We spent Christmas with my mother in South Carolina. On Christmas Eve, just as the kids were getting ready to go to bed, we hear someone walk through the door… Santa was early! Oh no! But never fear, he just came to bring them one little thing each before getting back on his reindeer. He did come back though!
(thanks, Jamie, for being such a good sport)
It’s late, but I’m still working (it’s January. I’m always working. ’nuff said.) The kids are getting stuff together to go spend the night with friends. Cassie has her suitcase but Jamie says he has his clothes packed, but we don’t see anything. Tom mumbled something about he probably used a garbage bag because well, he’s Jamie…. a few minutes pass and I hear the following conversation:
Tom: Jamie, Why is there underwear on the kitchen counter?
Jamie: Oh, it must have fallen out.
Tom: Out of what?
Jamie: The bag of clothes
Tom: Oh *looks and mumbles* Yeah, you actually did use a garbage bag.
Jamie: *incredulously* Of course I did!
Maybe you had to be there, but Jamie’s “Of course” had us rolling. Because, ya know, he’s Jamie.
I just got a phone call:
Me: “Hello?”
Caller: “It’s me, Jamie. I don’t have my binder.”
Me: “Okay, what’s in your bookbag then?”
Jamie: “Oh, it’s fully of Cassie’s dirty clothes.”
Me: *blink* “Um, okay, let me finish my shower and I’ll bring your binder if I can find it”
Jamie: “Okay, thanks Mommy, you’re the best!”
I want to ask why the heck he has Cassie’s dirty clothes in his backpack. They didn’t go on a sleepover together or anything. But I’m afraid of whatever strange answer those two would come up with. In the meantime, I cannot find his binder and my hair is soaking wet (worked out today with Chris over at Libra Fitness so I was nasty – shower much needed TYVM). Sigh. When is this whole Mommy thing over?
From the shower last night:
Jamie singing (to the tune of the Barney theme song):
“I hate you, you hate me, we’re a hate filled family….”
Ummmm…. yeah.
From our vacation to visit my mother and sisters in South Carolina:
Tom and my mother were in the front seats of the van. My sister, Marcy, and I were in the middle seat. Jamie and Cassie were in the very back seat. My mother hates going around the sweeping curves on the freeway exits, they make her dizzy. My sister and I, of course, always try to make her pee herself. It’s a tradition. So Tom is driving like 5 miles per hour, Mom has her eyes squeezed shut and Marcy and I are screaming “OMG, we’re going off the edge” and “Oh god, really, Tom, you gotta pay attention”. Yes, we are evil. Yes, I’m 12.
When all the laughter dies down and Mom has stopped having her heart attack, we hear Jamie pipe up from the backseat, “Wow, I didn’t know grown-ups could have so much fun too.”
After we got to where we were going, we parked while Tom ran into to get whatever it was and we were talking about how we tricked mom to get on a ride at Myrtle Beach a few years ago. It was one of those motion rides. This one was one going through a mine shaft. We had convinced mom that it was no big deal and we got her in there and buckled her in. I remember her asking why she needed a buckle if it didn’t move a lot (we told her it rocked like a rocking chair). I told her, “Oh mom, you know – they are just scared of lawsuits and everything”. Of course, the woman is insane so she believed me. We were cracking up because Mom was TICKED at us when she came out of that ride. The whole time, she had her eyes squeezed shut, holding on for dear life and well, being pissed off at us. She got off of that ride and told us all off. We tried to get her to go on the other ride (it was as 2 for 1 deal), but amazingly enough her ticket went unused. (now, I wonder where the kids were that day… I’m pretty sure they were with us *laughing* I just can’t remember)
… and then we hear Jamie pipe up from the backseat, “Granny? … I didn’t know my Mom was so crazy!”
My mother, of course, told him he had a lot to learn about his momma. Oh boy. Methinks the kid was paying too much attention, he learned a lot about how to torture your elders 
Love ya mom… and no, I’m still not sorry about the Myrtle Beach thing… because… well, because it was the funniest thing EVER.
Remember when I posted about how we had snow in Austin on December 4? Someone at the school got the absolute best photo of Jamie playing in it… look at that smile – complete and utter joy. Jamie is a tough cookie when it comes to smiles for the camera. This one left me grinning for days! What a lucky shot!
Cassie also wrote a story about it. Oh, excuse me, she PUBLISHED a story – that seems to be the big thing now… publishing it means writing it, editing it, rewriting it and illustrating it and making a cover sometimes too. Very serious stuff… but this is SO cute. I love that they let all the kids out to play in it. They still talk about how crazy it was!
(click for bigger pic)
The kids wrote letters to Santa and then decided to visit family out-of-state, so I called and left a message for him to call us back – and he DID! Cassie was so excited that she nearly peed her pants talking to him. She was SO NERVOUS too. I mean. Santa. Called. Her.
It was all very exciting and she got to tell him that we wouldn’t be at home that year and told him where. But she also had decided that the robot dog she wanted (that hasn’t been made since 2002 – just sayin’) – she didn’t want it anymore and instead wanted a cool robotic penguin named Penbo. Santa said he would certainly try. I hope be comes through!
But last week… OMG! We got letters postmarked from the North Pole! Santa wrote to Cassie and Rudolph wrote to Jamie. And he mentioned the phone call, so we know he knows now. A VERY good thing, indeed! Wanna see? (click to see a bigger picture)
(and yes, Jamie knows, but he is playing along and doing a stellar job – thank to UWriteSanta.com – they rocked!)
We try to do something fun each Thanksgiving, make a silly dessert or whatever… this year, we made turkey cupcakes! The kids were able to do them all by themselves (I did ice them though) – so the decorating was ALL them. Fun!
And the finished project:
It’s after Thanksgiving and you know what that means! Tree decorating time… I’ll share pictures later of everything else, but here’s the tree, all decorated by the kids and the little girl next door. They had a fabulous time!
And here’s an action shot of the little tree getting decorated:
Thank you to my decorators, who did the WHOLE thing themselves this year!
Jamie is in chess club this year and yesterday we were at the family Thanksgiving and I told him he could teach me to play (I’ve never learned)…. so he taught me – and he did a REALLY good job. I had a hard time grasping how everything moves (still do) and he was so patient and helped me when I was about to make a bad move, etc. Today, he wasn’t so nice and kicked my butt a few times. Ha! But we had a great time. He got to play with his 2nd cousin (errr, Tom’s cousin – whatever, however that works) later. And then again with his grandpa later that night, so life was good in Jamie’s world. Honestly, there’s too many variables for me, I don’t think chess will ever be my game, but I like having something to do with Jamie that keeps him still for a few minutes and doesn’t involve a video game that I cannot figure out the controls for. Board games are more my speed, I guess.
In other news, Tom and I, once again, have earned the Parents of the Year award. *takes a bow* Jamie has these weird manic episodes and we’ve loosely tied it back to red dye 40 sensitivity. I will say that I was never really on board until a few months ago and he ate like a pixi stick and a few candies or something and then went apeshit all over the place. Today, I think we have firmly tied it to it. Apparently, while I was gone to my trainer’s gym today, Jamie ate TWO strawberry fruit roll ups. We never have this stuff in the house so I didn’t think about it and buy the organic one or check the ingredients. We needed it for a cupcake project. No big deal, right? Oy. That was apparently before lunch. But I wanted to be a cool mom today and let him have Dr. Pepper with lunch. Yeah, so he kept himself in check but after dinner I think it all just built up in his system and he went completely nuts on us after dinner. Tom had to take him out to the car and stand out in the cold while he was in there yelling and acting like an insane person (because we wouldn’t buy him a webkinz or something, I don’t even remember).
Anyway, so I talked him down and told him I’d take him to spend his allowance at Target because I needed to go anyway. I also started asking him about what he had eaten because I knew it wasn’t just the Dr. Pepper. There was something else going on there.. Bingo. He told me he ate the fruit roll-ups. Honestly? It was a relief because he was making random noises and pretending to swim and shoot stuff down the aisles. He was doing good and only doing it when no one else was in the aisle, but you could tell he was completely manic, laughing and acting completely insane. When we got outside, I let him around a little in the parking lot (off to the side, mom, where he wouldn’t get run over!) and that helped a little.
I was talking to my mom about food additives lately and hormones in our meats and milk and stuff and how unnecessary it is. I mean, is it THAT important for STRAWBERRY to have added red dyes to it? Does it really need to be THAT red as compared to another shade of red. I’m assuming here there is some strawberry in there and besides, do I really care if it’s white or grey or whatever? Or hell, let’s actually start using strawberries? Shocking idea, I know. Anyway, so I’m back to checking labels again. We just totally spaced, we are so used to just not buying certain things that it didn’t even cross our minds. Oh well, I can’t be too hard on myself. At least we figured it out and now I know that he’s not being a bad kid today, he’s just on a red40 manic episode – and it really is like they are manic, it’s the only way I can describe it.
Ah well… ’til next time we screw up (hey, it’s still early tonight, let me go see what Cassie’s doing)
