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Her Style

We’re all prepared for Christmas, with the exception of ONE very, very difficult person to shop for. We’re simply stuck and have ZERO ideas. Other than that, I think we’re pretty excited for the coming events. Linda sent Maggie some Reindeer Dust and we’re planning on sprinkling some on Christmas Eve. Maggie won’t really care or have an idea of what we’re doing, but I have no doubt that she’ll like throwing the stuff outside.

I’ve been feeling myself cranking the Christmas tunes (side note: have you heard the Lower Lights Christmas album? Cjane has heavily promoted it, and we got it. LOVE it. Find it here.) a bit louder and staring at our tree with a bit more feeling of excitement than in years past. I think it must be having a child in the house that is interested in the presents and Santa, or at least pictures of him. We wrapped a present for my dad that Maggie really, really liked and she keeps going and finding it under the tree, shaking it and saying ”Ampa, ________” (I had to put the blank there in case he reads it and then it won’t be a surprise, but I’m pretty sure that he’ll have to open that present FIRST this year.

We’ve been asking Maggie to get her vest on when we’re ready to leave and she totally does it, but it is almost always upside down. The first time she did it we zipped it up (or is it down) and went happily on our way. That night we ended up going out to sushi and Barry had to conceal our laughter when she crammed a bunch of sushi in without hesitating around the big collar of the upside down vest. Since then, I’ve just decided to go with it and every so often we’ll get some weird looks, but I’m secretly really proud that she’s getting her clothes on.  Because the alternative is this:

I’m thinking that it might not be socially acceptable for her to ride along in the ‘Beep Beep Car’ at the grocery store or pick out books at the library without any clothes on. You know? So we’re encouraging her in her fashion endeavors. She NEVER wants help and is very determined.

It isn’t clear who she gets her fashion sense from? Barry? Me? Clearly we had a little help, right? There is no way that I could have buckled my shoes with my chubby feet. And Barry getting his collar to perfectly fan out?

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Jack of All Trades….Master of None

The other day I was feeling pretty proud of  myself because I cleaned out our linen closet, the guest room closet and both bathroom drains that had been giving us drainage problems. I even wrapped more presents. Maggie helped throughout it all, enjoying being part of the process. I jokingly told Barry that I’d have to charge him for the plumbing problem and that we (Maggie and I as a team) don’t come cheap. At one point she was chewing on a granola bar loudly in my ear while yelling “YUCK, YUCK, YUCK!!”

We fixed the problem(s) and I can safely say that it’ll probably happen again in a few months unless I shave my head and Barry stops shaving his face and that ain’t happening, people! But really, I found myself thinking about this whole stay at home gig and how much I love it. I really love it, but it isn’t full of sipping on tea and reading books together all day. There is a whole other side to it (grocery store trips, horrible naps, spilled everything, laundry, etc.) that makes it challenging to find authentic time between it all sometimes.

For the most part, I think we do a pretty good job of it….the authentic part, I mean. Sometimes other things fall to the wayside. Like last week we went to visit my grandparents and abandoned our house that was practically in shambles. We brought lunch of left over chili and cookie dough to bake. I had visions of Maggie pressing the cookie cutter into sugar cookie dough on my grandma’s kitchen table. That SO did not happen. The dough that I’d made turned out not to be great so I scratched that idea and made snicker doodles instead. Sugar cookies can wait until next year, we’ll stick to play dough for now.

But the magic of the trip over to my grandparents was everything else that was going on. Cora and Izak were there helping to set up Christmas. My grandparents love Christmas and their house transforms each year with each nook and cranny full of little vignettes. Maggie was in heaven listening to the annoying songs of my grandpa’s prized toys and petting the beards of the santas on the little bench. Seeing Izak put some more lights around the pond only reinforced everything that she thinks she knows about Uncle Izak and Christmas lights.  She also got to help Cora string lights (and listen to my grandparents each state their case for blinking or non-blinking lights) around the tree.

After spending a few hours we returned to our home (still in shambles, but who cares sometimes, right?) with a gifted snow globe and a Sugar-doodle cookie for Papa. That evening after we changed into our jammies, and picked up the shambles from previous activities, we took the snow globe out of the box to see if it was as beautiful as it was back at 3G’s.

It was.

But then we did some puzzles and the state of our shamble-like house returned.

But since I wear the hats of mama, plumber, professional organizer, and chef, why can’t I wear the hat of a wrecking crew too?