Christmas Cheer

Ah, Christmas. It turns out that our kids were on the nice list after all. This, despite the request I got yesterday, "Dad, can you help me take Santa's head off?" It was in reference to a Lego Santa minifigure... but still.

We keep monitors in the kids rooms still because we can't really hear them from our room at night. And when the late-night dramas occur, we prefer they wake us up instead of each other. This morning at precisely 6:32 AM, we awoke to the sound of the monitor whispering at us in Ben's voice, "Mommy... Daddy... Can I get up and open presents?"

We convinced him to hang out with us and wait for Penelope to wake up before opening gifts. He can be such a patient little kid when he's well rested! Even so, you could see the anticipation just thrumming through his little body. When he noticed that there were *also* stockings filled by the fireplace, he was so paralyzed with excitement that he dropped his stuffed animals on the floor and just stood there with his mouth open. We let him start digging through his stocking while we waited for Penelope, but we didn't have to wait too long. She woke up about 15 minutes later. After they both took inventory on the contents of their stockings and compared notes, we let them have at the gifts.

Then it was chaos for a while. Between the sounds of paper ripping, you'd hear Ben exclaim "Awesome!" every couple minutes. Penelope would follow up with her own "Awesome!" even if she hadn't opened anything. Ben, holding up a tiny gift, "A small one!"  Penelope, holding up a flat gift, "A thin one!"  It went on like that for a while. When the final swatch of paper hit the ground, they both wanted to play with their new stuff.

Ben got a boomerang, and was eager to try it, "Can I test out the boomerang?"

"Not yet. Wait until we go outside. It isn't an indoor toy."

"Awww.. just one time?"

It didn't take too long before his interest shifted to some new Legos, but we eventually got around to the boomerang too (we'll skip the part where Daddy got it stuck in the tree and had to use Penelope's soccer ball to get it back down.)

Penelope got a little bike, and spent much of the morning riding it from one end of the living room to the other.  Then she'd pick it up, turn it around, and ride it back. This too, we got to test outside later in the day. When she wasn't on the bike she was trying out her new Hello Kitty rain boots and umbrella, "I'm pretending it's raining!"

It was a fun, relaxing day at home with the family, and the subject of poop only came up two or three times (that's pretty low, compared to the average)! That's my poor segue into one of the more memorable Ben quotes of the day : "Today, on Christmas, any time I go pee or poop, I call it a Christmas present!"

To which, I have no response.  Merry Christmas!

Adorable

I can't imagine Penelope getting any more adorable than she is right now (yeah.. Ben is cute too - this one is about Penelope though). Somehow, she still manages to up the cuteness ante on a regular basis.  But she's also a bit of a toublemaker.  I fully comprehend the idea that kids are cute as a defense mechanism now. It can be really hard to keep a straight face, even when the "thing you don't want them to do" is unfolding before your eyes. She's often aware when she's about to do something wrong. Fortunately in those cases she's kind enough to warn us ahead of time by telling us to go to a different room or not to look at her (see? adorable). Other times though, she'll be the one leaving the room - that's when it gets dicey.

The one room she knows that she won't usually be followed into is the bathroom, which means that most of her mischief happens in there. If she disappears into a bathroom and you don't hear a toilet flush within a minute, or if the water in the sink is running for more than a minute, or if the singing stops and things are quiet (for a minute), you know *something's* up. You are probably in for a surprise when you investigate.

It might be that the toilet is filled with half a roll of un-rolled TP. It might be that the roll was unrolled quite a ways, and then rolled back up. It could be that the bubbles in the sink were just sooo beautiful that they had to be spread all over the place to make the rest of the room pretty too. Or it could be that she's using a toothbrush to apply lotion to her arms. You never really know.

A couple months ago, Penelope headed into the bathroom singing. The toilet flushed and the singing continued. The water ran and stopped, and the singing continued. She didn't stop singing, but she also didn't come out of the bathroom right away. I waited... about a minute, and then decided I had better check on her. I was expecting a mess of some kind - not a scare. When I got to the room, she was standing in the sink, doing a little dance and playing with the top of the mirror! Perhaps we encouraged that by putting one of those little miniature staircases in front of the sink. She didn't notice me come in, and it startled her pretty badly when I lifted her out of the sink yelling "NO!" Still, as momentarily terrifying as it was (for both of us), I have to admit that it was really cute. We put a much shorter foot stool in there and (I think) she hasn't climbed into the sink since.

Naughty or Nice?

Ben decided he needed to write out a Christmas card to Santa today. Not a wish list (that was weeks ago)... this is a bit different. Here's what it says on the inside:

He's obviously heard "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" one too many times, and this is a last-minute effort to butter someone up. It's too bad he forgot to use the word "please." I am sure he'll find something creative to do with all that coal. Better luck next year, buddy.

When She Grows Up...

I think most parents look at their kids every once in a while and make some guesses about what the future holds for them. I know I do. What are they going to be when they grow up? Over the past few months, my guesses for Penelope keep coming back to a career in the performing arts.

Is she gong to be a singer? She looooves to sing. She sings while she's playing, she sings in bed, she sings in the car, she sings while she's pooping. It isn't liks she's singing *all* the time, but every so often she will just break out in song unexpectedly. Sometimes it is a song that we all know well, and sometimes you'll recognize the tune, but she's made up her own words. A few nights ago at dinner, she sang her own Christmas song to the tune of London Bridge - "Santa Claus is loving you, loving you, loving you, Santa Claus is loving you, and he's Santa." And then sometimes it's just a random, Broadway-style show tune about whatever is bopping around in her little head at that time. Those are usually the most entertaining ones, because they involve a bit of interpretive dance and a large arm flourish or some jazz hands at the end. If you clap after one of those performances, she'll bow gracefully. And if you don't clap, she'll say "Clap everybody!", and then of course, you'll clap, and she'll bow gracefully.

Or maybe she'll be an actress... she's definitely got a flair for the dramatic. And she can instantly mold her face into nearly any emotion you might ask her to. Happy (of course), sad, angry, scared, serious, tired, bored... you name it. The only one you really have to watch out for is the sad puppy dog face.  

If you see that one, run. You never know what she's going to talk you into (I say "you" meaning "me"... Mommy is not quite the pushover that Daddy is). The faces show up unprompted most of the time, usually well-timed for a laugh. So maybe she's going to be a...

...comedian?  She has impeccable comedic timing. She's only three, so I have to believe it is accidental. But she has a knack for interjecting a word, sound, phrase (or face), etc. at just the right time. One of my favorite recent examples took place at dinner time. The kids had sat down at the table and we were getting ready to sit down too. Mommy and Daddy gave each other a kiss in the kitchen, and precisely when you'd expect it, from the table behind us we heard Penelope's voice, "Awww!" It was exactly the way you're hearing it in your head right now, complete with that little tongue click noise right before it. That's a sound she normally reserves for when she sees puppy dogs or anything built on a miniature scale, and probably the same noise she'd make if she could see herself half the time. When we started laughing, the entire family had the giggles for a while.

On Writing

It's been a while. Long enough that people are starting to ask me when I am going to write something again. And the requests have finally broken into the public domain, which is usually enough impetus for me to get off my lazy bum. To be fair, I've actually been writing things down.. just not finishing them up and posting them. So, I am going to finish off some of the stories, thoughts, etc. that have floated through my head recently (and some, not so recently). Perhaps I'll end up with five or six different posts out of the deal. First up, an easy one - because it has pictures of course, and also because its a nice segue from me not writing.

Penelope learned to write her name! She's been writing different letters (mostly P's) in random order for a while now. About a week before Thanksgiving, she "signed" a picture she colored. It wasn't quite her name, and it's not quite another word... but it is close enough to earn a spot here:

Yes.. not a whole lot has changed from earlier in the year. My kids are still obsessed with poop, but I am not sure she knows what she almost spelled. Then again, I'm not really sure about everything those guys have in that basket. Perhaps she intended to title her artwork instead of signing it. After all, she is the observant one in the family. It's probably best if we never know for sure.

And then, a few days later...

Yay PENE LOPE!