All he wants for Christmas...

Last night Benjamin proudly came to us holding a tooth in his hand, so he's now missing his two front teeth just in time for Christmas!

Somehow all my children so far have managed to have their two front teeth missing at the same time. Am I the only one in the world who didn't have that happen? I distinctly remember losing one front tooth, and having my new tooth well on its way in by the time the other one fell out. So I completely missed out on that super-gap.

Fa-la-la-la-la

I was about brought to tears by another children's book this evening. This time it was The Lighthouse Santa by Sara Hoagland Hunter and I started choking back tears while reading the author's note at the very beginning of the story (of all ridiculous places to start crying).

It's a true story based on an experience of a man—Edward Rowe Snow—who flew around delivering Christmas surprises to lighthouse keepers and their families (who lived very secluded lives) for forty years. And that's just so nice (cue tears).

The rest of the story was rather easy to read (and I didn't actually end up crying). Benjamin announced that it was a very "calming" story. And it truly was. Simply beautiful.

Zoë keeps asking whether Santa is real. I keep telling her that he's alive in our culture, an answer she finds rather unsatisfying, but which is also true.

When she saw an illustration of Edward Rowe Snow dressed up in a Santa suit she pointed and said, "There, see!? Santa is real." And I thought to myself, "She's not wrong."

In this story Mr. Snow was very much the embodiment of Santa.

Now that Thanksgiving is over with (we ended up going to a friend's house for dinner; they posted they were eating alone and we were eating alone and we just figured if we ate alone together we'd be that much less alone, so even though it was a last-minute coordination it ended up being a lot of fun) we're officially ready to get this Christmas holiday season underway.

I've been sneaking in Christmas stories for quite some time now (of course), but Andrew is still pretty strictly a no-Christmas-until-after-Thanksgiving kind of guy. He's softened up a little over the past decade (and a half?!) that we've been married. In fact we might now be to the point that he's stopped caring about it altogether but the rest of us have gotten so used to him not liking Christmas creep that he pretends to be annoyed just to validate our Christmas pining.

For example, he was out of town all week last week (so we were listening to Christmas music with reckless abandon over here) and on Saturday when we were out for a sunset stroll, the kids hatched a plan to put Christmas lights up on the house before he came home (that very evening). Since it was already getting dark, putting up all our Christmas lights was out of the question but we did wrap some around one of our trees in the front:

With thanksgiving

Last night Andrew wanted to clean a cast iron pan but he couldn't find his chainmail scrubber (it's perfect for washing cast iron pans and, yes, it's made out of chainmail). He looked in all the drawers (because things never quite end up being put away where they should in our house) and didn't find it.

He didn't check inside the garbage disposal.

But he did wash the pan and then run the garbage disposal.

So now we know where the chainmail is, but it's thoroughly ensnared inside the garbage disposal, which is now leaking out the bottom, which we've learned is kind of the death knell for garburators (thanks to the marble of '14 and the seashell of '17).

Yes, this is the third garbage disposal we've mangled beyond repair.

Guess. What. We're. Getting. For. Christmas.

(Being a grown-up is so fun.)

I suppose with today being Thanksgiving we can be grateful that when the garburator started leaking icky dishwater there was a pack of opened sponges sitting directly below the leak, and with their collective absorption powers were able to soak up all the water the garburator threw drizzled at them. This was a much happier discovery than finding icky dishwater had run all over our cabinets, as we've had happen in the past.

Now there's a bowl sitting under the sink, which should hold us over until we can get this puppy fixed.

Falling for fall

I never expected to love autumn as much as I've found myself loving it. 

Where I grew up, autumn was a mere blip of a transition between a lukewarm summer and a frigid winter. The trees seemed to be in a hurry to be ready for their long hibernation, as if they were gearing up for battle—no time to dilly-dally!

Here the trees treat autumn as if they're getting ready for a big first date with a mild-mannered, gentle winter. They spend weeks (and weeks) preening in front of the mirror, trying on this colour and that, and...

I'm not mad about it.

You're gorgeous, autumn!

Lost, lost, lost...

Alexander climbed into bed with us last night, as he does most every night. He's more or less trained now to just lie still and go back to sleep (without even asking for milk) so we're all getting a lot more sleep around here than we used to. Anyway, some time after he joined us in bed and we'd all fallen back asleep, I was woken up by Alexander stirring.

At least, I was pretty sure that's what it was. Sometimes I'm not quite aware what's going on when I first wake up.

I reached over to pat him and shush him, but he wasn't there. He was crawling around.

"Baby, where are you?" I whispered into the dark. I could still sense him crawling around. "You're going to crawl off the bed!" I warned.

I lunged toward the foot of the bed to grab him but still couldn't find him anywhere. I was just wildly feeling around in the dark. By this point he had begun to fuss. "Momma! Momma!" I kept feeling around for him. Then, finally, I grabbed him, way over on Andrew's side of the bed, about to fall off the foot of the bed, had it been possible to do so...but it wasn't because he was under the covers (and the sheets were tucked in tight).

He'd been crawling around deep inside our sheets for who knows how long!

So I ripped the blankets off Andrew (sorry, honey), grabbed Alexander, and settled him down in the middle of the bed (where he believes he belongs).

It doesn't sound all that crazy now that I'm typing it out, but it felt pretty wild for 3:00 in the morning!

Family photos sneak peek (2009 to 2019)

We did it: we managed to take family pictures this afternoon! It was quite the circus (as is to be expected) but we had a good time and out of the 500 or so pictures we took I think we managed to squeeze a few good ones in. I still have to go through them all and edit our selections, but here's a pretty good one of the kids:

They're pretty cute (and so grown up). For real, though. There's this decade photo challenge going around and people are posting pictures of themselves from 2009 and again from 2019 (which I suppose is something one could technically do any year, but it feels big to be moving into the twenties (can we say that—"the twenties"? I'm so old that I feel like the twenties are of course the nineteen-twenties, but here we are in the 2020s, so...)).

'Tis the Season

We had our first day of Thanksgiving break and it was (for me, at least) a rather relaxing day. Andrew went grocery shopping, Tom came around to re-grout our shower (because we are know-nothings), and I spent a large portion of the day arranging Christmas music for the ukulele (very simplistically).

I know a lot of Christmas music exists out there, but I'm picky. I want the lyrics, I want the chords (and diagrams), I want the tablature (because Rachel loves plucking), and I want the notes on the staff, and I want it all together on the same page! I haven't found many pieces arranged this way. Perhaps it's overkill, but when we're practicing the ukulele I want my kids to be learning about time signatures and measures, and learning to read music, and so forth so I feel like it's important to have it all there.

Maybe one day we'll understand the notes on the ukulele well enough to forego tablature and will simply be able to pluck out a tune while sight reading from regular music (but today is not that day, so I'm making it a little easier on us).

It's kind of fun to do and it's rather exciting when I figure out chords for a song or successfully transpose something into a different key (and I think a lot of this feeling stems from my lack of understanding of music theory, so whenever I pull something off it just feels magical instead of logical, but that's okay).

We're planning on hosting a Christmas ukulele night in December and I want everyone to have music that's easy to read, so hopefully I'll be able to pull something together that everyone will enjoy (even though I know you can only please some of the people some of the time).

But then I'm feeling like I have project overload because I also have to finish our Christmas newsletter (and *fingers crossed* take family pictures tomorrow), and there are still a handful of days left of NaBloPoMo, in addition to getting a manuscript ready to send off to the publisher (Andrew mailed it for me today; weird that they don't take electronic submissions but whatever). Oh, and keeping tabs on my freshly potty-trained toddler (who had zero real accidents today (though he did pee all over the floor when he tried to take himself potty and very nearly pooped in his underwear (but did not because I caught him and rushed him to the toilet)).

It's a busy season for everyone, though, isn't it?

Youngest Choir Director Ever, Part II

Andrew flew in late last night, which was good because he was filling in for all the accompanists at church today. Seriously. He played the organ for sacrament meeting, he played the piano for primary, and then he had to cover for the choir pianist as well...which made things awkward because he's also the choir director. 

When Alexander saw that Daddy was sitting at the piano rather than by the director's stand, he saw his chance to make his big debut. He lugged over the little stool (kept on the stand to help our smallest ward members reach the pulpit in order to bear their testimony or deliver their lines for the primary program or whatever), climbed up and then happily announced, "I up here!"

Leaves are falling all around

Today was a very wet day. It rained all night long and all through the morning and it was still raining this afternoon. The raindrops helped convince the trees in our yard that autumn is really upon us and so they got busy shedding their foliage all night long and all morning long. 

When we loaded up in the van to go to a friend's birthday party, the driveway was slick with leaves and rain water. It's been covered with leaves before, but...not quite like this. And we're quite diligent about clearing the driveway, anyway—I'd just cleared it (and the back deck) the other day. But here it was, covered with leaves again. 

"I'll have to blow the driveway off again when things dry out," I said, as I buckled Alexander.

Then I hopped in the driver's seat and confidently backed out of the garage and into our little turn around spot. I threw the van into drive and headed up the driveway. But then my tires started spinning and we began drifting backwards. I put on the brakes. 

"Okay..." I said. "It's a little slick. We'll try this again."

So I tried again, and again I couldn't get more than halfway up the driveway. 

I texted my friend to say that I wasn't sure we'd be able to get out of our driveway, at least not in time to make it to the party on time. She texted back, "Oh, please still come!" So we piled out of the van and started shoveling soggy leaves off our driveway in the now-drizzling rain. The kids were all using their hands, which was pretty slow-going, so I brought out the push broom and started clearing a trail for us so we could make it up the hill. 

For the record, our driveway is a beast. 

And to think I've been laughing to myself about how we'll never have to shovel snow! The joke's on me because while we may not ever be truly snowed in, we were leaf-ed in today! I didn't know that was a thing, but apparently...it is. So now we know!

Another one bites the dust

His tooth squeaked against the kleenex as I wiggled it in his mouth. 

*squeaky*squeaky*squeaky*

I did not want to take the next step but I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and yanked.

*POP*

His tooth detached, ripping the last little fibers from his gums, fall into my hand. 

Gross.

Pulling teeth is not my job. Usually Andrew does that, but he's busy enjoying the beach (and a conference...but also San Diego), so here we are. 

Benjamin's two front teeth have been wiggly for weeks now and today one of them was giving him so much grief that he could hardly eat a thing—it had to go! I'm sure the other one will be following suit shortly (but hopefully not until Andrew's here to help with its exit), and then at least Benjamin'll know what to put on his Christmas list (not that he has any trouble coming up with things to put on his wish list; he wants a lot of things).

If you look carefully you can see that his note says, "One $ please."

And here's a better shot of his gappy, snaggletooth grin: