Monday, January 2, 2012

Bumming Around the Christmas Tree

What holiday isn't complete without some good stories that come out of it?  Like the Thanksgiving the turkey caught fire.  But that's a tale for another day.  Now we're just remembering the fun that is Christmas with littles.  Beyond the usual sugar induced, Santa's on his way insanity kind of adventures because we certainly had our share of that too. 

On Christmas Eve we went to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  (I don't make vast quantities of Christmas cookies, this year it was just a batch of reverse chocolate chip cookies and a batch of chocolate chip dough to bake a tray at a time.)  Once the oven started to preheat it started smoking!  I'm guessing that last chicken we roasted a few days before did a number on the oven with it's splattering.  And that would be why I prefer to make chicken in the slow cooker but I wasn't in charge of that particular dinner and so that goes. 

Anyway, the real problem was what to do about dinner!  We carry on the WeatherMan's family tradition of having "white supper" after Mass, before the kids go to bed.  We did have some oven cleaner and would be gone long enough for it to do it's magic (without killing us all with fumes.)  But to get home around 6:30 and then wipe down the oven and then have to bake the fish and whatnot for dinner was just going to be torture.  So what do we do?  We call the closest Chinese restaurant and make sure they will still be open so we can get take out on our way home from Mass :)  Only a few quotes from A Christmas Story were thrown around that evening because "we are going out to eat."  

We had at least one other Christmas Story moment watching a very worn out Littler laying on the floor driving cars around.  Just like Randy with his zeppelin.  He did not fall asleep in the pile of wrapping paper, although we might have had a slightly calmer afternoon if he had.  But napping just isn't the way we roll. 

The boys got a musical gift from their musician uncle.  I had actually suggested these to him and he expressed concern to our mom that maybe I didn't know what I was really asking for.  They're Boomwhackers - a set of pitched tubes.  A great noisy boy toy.  (And to reassure my brother, the boys also love paints but it doesn't mean they always have access to them ;-)  But I had no idea just how open ended the play would be that they could come up with with these suckers.  Of course they like whacking them on anything they can get to.  And someday they'll figure out that each one makes a different sound.  And they've made them into shovels, airplanes, and fishing poles.  Being boys they even made themselves some guns - and not just any guns.  Littler put the biggest up on his shoulder and said "I shoot."  How he came up with his own bazooka at 2 years old I will never know! 

But my personal favorite is when I thought they were playing the cello (picture one tube straight down to the ground, one across it like a bow.)  But when Bigger explained it made so much more sense because, really, how would they come up with playing the cello?  No, they were Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor in Singing in the Rain.  Can you see it now?  "Fit as a fiddle and ready for love, I can jump over the moon up above."  Complete with some dance like moves and jumping.  And this opened up another world of play, tipping Bigger's mattress against Littler's crib and trying to run up the wall like O'Connor in "Make 'Em Laugh."  Of course this devolved into dragging each other to the floor and sitting on each other while laughing hysterically.  Have I mentioned how we desperately need a yard? 

I for one am looking forward to Epiphany when we can take down the tree.  The boys I am certain do not share my feelings.  Many happy hours have been spent contemplating which ornament to pull on and yank off the tree next.  Thank goodness those shatterproof balls bounce.  When you step on them though it's another story. 

There has also been at least one swift Mama rescue needed for a little who got himself stuck behind the tree.  He was so not happy with Mama's decision to take a picture of his distress before getting him the heck out of there.  Those little branches are just a wee bit scratchy, ya know! 

But perhaps best of all for this Mama was the fact that she was not thrown up on once through the course of all this fun :)  Ahh, the little blessings in life. 

2 comments:

Pippajo said...

Our church has an entire kids' boomwhackers choir! It's kind of cool and kind of crazy! What a cool gift!

And Singin' in the Rain is one of our all-time favorite movies! My Calvin is ten and he still tries to reenact the "Make 'Em Laugh" and "Moses Supposes" scenes. So many lines from that movie frequently find their way into our every day conversation.

I also had to laugh at your description of the boys and the tree. One year when we took ours down we found stuck in its branches: three paper airplanes, nine rubber bands (which had been shot into it) and a sock. And that's from only one boy in the house!

Ah, the little blessings in life, indeed.

karen said...

The last photo is precious!! Poor little guy. Happy New Year!