Non-Christmasy December stuff

Regular life still went on in December. One of the cutest things that happened was that Dane and Tommy went on a Daddy Date to one of the kids' workshops at Lowes, and built a Christmas train together. Afterwards they went mini-golfing at Tommy's work (they have a new putting green they put in there) and then got lunch at Chick-fil-A. Dane thought he had died and gone to heaven. Getting to use a hammer, go golfing, and hang out with Dad? BEST DAY EVER.

Great form!

One proud three-year-old.

We went over to the Myres' house for dinner before leaving for Christmas. Graham thinks that Ava is sooooo cool. And Ava thinks Dane is so cool. And Dane thinks that Ethan is so cool. They're always just interested in whoever is older than them.

It's so nice to put Graham in the seat in the cart now! I love not having to use that enormous carseat or having to wear him in the front pack.

I love seeing them when they're sleeping. SO sweet and lovey.

Costco buddies. Graham has started eating their samples and is the most shameless of all of us. He makes us go back for seconds and thirds of the ones he likes.

Someone is feeding himself now and LOVES it!

Watching the Grinch together. Both boys were so brave.

Dane says he is an angry construction worker when he wears his headband over his eyes like this.

Dane is learning how to use scissors. It's pretty amazing how quickly he can learn things. Just give him a few pages to practice on and he's got it pretty darn well.

SWEETEST boy!

I know I already posted this one, but I love it. This is my favorite part of the day. Being outside, enjoying the day with my boys. Just relaxing and being happy together. And waiting for the trash truck. (Or Daddy, depends on the time of day.)

I think I posted this one too. It's so cute to see them matching. Dane LOVES matching with Graham. He asks every night that they wear matching jammies.

Our grocery store just got new carts with cars in the front and I wanted to hug the manager for doing that. I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU. Dane needs nothing else to entertain him at the grocery store now.

Baby snuggles are the best.

Two naughty friends at the park...

They got each other's shirts super wet in a puddle at the park, so even though it was pretty cold outside, we took their shirts off and they were SO HAPPY to be able to run around shirtless for a while. Boys are hilarious.

I gave Graham a little blankie to sleep with and I think it was safe to say that he liked it. 

Snuggled up with his blankie.

BABIES IN HATS. Too bad Graham is a master of taking the hat off. Dane used to leave them on... Graham is not so easily manipulated.

Decorating Christmas cookies at playgroup.

Me and my baby boy.

Saturday morning snuggles in bed. Trying to convince them to let us sleep just a little longer... please?

Graham laying in Dane's lap in a milk-induced stupor of thought. 

I LOVED December in Texas this year. Most days it was nice enough to go places without a coat. It doesn't bother me to have a warm Christmas season, after growing up in California. After two summers here now I am just grateful for every single day that is moderate enough weather for us to go on a walk or go to the park. It was a beautiful month.

It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas...

(Or at least it was, a month ago...)

I really, really enjoyed this Christmas season. It's not like I usually don't, but Dane is getting to the age that it's really fun to pass along the traditions that Tommy and I both loved as kids, and it's actually meaningful to him. I tried to consciously think about what traditions I loved as a kid, and which ones I want to try to pass along to our kids. I definitely didn't want to get super over-committed to doing things and I tried to keep it low-key. This was the first year we really decorated for Christmas and I just loved it. When I was thinking about my favorite traditions, I really kept coming back to when we would go pick out our Christmas tree--in the Home Depot parking lot, of all the super special places--and how happy that made me as a kid. And of course, decorating the tree while listening to Christmas music. I loved handling all of our old Christmas tree ornaments and helping with all of that. So I was really excited to do this with Dane this year. And we finally managed it! 

We also did a gingerbread house and baked Christmas cookies, and went to look at Christmas lights. We did a Christmas nativity advent calendar (I had one growing up and always loved it). We watched some Christmas movies like Elf, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, and the Grinch with Dane. We baked some poppyseed bread for home and visiting teachees and neighbors (and for ourselves), which I love doing because it is my favorite thing to bake in the world. (Funny story: the second batch I made, I forgot to put in the poppyseeds. So it was just... bread. I still gave it to people because it tasted fine and we had six mini-loaves. I had to figure out an alternative name for it so they didn't wonder where the poppyseeds went!) Most of these activities we just did here at home and didn't take too much effort. I think that's one reason it was so enjoyable and relaxed. We only did things we really wanted to do, and left off the things that didn't matter so much. I know once our kids are older we won't have the choice about keeping things so close to home and so calm, so I'm happy to be able to control things so much right now in this stage of our lives. 

Picking out the Christmas tree at Lowes.

Super excited!

This tugs at my heartstrings. Seriously one of my favorite memories from growing up--and passing it on.

Dane got his own Christmas lights and mini-Christmas tree in his room this year.

We even got Christmas lights for the outside of our house! We didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars all at once so we just got a few, and it still made me really happy how it looked. (And we went to Lowes on New Year's Day and got 10 strings of icicle lights for the roof for 75% off--so we will have even more next year!)

Eating cookies and drinking egg nog after decorating the tree. Bummer that it's such a blurry picture.

I also remember always going to look at Christmas lights, which is something that I always love. We went to this neighborhood south of us that is super famous for its crazy Christmas lights. It was totally freezing but really fun. We went there last year too, and we got to see some repeats--like this blow-up Thomas with a Santa hat.

A Rudolph they could sit on!

We made Christmas cookies a few times! A favorite tradition for many reasons...

Is there anything as cute as two matching brothers?

I always loved decorating our gingerbread house growing up too. This year, we just bought a gingerbread house kit at Costco. Maybe next year we will figure out how to do it on our own. But this was perfect for Dane and he had a lot of fun putting the candy on (and stuffing his face).

Tommy's work also had an event with Santa there. The lines were SUPER long and it took forever, but the boys managed to not lose it and we lasted through to the end. Dane was very excited to wear this crazy Santa hat in his picture with Santa.

The Gingerbread Man was sadly not as interesting and had no line to take a picture with him. 

Our ward party had Santa available for pictures too--and Dane was the FIRST in line this time! He was very solemn sitting on his lap and informed Santa that he wanted "more trains." (Santa was NOT bringing him more trains. He has about 55,000 trains in his toy room. NO MORE TRAINS.)

Graham was pretty tired out and started crying the minute he saw that crazy beard. Poor guy.

The night before we left town for Christmas in California, we opened the presents we already had under the Christmas tree so that we didn't have to cart them to California. (And to space out the presents for the boys, so that they didn't have too many to open on Christmas morning. Of course, it still turned out that there were too many and Dane was done before we was halfway finished with his stack.) 

A great way to get ready for Christmas! Great presents from their great-grandparents and Aunt Kiki. Graham was sporting his Santa suit and looking pretty festive. 

Let It Go

This is probably going to be a really obvious statement to all of my parent/grandparent readers, but I have learned something: I think a major part of parenting is learning to let it go. Let EVERYTHING go. Only pick your battles about the most important, significant things, and stop trying to control everything. 

I have a hard time with this sometimes. When Dane was a baby, he would only nap for 20-30 minutes at a time almost every nap. And I would get completely INCENSED. I would rage into my pillow and think angry thoughts about WHY WHY WHY I couldn't get a break for longer than 20 minutes! (And send many angry texts to Tommy.) As he got older he became a much better napper, but on those days he would keep himself awake and not sleep, I would still get really mad and try to force him to nap, by sitting in his room and shushing him until he fell asleep or chastising him after not napping, like he really got what he was doing. I know all of these things make me sound super immature and like a super great mom, but it was a huge deal for me to get a break at naptime. And it was something I wanted to be able to control.

And luckily, I have gotten WAY WAY better about this three years into it. I still get frustrated when the boys don't nap well (and now that there are two of them it's definitely worse) but it's not even close to the same level of frustration--and I've stopped trying to force Dane to nap. For one, he's getting close to being too old for it. But for another, and more importantly, I have let myself stop stressing about it. It doesn't matter. He will survive the day without a nap. I will survive the day without a nap. And so will Graham. I feel much happier when I am more successful at letting this go.

The issue that we have been dealing with lately is Dane's clothes. He wants to wear his "running clothes" every single day (two athletic outfits he got from Costco) and when they are not clean, he throws major fits and begs, begs, begs me to wash them. It's gotten to the point that I get frustrated when he just brings it up AT ALL. If he's not begging for his running clothes, he's begging to wear shorts and flipflops in the 30- and 40-degree weather we've been having and screaming at me because he doesn't want to wear his jacket. It's hard to even IMAGINE, but it's true. And I'm trying to be in charge of what he wears because I want him to be warm, but also, mostly, to be honest, it's because I want him to wear different clothes than the same 3 outfits over and over again. I want to control his clothes. And guess what? The time for that has now passed. 

I have to LET IT GO and let him do what he wants. It doesn't really matter what he wears. It's not cold enough here that he's going to freeze to death with his shorts on (which he keeps finding no matter how many times I pack them away). And I don't actually care! It doesn't affect me at all. I am giving myself permission to let it go. 

The red running shorts in the top picture and the blue running clothes here are the worst offenders.

I think I need to figure out what our constant points of tension are, and figure out how I can let those go. And I bet I could let other things go to make my life easier. I could probably write a really lyrical metaphor about how letting things go relates to life and try to use my mostly-defunct writing skills, but I've kind of let that go too. I feel lighter and easier already!