Presto Change-O

It snow AGAIN last night, about another 10 cm. Daddy's busy trying to dig us out. So Mommy and Nathan are having some costume box fun...

 Presto Chang-o

Watch me wave my paintbrush er...magic wand...

and pull a rabbit out of my hat.

Another magical childhood tradition

When I was a kid one of my favorite parts of December was the night we got to sleep under the Christmas tree. We did it every year I can remember, until I was "too cool" to participate anymore.
There would be eggnog and Christmas stories and then my whole family would curl up in their sleeping bags and sleep on the living room floor for the night under the twinkling Christmas tree lights.

This year I decided Nathan was old enough we could start the same sort of tradition here.

Since Grandpa Zoom wasn't coming for Christmas this year he came up the weekend before.

 Nathan and Grandpa ate snowman cookies, and drank little mugs of eggnog while watching the Grinch.

Then they settled in under the tree for the night.
Nathan L-O-V-E-D this new tradition. And I think Grandpa Zoom loved reliving some Christmas memories while making new ones with a new generation.

* I still have at least one more Childhood tradition I hope to revive before the seasons out- stay tuned*

Teddy Bears' Picnic vs Toy Story. My Magical Childhood

Do you know the Teddy Bear Picnic song?
After watching Toy Story 3 for about the 9 millionth time, I had to share.
Toy Story makes me feel guilty about where all my childhood "friend" are now.
When I was a kid, We used to have a record of the Teddy Bear Picnic Song.
My parents convinced me that it was true. That Teddy Bears came to life at night, or when you weren't around and played and had picnics (Much like all of Andy's Toys in Toy Story, but long before the movie ever existed)
One afternoon, I came into to my room and "CAUGHT" them.
My parents had set out a blanket, places all of my stuffed toys out, as well as my tea set.
It was so convincing there was even cookie crumbs on the plates.
I was utterly convinced that my toys came to life.
Which is probably why, even after Toy Story has been put on repeat for days. It's one of the movies I still don't mind.
I believe that toys can have a secret life.
I have proof that mine did.
I asked my Dad if there was a picture in any of the albums of the Teddy Bear tea party. I so wanted to show you, why my childhood was magical. But alas. It happened in the days before toy story, and the days before digital camera. So there isn't picture proof of every little event. The Teddy Bear Tea party only still exists in my memories.

rain drops keep falling on my head

Monday night our soccer practice was canceled due to rain. But when your 3 rain just makes everything more fun!!!I'd found a scooter at a garage sale for 7 dollars on the weekend. He's being dying for one for awhile. Every time were in a store where there sold he's ready to test drive them up and down the isles, peoples ankles in the way or not! One of the drawbacks to living on a farm is you don't have sidewalks, or hardly enough concrete to ride a scooter properly. So instead of soccer practice we went to town anyways and spent a good 45 minutes riding in a parking lot. The finished a new strip mall last summer and store are yet to move into any of the spaces. This makes for some awesome riding. there are no cars, and brand new concrete everywhere.

Nate was getting the hang of it pretty good. But you would have laughed at me. Rain may not bother 3 year olds but there was Mom under a big umbrella with a warm coffee in hand going up and down the curbs behind the "ROCKET SCOOTER".

knights of indigo

Wouldn't it be awesome to be 3 again? and just start playing dress up whenever and where ever you are? To have that kind of imagination? and not care what anyone thought? To just be in the moment so you become a knight with your sword and crown?
Nathan and I were in the bookstore Tuesday night, he disappeared behind one of the bookshelves, and after a minute or two I had to go see what he was up to. This was the sight I came around the corner to.

Sodbusters rodeo

Saturday we...or I should say Nathan participated in the Sodbusters rodeo. It was the perfect small town rodeo with all ages and abilities steer wrestling, bull riding, bare back broncs...and of course there was Mutton bustin'!!!

This is Nathan's second time doing the Mutton bustin', we did the bull-a-rama back in April.

And as I watched the first kid ride, I was a little worried about how he'd do. This time no one was going to hold him on. They had what I referred to as the bait sheep, standing in the middle of the arena, in an attempt to make the riding sheep run a beeline to the "bait" sheep I think. But once they got the kids on the backs of the sheep they turned them loose.

Most of the kids only made it about 20 feet before hitting the dust.

Nathan was the 4th one up. they got him settled on the back of this poor sheep told him to hold on tight and let the thing go!

No word of a lie. That little cowboy hung on for dear life, and made it to the half way mark of the arena. If fact I'm pretty sure the only reason he fell is because the sheep came to a dead stop when it got to the "bait" sheep.

He rode further than any of the kids there (not that I'm bragging- okay maybe a little). And when I saw the pictures afterwards he had a huge grin on his face the whole time he was riding. Of course when he fell off he apparently landed on his head (lucky they make them wear helmets) so I think he may have also cried the hardest of all the kids too!

I don't know if we'll get him back on another sheep now.

but I love this picture of him riding and the clown running along beside him in the back ground.

Picnic Day

I promised Nathan a picnic todaySo we set up the tent in the backyard and even packed Greg in the picnic basket

We all had a great time can't you tell. I LOVE this picture of us all looking at each other

a Greg in a box?

mmmmm...peanut butter and banana sandwich

Nate thinks its the coolest clubhouse ever! So excited, it was such a fun adventure for him. We've left the tent up in the yard for a few days. and Nathan is dying to get back out there first thing in the morning.

Soccer Star

Nathan had his first soccer practice last night.
And to be honest...
it went horribly wrong.

He did fine during the warm ups. When he was told to go for a run with the coach he ran right up and grabbed his hand and went for the run"right with him". He hopped like a bunny when he was told to. And as long as he had the coaches attention he'd do what he was asked.
But...
then the drills started and the parents do them with the kids (remember I'm wearing Greg in his sling for all this). Anyways the drills involved things like kicking the ball around pylons. and most of the other kids would kick it, and it would go somewhere near the next pylon 3 or 4 feet away. But when Nathan kicked the ball it would go half the field. and be nowhere near the pylons he was suppose to be going through. So Nathan and I spent the entire practice running over three different soccer fields. The coach would blow he whistle to bring everyone in and explain the next drill and more than half the time he missed the directions because he was still coming back from 3 fields over.
Totally not the coach's fault. The Head coach did an awesome job, keeping everything moving. and only doing each activity for 5-10 minutes so most of them didn't get bored.
In fact I blame myself for his less than stellar behavior.
He was so excited to be "Playing" with other kids that he could barely contain himself. and he's just not the type of kid to wait in line to take his shot on net. If theres a line up he'll just take his ball and go somewhere else. Really? he hasn't been in enough groups. He's also not used to not being the centre of attention.
So for the next 2 days. Until our next practice on Wednesday night. We will be having a ton of conversations about how when you hear a coaches whistle, you need to run as fast as you can to the coach. See if you can be the first one there.

Daddy came to our playtime class

Daddy was home for our playtime class today, so he got to come see what it was all about.
I still think this class on Wednesday's is much better, or at least better suited to Nathan's attention than our class on Monday's
Not only is there more space to run around in (and does Nathan ever run the whole time) there is also the 1/2 hour of playtime at the start, which seems to burn him out enough to have the attention to sit and at least listen to the songs in circle time. And then Carol-his teacher has all of the craft already ready to go. So she pored the paint and handed out all these black pieces of paper with the snowflake stencil already taped down and a little sponge attached to a clothes pin.
I'm so impressed that all he had to do was dab paint and it still came out looking like something.
-AND it was all ready so his attention span wasn't already spent by the time he go all the craft in front of him....isn't it kind of cool???

good hair, more snow, painting fun

I soooo need a haircut- Today was the first day in weeks I actually thought my curls looked good. You should not only have one good hair day in WEEKS!!! EVER
But I think I have to wait until Chris has a day off before I go get it cut, I just can't imagine what Nathan would do in a salon if I was strapped into a chair!

My hair looked good all day until the snow hit tonight, It was that really really wet heavy snow that came down fast and hard...of course it only started coming down at about 5 o'clock...on the night that I HAD to go for groceries. Some days I could just kick myself, I had basically all day to go for a supermarket run but I waited until the snow hit and we were completely out of milk so I had no choice. Brutal. Worse yet was brushing 2 or 3 inches of snow off the van- driving to the store barely able to see out my front window because it kept re icing faster than the heater was working; and then coming out with the groceries (pushing a shopping cart through that much wet snow with a toddler in it isn't fun either by the way) and finding that not only do you have to re sweep the car but actually get out and scrape the windows, because anything that melted on the way over is now frozen to your windshield again.
ALL DAY_
I HAD ALL DAY TO DO THIS SHOPPING AND I WAITED UNTIL THE WORST PART OF IT
*its stopped snowing now just in case your wondering.

We also started Nathan's other morning class today.
It was a little hectic around our house this morning since the program begins at 9 on the other side of town. Our schedule hasn't included getting up by 7 and actually being out the door for a deadline like that.
We did manage to get there only a few minutes late.
but to be honest I wasn't that impressed with this class or the teachers. Certainly not in comparison to his Wednesday morning one.
It's held in a pretty small classroom just off the big indoor playground I take him to quite often.
He spent at lot of his time hanging off the door handle wanting to be let out to play in the "Big room with the fun stuff"
We sang 3 or 4 songs and then did a hand painting. That and trying to get all the kids washed in one sink and filling out the contact forms was pretty much all that happened in the hour long class.
Although Nathan did manage to get paint on the kid sitting beside him!
The mother looked thoroughly unimpressed with me and him...and I was kind of like- "well, they handed out paint shirts to the kids maybe yours should be wearing it huh?" I didn't say anything but I felt like it when she scowled at us.
Truth be told I was wearing a pretty nice denim blazer and was a little less than impressed myself to have paint wiped on it...I'll be dressing down for this class from now on.
I'm not really sure how well this class is going to go for Nathan, if they expect him to sing and do crafts the whole time it's not going to go well would be my guess...but we'll give it a shot, maybe he'll learn to sit still and focus on a project like painting. It could happen. Right? right? right?

Play Class

So we went to our first play class today...
it was a little bit of a whirlwind getting there, our morning was just not very organized. But we got there only 2 minutes late, and we we're the last ones there!!!

It was held in the gym, and had all the push cars, playhouse, jungle gyms that were out last time we were there. The first half an hour or so was just free play time.
there was only 4 moms and boys in total. Although there is apparently 6 kids registered.

Nathan literally did laps...between pushing baby dolls in strollers, running around with a little shopping cart, in and out of the cars and chasing balls.

His teacher Carol, an older grandma type, was quite nice. She talked quite a bit to the mom's (boring the boys during circle time a bit) but has a good attitude about not forcing kids into activities. She pressed not doing your child's craft for them...or forcing them to sit in the circle. She talked so much that most of the boys got up and went back to the toys during the circle time. Nathan, stayed close by...handing toys out of the shopping cart to all the moms. When Carol started singing "The Wheels on the Bus" you should have seen his face!
He whipped his head around, and just lit up with a huge smile.
He started doing his stomp dance right away.
When he realized all the Moms were doing actions, he'd stop and watch for a sec, and then try and imitate them.
If he couldn't quite do the actions he'd just wave his hands and dance in a circle.

He was the only one who paid attention or participated at all in the songs- he was so amusing.

He had Carol in laughing hard. "well, thank-you Nathan, that was quite a performance"

He didn't do as well on the craft, even though he liked playing with the glue sticks and trying to mash them together,

By the end of only an hour, Nathan was so tired out...he wasn't in the van 5 minutes before he fell asleep.
he obviously had a blast!

Play time was a bust

I drove all the way across town to take Nathan to the Millwoods indoor playground- it's such a massive room, with so many different toys and slides and stuff it's become my favorite place to take him. And usually there's only about 5 or less other kids which keep the noise level at a dull roar.





But today was kind of a bust.





we showed up and there was 2 other mom's with a toddler and a baby each...but they left about 10 minutes after we got there, so it was just us...





after an hour and half I gave up. Although there's lots of toys and stuff to do, most of the point of taking him there is to socialize him and let him hang out with other kids. I feel so bad that he's not getting enough interaction with other kids right now, you can tell he's desperate to play with someone his own size every time I take him to any store he immediately lets go of my hand and bee lines for other kids as soon as he spots them.





But one of our programs starts on Wednesday-


we're going to one Monday morning and a second on Wednesday mornings from now until March so hopefully that will help a bit.



And... on the positive note- Our Playtime did in fact accomplish another goal- which is to wear him out!!! He fell asleep in the last few minutes of our drive home and is happily snoring away up in his room. Which means my whole house is asleep at the moment, and I have a few minutes peace to sort out the mess of blog drafts I've started but haven't managed to publish in the last few days.!!! YAY