morning and were able to watch each other unwrap presents, even though we're miles apart. Gunner and I have also been able to fully enjoy Spiff during his last ever long Christmas vacation. It has been great!

And now just a few random thoughts and stories:
1. My favorite thing about Christmas this year: New Toys! I do realize that saying that makes me sound like I'm five years old, but it's true. I love Gunner's new toys. I love the fact that he loves them and happily plays and plays and plays with them for hours. He has been content and busy for a whole week, with the promise of lots more entertainment to come. The most successful toys of the season are Playmobils, hands down. He fell in love with our nativity scene and packed Mary and "Baby Jee-us" around for days. He also loved the donkey ("horsie") and the ox in the manger scene, whom he named "Otis." He absolutely loves the "Pilots" he received from Spiff's mom, and the accompanying helicopter and race car. I have loved seeing develop his skills for imaginative play, and I'm telling you, I love love love the hours of entertainment these toys have provided! I think I will need another Christmas next month.

2. I'm having a baby sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. The question I really don't like answering is, "How much weight have you gained during this pregnancy?" I know that my very nice neighbors mean well, but describing how much weight you have gained isn't something anyone I know likes talking about. It's tempting for me to answer in explicit detail about how I have gained the weight, what sweet and fatty foods have tasted the very best, where I keep the weight, and how I feel about it. It's great that I already feel like an overstuffed whale. Thanks for drawing attention to it and for rubbing salt into that wound.

3. My two-year-old is cool. Gunner has memorized several children's books, including the original Madeline. He has also started asking for specific bedtime songs. He asked for the Daddy song one day, so I sang the "I'm so glad when daddy comes home" primary song. He asked for the Mommy song, and since I couldn't think of a mother's day song, I sang "My Heavenly Father Loves Me." He asked for the Boy Song, I sang the first song that came to my head, which happens to be a song the primary just sang in their recent program. "If you don't walk like most people do, some people walk away from you, but I won't, I won't." He asks for it almost every day these days, but I didn't realize that he knows it as well as he does until Spiff pointed out one day this week that Gunner was singing to himself, "I will, I will."

As we drove home from the grocery store yesterday, Gunner started singing this little song to himself. We decided to see how well he knew it, and we started from the beginning. He filled in almost all of the blanks. There could not be anything cuter! And just as my heart was about to melt right onto the floor of the car, I looked back at him. He had quietly taken off his shoes and socks and was in the process of stuffing his entire foot in his mouth. He innocently looked up at us and said, "I taste my toes."

Happy New Year!

3 comments:

cfg said...

You have made my new year's day very happy. I am glad the playmobils were a success. Emmy gave me a playmobil for Christmas. It is Cicero, holding a scroll in Latin, standing next to a column with fire at the top, and a table with a dish and goblet. I hope I never outgrow playmobils. He did not exactly encroach on the santons, but he kept glancing in their direction.

Lauren said...

Little Gunner is such a smart little guy! I too love all the new toys of Christmas. I admit though that I took a few of them and hid them away to be brought out later in the year. He got a TON of toys and I was right that he didn't miss them at all when I secreted them away one night. Good luck with your last few weeks. I will keep a good thought for you that he won't come when Spiff is away.

Kathryn said...

Hey! Rachel loved that song too when she was the same age! Oh my gosh. I started Judy Butler-ing (the term our family uses and I hope you get what that means) when I read about Gunner wanting to sing that repeatedly. And one of the longest songs in the children's songbook makes it even more unlikely for them to choose it as a favorite I think! And of course for your child's enjoyment, it never can be edited down--only the entire song will do. Good luck with your pending delivery! (and the Match!)