I hope all of you had as lovely a time as did we the past couple of days. Even being trapped in the house wasn't bad. True was in heaven having mom AND dad at her beck and call. She had a perfectly lovely Christmas I think. 
As per tradition, she got to open one gift on Christmas Eve. The one she picked was the greatest. A while ago we made a big piece of whiteboard for her and we draw gameboards on it. She gets to make up the rules and the spaces and stuff. She loves it. So Daddy made a rockin awesome box for her to keep stuff in. It has a big whiteboard spinner for the lid and he filled the sections inside with blank cards, dice, little animals for pawns, set pieces...How cool is this guy? She was so excited! When she woke on Christmas morning, she got to open her stocking and then we had a wonderful breakfast of homemade pecan waffles and I kid you not, from-scratch caramel sauce. Huh? Trap me indoors and I become freakin Betty Crocker! She played with her new game box for a while, dad and I got showers in, then the present opening began! 
Honestly, for how much we tried to instill a "we don't need stuff" instinct, the chick got a ton of swag. Good times, though. As the pop put it, "She's only five once." He makes her a gift every year, and this year it had a theme. She got the game box, and after all the presents were unwrapped, in the tree she found a rolled parchment "For Emma, from the Pirates." It was this wonderfully drawn, aged, burned edge, rolled with a ribbon treasure map leading her to her room where she found her new treasure chest. Ok, toybox. Still. She was so giggly following the clues; the mountain that looked like stairs up one side was my particular favorite. It was a ton of fun. The rest of the day was spent playing and lounging and listening to music and watching the dratted snow beautifully blanket the outside. 
For dinner we made pizza, True now having a real taste for yeast doughs. She can't get enough of the texture and the smell and the fact that it rises. She loves it. The second shot is daddy and I both trying to catch for posterity her throwing it up in the air on her fists. We were laughing so hard neither of us got a usable picture at all. The last shot is the centerpiece she crafted for the "fancy family dinner" out of the Floam she got for a gift. Nice huh?
As per tradition, she got to open one gift on Christmas Eve. The one she picked was the greatest. A while ago we made a big piece of whiteboard for her and we draw gameboards on it. She gets to make up the rules and the spaces and stuff. She loves it. So Daddy made a rockin awesome box for her to keep stuff in. It has a big whiteboard spinner for the lid and he filled the sections inside with blank cards, dice, little animals for pawns, set pieces...How cool is this guy? She was so excited! When she woke on Christmas morning, she got to open her stocking and then we had a wonderful breakfast of homemade pecan waffles and I kid you not, from-scratch caramel sauce. Huh? Trap me indoors and I become freakin Betty Crocker! She played with her new game box for a while, dad and I got showers in, then the present opening began! Honestly, for how much we tried to instill a "we don't need stuff" instinct, the chick got a ton of swag. Good times, though. As the pop put it, "She's only five once." He makes her a gift every year, and this year it had a theme. She got the game box, and after all the presents were unwrapped, in the tree she found a rolled parchment "For Emma, from the Pirates." It was this wonderfully drawn, aged, burned edge, rolled with a ribbon treasure map leading her to her room where she found her new treasure chest. Ok, toybox. Still. She was so giggly following the clues; the mountain that looked like stairs up one side was my particular favorite. It was a ton of fun. The rest of the day was spent playing and lounging and listening to music and watching the dratted snow beautifully blanket the outside. For dinner we made pizza, True now having a real taste for yeast doughs. She can't get enough of the texture and the smell and the fact that it rises. She loves it. The second shot is daddy and I both trying to catch for posterity her throwing it up in the air on her fists. We were laughing so hard neither of us got a usable picture at all. The last shot is the centerpiece she crafted for the "fancy family dinner" out of the Floam she got for a gift. Nice huh?So the day after was spent much the same, with her pleading for pizza for dinner again, to no avail. I was thrilled to get an external hard drive for my gift and spent the entire day cataloging, organizing and saving all my digital crap. And holy crap do I have a lot of it! But it is now all safely, securely, neatly, off my computer. Whoo hoo!
So while most of us enjoy the season of brotherhood and community, the RNC was busy hatemongering. My goodness, have you seen this? I was shocked at how blatant this is. I can't believe it. Check out hater to see what CNN says about it. Apparently this guy sent CDs to all his crony pals and says, "What? It's a joke. Can't you take a joke?" For the love of mice, the title of the sucker is "We Hate the USA." Why would one political party choose to make this their rallying cry? How out of ideas do you have to be for your entire platform to consist of "the other guy hates your country?" It's all these songs making fun of liberals, which is fine, go to town. But why use that angle on it? Who does that help? They are song parodies about John Edwards, Wright, immigrants and, the capper, that made it national news, "Barack the Magic Negro." I am not making this up. If you can still say you are republican in public, you have bigger balls than I do. Use your voice, tell your party you are tired of their shit and take back your integrity! GO NOW!
Last thing. Last night, while putting True to bed, we talked about how much vacation was left and she says, "I don't want to go back to school. I don't like it." We talked about it, discussed why, what she doesn't like all the stuff we always do. One cute point, she was saying how all they ever do is sit down, they just "sit sit sit and listen." I said, "Well, honey, she has a lot of important things to tell you about." She goes, "Well, why can't she tell us while we're doing art?" Heh heh. So we talked about having free choice every day and it sounds like her biggest problem is that she doesn't have a relationship like she had at the CDC and doesn't feel secure. She has a few friends she hangs out with most of the time but not always, and she doesn't understand how the other kids interact. She says "They only want to do their way. I say, 'Let's do both ways together' but they won't." Or she says they won't take turns. She has had this skillset banged into her about how you act in group of children and the others don't follow those rules. She doesn't know how to cope. I certainly don't want her to say, You've been hogging that game the whole time, let someone else play! but I don't know what to tell her to do. I don't want her to tell the teacher, but I don't know how to teach her to fix it herself. In my room, I always watched out for those little conflicts because I wanted to head them off before kids learned to tattle, but I don't know how her teacher's way of handling it. I'm not blaming, if a kid is really struggling, but is quiet about it, it's hard to pick up on. The noisy ones take so much of your attention! We did some role playing and brain-storming and in the end she said, "Mom, will you talk to her about it please?" Oh dear. Poor sweet thing. I just hate to think of her not wanting to be there, and having to grit her teeth every single day and "face" another school day instead of being so glad to be there. dammit!
