I’m sorry for my lack of posting lately. Even when I do post, it’s very blah. I have a serious case of blogger’s block and I’m tired and I’ve had a headache for three days now. So, that makes for poor posting. But, if you’d like some information regarding the Soviet Christmas and New Year’s celebration, scroll down and read the 5th comment on my last post. My friend, Sveta, lives in Kiev (for the time being, she is currently preparing with her family to move back to her home town of Dunaivtsi) and she is a dear sister across the pond to me. She gave a brief explanation of the fun, interesting traditions that Russians and Urkainians alike celebrate. So scroll on down and learn something new. Merry Christmas…again!

We had our first of two Christmases this weekend. The in-laws came in and we had a lovely time celebrating with them. The kids got some really fun new gifts. Sloan has not taken this outfit off since he got it Friday night (except for church, at which point we told him he absolutely had to wear regular clothes):

Landon hates Sloan’s new outfit, though, along with the Star Trooper helmet that he got so everytime Sloan comes out with one of the masks on, Landon scampers as fast as his pudgy little legs will take him into the arms of the nearest adult and holds on for dear life with this look on his face:

Sweet Katya got a cheerleader costume and a wedding dress costume. She has no idea what a cheerleader is (which I’m fine with) and when she opened it, she pulled out the poms poms and held them up and said, “It’s eyeballs!” Lee doesn’t like the idea of his little girl playing the bride and refuses to call this a wedding dress – he calls it her princess dress. I can understand and respect that. It weirds me out a little too to have my little girl playing “wedding.” Yikes!

I took the kids to the Dollar store and let them pick out their own presents for the grandparents this year. I tried to guide them toward the practical while still giving them the freedom to choose the gifts themselves. Sloan did a pretty good job picking things out. Tia tried, sweet thing, but was very insistent on giving her Papa a small ceramic Zebra and her Bebe a wildly tacky vase. It truly was the thought that counted…

On Saturday, Sloan had his russian school New Year party. Russians don’t celebrate Christmas the same way we westerners do. Their big celebration is on New Years with the Slavic Christmas being observed on January 6 (Sveta, correct me if I’m wrong). They do have a Santa Claus figure called, Dyed Moros, or Father Ice – which is very appropriate for us given the ridiculous temperatures we are experiencing right now. Dyed Moros also has a granddaughter named Snyegurichka who helps deliver the presents. I love russians and the way that they party. They have so much fun and it’s so carefree. The adults get into it as much as the kids and laugh and sing and dance around and just all around have a great time. And, where else would you have a man dressed as some sort of forest witch pull out an accordian and start dancing and singing? Oh, and Dyed Moros came out singing and dancing as well. It was awesome. I just love that culture. (Incidentally, Sveta, I think I need some schooling on who the little forest witch and her sidekicks are that seem to be trying to foil Dyed Moros’s New Year plans. It’s a little confusing.) Another fun tradition they have is the kids dress in costume for this New YEar’s party. Again, I don’t really know why, but Sloan was thrilled because he didn’t have to take his Power Ranger costume off. You know, because nothing says holiday cheer like a blue Power Ranger (or Optimus Prime – it might be a Transformer costume, I’m not 100% sure…) Anyway, here’s a picture of the whole crew, minus the accordian playing forest man:

Afterwards, my mom, my mother-in-law, Tia and I went to a tea party at the Ladies of Lucerne Tea House.

I’ve mentioned before my love for tea parties and I was so thrilled to take Tia to her first. She did alright. It’s a lot to ask of a near three year old to sit properly around fine china and enjoy scones and finger sandwiches, but she did very well considering. This tea was geared toward kids too so they had gingerbread cookies and p,b&j sandwiches and hot chocolate. It was a fun little girly afternoon. Of course, before we left, Tia decided that she wanted to fix her hair…without asking me for help…which as we all know leads only to disaster. A half a jar of hair gel later she walked out looking like this:

Needless to say a bath was necessary and after it was all said and done, she looked like this:She’s my little doll. She’s rotten, but she’s a doll. Merry Christmas everyone! Have a blessed week.

For years, I have been begging Lee to get our home movies burned onto DVD. Yesterday, something came over him and he decided to get the new DVD burner that we needed in order to accomplish this task and got two of our videos burned last night. It’s like a Christmas miracle!

We sat down to watch them and had a jolly good time watching the first few months of Sloan’s life once again. We both got a good chuckle at how young Lee looked. I know it was only five year ago, but it’s still noticable. I mean, there’s a big difference between 28 and 34. Lee looks like a baby. I, however, look as youthful today as I did then and that’s the way it’s gonna be, got it?

Of course we have just over three hours of videotape of Sloan’s first nine months. I think we’re approaching 45 minutes of videotape for Landon’s first year – and he’s not even in a lot of that video. Poor third baby. Watching these movies of our interaction with Sloan gave me great insight into why he is the way he is. Sloan is a typical first child, fun loving, meticulous and always needing someone to entertain him. To watch the videos, I see why. We made him that way! We coddled that sweet baby, always entertaining him, trying to make him laugh, talking to him and playing with him. Most of the video of his first couple of months, we are trying desperately to get a smile. Until about 6 months, Sloan was such a serious little guy and you had to practically move a mountain to get a smile. Either that or you had to make a gigantic fool of yourself, which we were doing in every frame of this video. Good grief, the poor kid just wanted to be left alone. Half the time he looked exhausted, but you know as a first time mom, I had to stick to the schedule and if it wasn’t naptime, then by God he wasn’t going down for a nap.

Then there’s the video of him trying cereal for the first time. He hated it, but I kept shoving it into his wide open, screaming mouth, determined to get him to give it a try. Meanwhile I’m looking at the camera with this overwhelmed, bewildered look and saying, “I don’t think he likes it!” Lee said I looked like Britney Spears – I think I should be insulted, and confused because… huh?

Anyway, thank God we’ve gotten better at this parenting thing. Not that we’re experts by any means, but we have figured out a few tricks of the trade through trial and error – most of which occurred on Sloan. It’s amazing that first children make it at all. How do any of us grow into well adjusted adults? But we have loosened up a whole lot. I’m no longer such a nap stickler – unless it’s the afternoon nap, which is like gold for me. We aren’t quite so anal about what “bad” words are – poor Sloan wasn’t aloud to say anything for awhile. I let the kids have McDonalds, eat sweets and drink rum in the morning – just kidding! That’s not true, they are only allowed to drink at night…

Oh and incidentally, I hereby publicly apologize to my husband for the fact that I apparently never showered that first year. In every video I’m wearing sweats and my hair appears to have swallowed a bucket of Crisco. Geesh.

The point is, we still learn something new every day and while I’m sure both Tia and Landon will also be products of our parenting mishaps, we have gotten a better handle on some things. How about you all? What are some things that you’ve learned through raising children?

We had Landon’s birthday party last night. These one year old parties get more and more stressful the more kids that we and our friends have. But it was still a nice time to visit with friends and celebrate my little man’s life. Here are a few pictures from the shindig…

Sometime last week, Landon received a memo that I’m certain read something like this:

I took the kids to see Santa yesterday. We haven’t been to see Santa Clause since Sloan was 18 months old and responded like this:
He was terrified after that year and I just didn’t have the heart to force him to sit on Santa’s lap again. And because he was so scared, Tia was scared and freaked out if we even got near a guy in a big red suit. So, it’s been several years. This year, however, Sloan is very into the idea of Santa. He’s so concerned about our fireplace and tells us everyday to make sure and turn the fire off on Christmas Eve to make sure Santa doesn’t get burned. And yesterday, when I told him that we were going to see Santa, he was thrilled. And, of course, Tia followed his lead and got excited too. They both leapt up on Santa’s lap and told him what they wanted – Sloan an excavator set, Tia a dollhouse – then smiled bright for the picture. Poor sweet Landon, however, did not enjoy it as much as they did…

We braved the 26 degree weather Friday night and went shopping for our Christmas tree. You know, because nothing says holiday cheer like frostbite…

We came home, had hot chocolate, put the kids to bed and strung the lights, then Saturday morning let them help us put up the ornaments. One of the ornaments we hang on our tree each year is a time capsule that we got on our first Christmas in 2000. In it is a small scroll where Lee and I wrote the details of our first Christmas as a married couple. This is what it looks like:Inside it say: Our First Christmas it was – cold and icy in Dallas
We lived at – St. Charles at Stonebriar apartment complex in Frisco, TX
At that time the new was full of stories like – Presidential Election Controversy, crazy snow storms in the north, the Rams beat the Saints and sqeaked into the play-offs – then lost.
We shared lots of Christmas traditions like – opening stocking on Christmas Eve. Getting up at the crack of dawn (this is a family tradition of mine that Lee has grown to love over the course of the last eight years – it fills him with such joy to creep out of bed at 5:00 am)
We celebrated the season with special people like: Herb, Barbara and Zach Dec. 10; Richard, Candy, Brett and Jared on Christmas; Old Baylor friends on New Years
We got each other presents like: Lee got Kelli a Karaoke machine, Anna Karenina in russian and clothes; Kelli got Lee clothes, “Rich, Dad, Poor Dad,” and an old LIFE magazine about JFK (that’s so random – I don’t know why I bought him that or where that magazine is now!)

Anyway, it’s always fun to read that and remember Christmas 2000, our first together. And here are a few more of my favorite ornaments.
I have no idea where we got his ornament but it makes me laugh. It’s a hula wearing Santa surfing on two dolphins and he kind of looks like he’s making an obscene gesture. Of course, that only makes sense right? Bizarre.

My First Christmas ornament from 1978. In a few years I’m not sure that I’ll like that one quite as much though – it’s starting to make me feel old.

Here is a picture of Lee when he was around 9 or 10. The ornament it’s nestled in is looking a little ragged, but he’s old too so…

There is a story behind this one. When I was a kid, my mom bought a blown glass Statue of Liberty ornament at some hole in the wall shop in Wisconsin. She loved the ornament, the rest of us thought it was ugly and a little odd so every Christmas she would hang it front and center on the tree and we would move it to the back of the tree. Back and forth we moved it throughout the entire season. It became the family joke – until college when it was mysteriously lost forever and we were all a little sad. But, low and behold, my mom was, I think, in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago and she stumbled upon not one, but two more of these horrendous ornaments which she bought for me and for herself. So now I hang mine on the back of the tree and every time mom or dad comes to my house they move it to the front and the tradition lives on!

And here we are, freezing our tails off to get our very lovely, very piney tree. I love the smell of a Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas everybody!

The other day, Sloan came walking into the living room, Tia trailing quick at his heels. He grasped in his hand his new Light Saber, which he got as an early Christmas gift from his cousins over Thanksgiving. For some reason he is obsessively into Star Wars, which is a mystery to me because he’s never actually seen any of the movies. It’s not that we don’t want him to watch them, it’s just that I don’t really know that he’ll enjoy the movies all that much given the fact that they are a little slow and, well, boring.

Somewhere out there, I know there’s a group of Star Wars addicts who are putting some voodoo intergalactic hex on me. Sorry, I just never really got it with those movies. Anyway, moving on. Sloan rounded the corner and held his sword up proudly.

“Mom,” he announced, “I am Darth Vader.”

“Oh,” I murmered trying to sound impressed.

“Yeah, and Tia is my girlfriend. Her name is Melissa.”

At this point I look up, my eyebrows raised, trying to figure out how in the world I should respond to this.

“Wow, Melissa huh?” I said.

“Yep, she’s my girlfriend Melissa.” Turning to Tia, he throws his arms out wide and she ducks slightly to avoid being whacked across the head with a light saber.

“Melissa,” he exclaims loudly, “Bow down to me!”

Tia just stares at him.

“Bow down to me!” he repeats. And still Tia does not move.

“Tia, you’re supposed to bow down to me. I’m Darth Vader.”

“Uh-uh, Hol (Sloan),” Tia responds indignantly.

Turning to me Sloan throws his light saber down. “Mom, Tia is my girlfriend Melissa and she won’t bow down to me.”

Honestly, I had no response so I stood there silently for a minute before saying, “Okay, who wants a snack?”

I think it’s time we showed him the movies…