Cream of Potato Soup

I'm starting to think that Evan is an 85-year-old man trapped in a five-year-old's body. Last night we were out running errands and looking at Christmas decorations, and Ev was in knots over whether or not we'd get home in time for Wheel of Fortune. Thank God for DVR.

Yesterday was Ev's last day with his TSS. She took him swimming at the Y and didn't make him do any drills, so I'm guessing that was a pretty good sendoff for him. I think he's glad to be done with all of that, and I am too. It was great for him to get the extra help over the summer, but it's really been too much since he's been in school all day. Now Ev's only after school activity is speech at the hospital on Thursdays, which will be much easier for Mom to remember.

I've been trying to get some extra stuff done this week, and it hasn't been going well. We bought a bookcase from Target and last night Mike started putting it together. Some parts weren't working well, so he called me in to help, and from the first minute we were snapping at each other. We just cannot assemble furniture together. I don't know what it is, but anytime we even attempt it we get in a fight. Moving furniture also causes marital discord. For the sake of the family, we should probably stay away from both of those things in the future. The kicker is we know that it makes us nuts, but we try it anyway, as if this time is going to be different. We need to learn our lesson and keep away from flat-pack.

The bookcase has led to cleaning out the hall closet, which in turn has led to getting some stuff out of the attic and putting some other stuff in the attic and then trying to clean out the kitchen closet and suddenly my house looks like a bomb went off in it. I'm great at organizing, I'm just awful at dealing with the fallout. Something tells me I'm just going to haul a bunch of stuff up to the office and shut the door and pretend it's not there. That will work, right?

Posted by jenny at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Thanksgiving, like so many holidays, passed in a blur of food and family and travel. I feel like I barely had a minute to enjoy any of it, but that's the way it always goes--no time to sit back and watch as we try to cram everything into a few days. It's probably been that way all along, but I was too young to notice.

I took Evan to visit Santa on Sunday, and that made him the happiest kid in town. I honestly thought his face was going to crack he was smiling so much. Ev had been building up to the visit for several days, planning what to say and what he wanted to ask for. He even got to hug the big guy, so he was pretty thrilled about that. On the way out to the car, he kept saying, "I'm so happy I got to see Santa! He makes me feel so happy!" It's really magical to see Ev this excited about something, so into the whole holiday thing. Every year it's been a little more, but this year it's the big time. He believes, and he can't wait for Christmas.

Grady can't stop laughing lately, which has been loads of fun. Everything is hilarious. Chasing Evan around? So funny. Daddy saying "oop"? Hysterical. A book on Mommy's head? A comedy gold mine. He's definitely easy to entertain, and you can't help but laugh too when he sits there cracking up. I'll have to get some video of it and share the joy.

Posted by jenny at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's that time of year again--time for the Erie Blogs Secret Santa. You don't have to be a blogger to participate, you just need to be someone who likes presents and helping others at the holidays. It's really easy to do--just submit your name, email, and a link to your Amazon wishlist here. After Thanksgiving, you'll get an email with the URL of the wishlist of the person you will buy for. Choose something off of their list (under $15 please), Amazon will send it to them, and you will also get a gift in the mail from your Secret Santa. It's a win for everybody!

It's especially important this year to use the URL you're given in your Secret Santa email, because the good folks at Erie Blogs will be using Amazon's affiliate program to keep track of the sales in our exchange. All proceeds from the Secret Santa are going to benefit Parents of Autistic Children, a great Erie charity which provides assistance in creating safe environments for children on the autism spectrum. So please join us for this fun holiday activity and to help out a great cause.

Posted by jenny at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight I'm headed up to Erie to help my sister in law with her baby registry. I know Babies R Us can seem like a minefield to someone new to the game, so I wanted to give her a hand. It's going to be fun, and hopefully I'll be able to help without being too bossy. Yes, I can be a bit pushy sometimes, can you believe it? But I don't want to make my poor expectant SIL crazy with my awesome baby gear knowledge, so I'm going to try to keep myself in check.

I'm trying to get the house in shape for the holidays, as I realized yesterday that Thanksgiving is next week and I really want things to be in good order when folks start showing up at my door. I painted the living room two weeks ago, and I'd really like to get the dining room done by this weekend, but we'll see how it goes. Christmas is lurking too and there's shopping and baking and lots of other stuff to do, and I might be fooling myself thinking I can get it all done. But I'm going to try. Where the hell are we going to put a Christmas tree?

I'm also going to try to get video of Grady saying "apple". Mike's mom taught him that over the weekend and he's doing well with it. He's been slow to acquire language--he still says less than 10 words at 17 months, but I know he can understand a lot more than that, so I'm not worried. Yet. It's funny to realize how much he gets now though, his comprehension is really starting to take off. So are his climbing skills, and he's got the bruises to prove it. G has such a personality now, and he's so much fun, but he's becoming such a challenge at the same time. It's hard to keep him happy when he wants to be doing everything like a big boy, and he just can't. I smell those terrible twos coming around the corner.

Posted by jenny at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We got the movie Chicken Little the other day - it was part of a Blu-ray promotion and the discs took forever to arrive. Evan was excited that he got a movie in the mail and we threw it in.

Imagine our surprise as we're all sitting there and he informs us that the e at the end of little is a silent e, and you don't say it. Otherwise, he went on to explain, you'd say littl-eeee.

I know I say it all the time, but all this stuff is remarkable considering he wasn't saying word 1 a year and a half ago. Now, he's got an opinion on everything. My favorite is when you tell him to do something he doesn't want to, and he'll moan back, "COME ON!" in that whiny, teenager defeatist way. We can't help but laugh when he does that.

Posted by Mike at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)