santa's library

So, S got quite the haul of new books for Christmas, and we are all loving them (see if you can spot M's favorite title...thank you, MoWasks. you made his Christmas.) Here's a list.

• The Complete Adventures of Curious George
• Llama Llama, Red Pajama
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Harold and the Purple Crayon
• Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris
• Fancy Nancy at the Museum
• Goodnight Moon
  
• The Umbrella
• There's a Map on My Lap!
  
• The Chimpanzees of Happytown
• Angelina Ballerina
• The Snowy Day

There are a few things under the tree that she hasn't opened yet as we are waiting for the Feather Nester fam to get home from Texas.

We are really enjoying the new books, and we're glad to have them as we'll be repacking the Christmas books soon. We are seriously afraid that S is going to have a meltdown when all the Christmas stuff goes away, which will likely happen on Friday. She still likes to say hello to the nutcrackers every single day...usually every single hour.

As for me and M, we also scored a few new titles. This I Believe II, The Tales of Beetle the Bard, and Last Child in the Woods. Technically, I also acquired a copy of 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of Nashville, but I'm "sharing" it with my brother, and he is currently in possession of said book. As possession is nine-tenths and all, I'm not holding my breath.

Happy Sunday, peeps. We're skipping church this morning and just chilling out having tea parties in the living room floor and playing with S's babies.

our day...in words and pictures

I know, I know. I've been MIA. I've been uber-busy gearing up for the holiday. I'll catch you all up later, but here's the rundown.

5AM, M and I can't sleep. He finishes watching A Christmas Carol while I make monkey bread muffins and coffee...and all the makings of the cornbread dressing.

630AM, Otis begs for molasses butter that I prepared for the turkey.

7AM, we anxiously wait for S to wake up as we sit on the kitchen counter and sip our coffee.

730AM, S wakes up. Aunt Mel, Uncle Bret, and Granddaddy show up. We bring the little one downstairs as she asks for a piece of chocolate.

731AM, S starts running in place ala Chris Farley in Tommy Boy when she sees the easel that Santa left her. She immediately grabs the coloring pencils and starts naming colors and drawing.

735AM, we start begging her to open a gift. She obliges us by opening her Fancy Nancy doll. That was a mistake. We should've saved it for last.

736AM, Fancy Nancy achieves an X rating as S strips her of her clothes.

737AM+, S humors us every few minutes by opening a gift. She really likes the stockings as they are full of stickers and suckers and My Little Ponies. (Stockings...yep, it's plural. One from Santa, one from Aunt Mel, and I think another on the way.) I'll give a complete list of her new library (because she got awesome books) tomorrow.

9AM, turkey goes in the oven. I work on assembling the aforementioned dressing ingredients.

10AM, the Ouisers head out for the Christmas morning walk. We say hello to the Spencers. We head to Aunt Mel's and eat sausage casserole and eggs.

1130AM, we head home and realize that my dad and fam are already here. Oops. I have not showered. Luckily, M and S are presentable. I am forgiven because my house smells like deliciousness.

1215PM, more gifts. S loves, and I mean loves, her new Cabbage Patch doll Fannie.

1PM, S goes upstairs for nappers.

130PM, lunch is served. Turkey with molasses butter, cornbread dressing, cranberries, sweet peas, mashed potatoes, and yeast rolls. Followed by mounds cake, caramel pecan pie, and orange date cake. I am likely to need new pants tomorrow.

4PM, S finally falls asleep.

430PM, I finally get to shower.

5PM, S wakes up screaming. I rock her for 15 minutes, which leads to my current state of being snot and drool covered. So much for showers and clean clothes.

530PM, S realizes that the Advent Calendar is gone, and she loses it. M holds her for ten minutes trying to calm her down. She only calms herself when we turn on Sleeping Beauty. She and M are on the couch now with apple juice and grapes.

6PM, you're looking at it. I'm thinking about hitting the leftover pie.
And here was her favorite activity last night at Aunt Mel's.

grounded in a time out with a spanking

Help me. Somebody, please. Maybe I should be calling Nanny 911 per Feathernester's suggestion.

My child is immune to discipline. Granted, I understand that she's still only a one-year-old, but I have no idea what to do. She doesn't care a thing about time out. She thinks it's a game. Remove her from what she was doing, and she just immediately shifts gears and decides to do something else. Take away a toy, and she picks out another one to play with. Give her a stern talking to, and she does a mental eye roll and grins at you. Yell at her, and she ignores you. I even tried spanking her once (very calmly, I might add), and she literally looked at me like I had lost my marbles. I have no idea what to do. She does respond somewhat to M's voice, mostly because it is crazy deep when he gets mad, and it carries. I can imagine it's what it would be like to hear Zeus's voice thundering down from Olympus. I'd stop what I was doing, too. Of course, it only succeeds in getting her attention. She then goes back to whatever she was doing.

I am at a total loss.

I've, for the most part, been able to stop her from hitting and biting and pushing. I cannot, however, make her stop climbing on the furniture like a monkey. Feathernester and I thought that perhaps I should ignore it (as long as there was no real danger...like falling on a set of kitchen knives or something). Let her fall. Then maybe she'd learn. M has wholeheartedly disagreed with that approach, however. That makes it a little tough for me as she totally ignores all of my attempts at disciplining her.

Any advice?

I know that I've always heard to remove the object that causes the problem. That's easy when the problem is her practicing her forehand on Otis. It's just taking away a tennis racket. It's not so easy when we're talking about removing the furniture from our home. Oy.

I need a drink. Is it too early in the day for that?

bite me

Okay. It's official. I have moved back to the place where I was once a fifteen-year-old girl, and I have become a fifteen-year-old girl once again. My newest obsession is Twilight. That's right. Every other teenage girl and I in the country are in L-O-V-E with Edward Cullen/Cedric Diggory.

Normally, I don't dig vampire stuff, despite the urgings of dear Kristie who loves vampire movies. I usually think they are annoying and stupid, and I generally lack the ability to suspend disbelief enough to enjoy them. However, late Saturday night, I was unable to sleep (which has been an issue for a couple of weeks now), and I was kind of over reading my new book for the night, so I picked up Twilight, which I had borrowed from my cousins just in case I felt like a dose of fiction. I did not put it down until I was completely finished. I didn't even get up to pee, which resulted in a very long trip to the potty when I was done reading after six-and-a-half hours.

The book was intoxicating. I couldn't stop reading. It sucked me in, and I loved every second of it. Look, I know it's not great literature or anything, but it was highly entertaining. So much so that I required my husband take me to the movie yesterday afternoon after we visited with his dad. Like all books turned into movies, the book was significantly better, but I can see that the movie would be perfectly fine without the book. I recommend the book, though. I recommend it a lot. But only if you're a girl. I don't think it would have the same appeal to guys. You know, if you weren't able to sit there reading, imagining Robert Pattinson smolderingly staring holes through you. Like I said, L-O-V-E.

So, I am anxiously awaiting the second book from Hillary and Abbe, though I've promised my husband I won't start reading it until the weekend. I am certain that my parenting skills would suffer if I chose to continue staying up all night reading vampire chick-lit. So, I'll wait...

Hope everyone else had a great weekend. Especially those of you who were able to attend the FIRMYs.

BREAKING NEWS

Okay, since the writing of this morning's post, we've hit a major milestone in S's life. Major. Bigger than her using the potty last week. Bigger than her apparent love of all things Christmas that aren't Santa Claus. Bigger than her starting to actually pretend things.

She has gotten a joke. Sort of. It wasn't really a joke. It was just something I said.

History. Most of the time, when I drop something or run into something, instead of the typical, "sh!t," or some other non-PG phrase, I say, "Ruh roh, Raggy." You know, like Scooby Doo says to Shaggy? Do you get it? Is it obscure? Anyway, S and I were having a little tea party upstairs before her nap, and when I accidentally dropped my cupcake, I said, "Ruh roh, Raggy." S cracked up. Full on giggling. The type of giggling that normally only ensues during tickle fights. This is the first time she's ever laughed at something verbal that wasn't a goofy noise. She kept dropping the cupcake over and over and then saying it herself.

"Ruh roh, Raggy."

"Ruh roh, Raggy."

"Ruh roh, Raggy."

It was priceless. Absolutely hysterical. Then she got that the joke could be carried into other activities. She accidentally on-purpose kept falling off her bouncy horse, and saying, "Ruh roh, Raggy."

It's a good day around here.

no dice.

We took S to see Santa Claus (or in S language, "Sankulk Clawwws") last night. Of course, we got there during Kris Kringle's dinner break, so my family took S to the Disney Store for the first time. It was sensory overload for a few minutes as she refused to venture beyond the first ten feet of the store, which was the princess section. Go figure. (Had I mentioned that the princess obsession has sort of already hit our house? Princesses are super fancy posh, and therefore, they are revered.) She didn't break anything or cry, so it was a success.

The visit with Santa Claus, however, was not a success. S refused to sit in his lap. Refused. When I tried to let go of her, she pulled her, "I will crush your internal organs with my thighs if you even think of letting me go" move. She didn't cry or scream or get really panicky, she just wouldn't let go of me. So, no Santa picture this year. She was super cute all decked out, though. Plus, she was really into the set up around Santa. Lots of big trees and lights and things. And let's not forget the unparalleled commercialism of Christmas. She pretty much loved everything about that. It was the first time I've let her walk in a mall, and she dug it the most.

So, since there is no Santa photo, here's a copy of a wide-eyed S spotting the Disney Store windows. Happy Thursday, peeps.

finger painters for hire

S and I finger painted this afternoon before nap time. Originally, I just sat down with her and painted a bit, then I remembered, "hey! I have a blank canvas in my bedroom, and I bought paint last week to paint a picture for S's bathroom. HELLO." The squishiness of the acrylic paint all over my fingers was great. Ridiculously cathartic. I highly recommend it. Besides, what else are you going to do with a forty dollar canvas?? Use a brush??

Either way, here are the results. Please note that my child seems to think that finger paint is for painting her fingers. She painted more on herself than on the paper. I did not get a picture of the resulting green bath water. I will say that at some point, the octopus picture will say, "I'd like to be under the sea." Get it? In an octopus's garden. I am so clever that sometimes it hurts.

turkey week in pictures

I thought that another photo post would make catching up on the last week pretty quick. No. It took 20 minutes just to go through the pictures. Oh, well. Here you go...the Ouisers' Thanksgiving week.

S refused to take this bathing suit cover off for days. She thinks it goes with everything.
This time, it was Grandpa who got fancy-posh'd.
Photography by S. Little thief snaked the camera from the counter.
One of our thankful lists on the sidewalk.
Doing the Turkey Dance Thursday morning.
Stretching out her tummy via...bean juice??
Working off the turkey by fishing for leaves.
Don't ask me what happened here.
Decorating T and Grandma's tree.
Bah humbug.
Our tree and our girl.

And a couple of videos for Scarlet Lily...

Daddy, you're welcome for this one...