Month: December 2010

The Most Photographed Christmas Pageant Ever

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My ward has a tradition of putting on a children’s Nativity pageant the Sunday before Christmas.  It’s something that always makes me want to get down on my knees and personally thank the Primary presidency for.  Nothing makes me feel the true Christmas spirit like this little 30-minute presentation. My mother-in-law, my parents, and my brother Alex all drove to see it.  My parents declared afterwards that the pageant is “when Christmas really begins.”

Jeffrey was a shepherd.  He’s always been a shepherd, and will probably be a shepherd until the day he turns 12 and is deemed to big for the program.  He actually sang some of the songs this year, which is a big step for him.  (He knows all the songs; he usually just kinda freezes in front of an audience and does nothing.  But not this time!  Hooray!)

Eleanor was a sheep.  She was asked to come dressed in “animal colors” — black, brown, grey, or white — and was near despair when she couldn’t find white pants in her dresser drawer.  Eventually, we were able to convince her that khaki would be okay.

Two of my Wolf Scouts got to sing a small-group song with a pair of girls, and I pointed them out to my mom.  She said, “Yes, it’s funny how fast you grow attached to them, isn’t it?”  I replied that my scouts were pretty easy to get attached to.

The kids sang sweetly, and there was only one small moment when someone forgot their lines.  I highly suspect that the kid who played the “drummer boy” had his lines taped to the edge of his drum.  And the Angel Gabriel blew a retractable trumpet that looked an awful lot like a vuvuzela.  All in all, a most excellent program.

Afterwards, there were star-shaped sugar cookies, which made William rather happy.

The center of the refreshments table had this sweet little stable made out of gingerbread.  See how they used pepitas for the roof and dried oatmeal for snow?  My mom and I want to try this out next year.  I have a whole box of animal cookie cutters I inherited from Brian’s grandma.  Mmmm, gingerdonkeys and gingerpigs!  Can’t wait.

Proper Little Ladies

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This past Saturday Eleanor and I went to Santa’s Tea Party at the Grand America, along with all her female cousins, various aunts, and both grandmas.  (From left to right in the above picture: Abby (age 1 1/2), June (age 2), Eleanor (age 5), and Sarah (age 3 1/2).  It was overwhelmingly girly fun; and the food was EXCELLENT.  Praise be to the inventor of the scone.  Especially the scone that includes clotted cream and lemon curd.  I drank a delightful plum spice herbal tea (eh, they should have just called it “wassail” because that’s what it tasted like) which was also quite the yummy thing.  Each person at the table had her own little mini teapot, which enchanted the girls.

Eleanor and her cousin Sarah sat side by side on this big couch for the party.  You can really see the likeness between them!  Eleanor chose to have mint hot chocolate and Sarah chose plain hot chocolate.  They were very interested in the sugar bowl, and insisted on putting “lumps” in their cocoa with the tongs.  (This, of course, lead to many lumps of sugar being dropped on the floor.)  Sarah insisted on drinking her cocoa with a spoon, which I thought adorably funny.

Despite the excitement of the event, both girls were remarkably well behaved, taking pains to show off their “fancy manners.”

There was still some twirling and bouncing around, but they were well within the parameters of expected three- and five-year-old behavior.  A grand piano was in the center of the room, with a woman playing and endless list of carols; pretty much every little girl in the room (including mine) took the opportunity to go and dance.

During the party, Santa and Mrs. Claus paid us a visit.  This has to be one of the best Santas I’ve ever seen; he was incredibly kind and patient with the kids.  Eleanor, as you can see, was thrilled to talk to him.  Everyone enjoyed the outing and we’re already planning to go again next year!

Twinkle Lights & Vampires

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There are days when I have said that I would give anything for a paper printout of whatever is going on in Jeffrey’s mind.  This past Tuesday was definitely one of those moments.

We had decided to go down to Temple Square and see the Christmas lights while the weather was still warm.  In the car the kids excitedly pointed out all the decorations we saw along the way.

ELEANOR: I see a reindeer!

WILLIAM: I see a snowman!

JEFFREY: I see a VAMPIRE!

And Jeffrey continued to see vampires everywhere.

JEFF:  Look!  There’s another vampire, walking along that sidewalk.  Another one by that store!

JEFF:  Aaaah!  A vampire going into a house!

Eventually, our logical daughter could take no more.

ELLA: Jeffrey, I don’t think you can see vampires.  Vampires are not real.

WILLIAM (aka “Eleanor’s Shadow”): Yeah, vampwires are not weal!

JEFF:  Yes they are!

ELLA: No they aren’t!

JEFF: Yes they are!

ELLA: No they aren’t!

JEFFREY (beginning to lose his patience): Okay, FINE!  We’ll take a POLL!  [shouting] ARE VAMPIRES REAL?

ELLA: No.

WILLIAM: No.

BRIAN: No.

ME: No.

JEFFREY: AUAUUUAUUAAAAGH!

ME: But . . . um, sometimes it’s fun to pretend that vampires are real.

JEFFREY (instantly happy again):  Oh, look!  There’s another vampire walking by that Christmas tree!

ELEANOR: [sighs in disgust]

ME: So, Jeffrey, why are you seeing so many vampires, anyway?

JEFFREY: Well, at Christmas time, there are lots of family reunions.  And when there are family reunions, then there are always lots of vampires around.

Well, of course! Because every extended family has at least one vampire, right?

This level of enigmatic Jeffrey-speak may conquer the current champion — the evening Jeffrey was reduced to tears because we wouldn’t let him have two plates at dinnertime, one for his main food and one for the side dish.  If it’s called a side dish, he insisted, then there should be two dishes side-by-side!  (There was no way I was setting a precedent for that.)

Just for the record, he forgot all about vampires by the time we got to Temple Square.  Instead, he wanted to know why none of the various nativity scenes around the square featured a big star.  No poll-taking was involved.

Ella’s First Piano Recital

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I am so sick of “Here Comes Santa Claus.”  It’s been playing in my house, in one form or another, at least 3-5 times a day since late September, often with miscellaneous grunts of frustration thrown in for spice.

People who complain about seeing Christmas ornaments in stores the day after Halloween have NOTHING on a home with a young piano student.  There have been times when I felt that hearing even one more note of this song would be enough to send me over the edge.  But it’s been worth it.

November marked the completion of Eleanor’s first year of piano lessons, and either as a result of this or perhaps other factors, her teacher decided to give her a very advanced piece to play for the holiday recital this year.  Her arrangement of “Here Comes Santa Claus” features eighth notes, flats, sharps, and lots of tricky fingering (cross-overs, position changes, and other things that frequently foul up the beginning pianist).  This is unusual for a kid who is still in the “primer” stage of lessons.  She’s only five, and to tell the truth, I had serious doubts when I first saw the music.

And then . . . she had to have it MEMORIZED.

The great thing is that Eleanor tackled the project with enthusiasm, and after many, many, MANY days of practice, had it pretty much ready to go by last Saturday’s recital.  She practiced walking up to the piano by herself, playing without too much wiggling around on the bench, and taking a bow afterwards.  I’m very proud of how she’s able to focus and work hard.

On the day of the performance, she eagerly slipped into her red ruffly Christmas dress (“with a matching headband!” she told anyone who crossed her path), packed up her music folder, and we all headed down to the recital hall.

She was the first person playing in the program . . . and she FROZE.

Yup.  That shiny black Steinway on stage was nothing like the piano at home.  She didn’t seem nervous or upset, she just looked puzzled:  “Where are my fingers supposed to go again?”  After a few minutes of being lost, her piano teacher came up and sat next to her, opened her music, and pointed out where she needed to be.

Then Eleanor and I played a duet called “The Snow Lay on the Ground” together, which went off without a hitch.  Everyone praised her work, and then she got to go eat cookies.

If there was anything about the performance she found upsetting, she hasn’t mentioned it.  When we got home, we made a video of her playing it without mistakes, and she seemed very pleased by that.  Besides, we were going to a performance of “Nutcracker” that evening in Provo.  It’s simply impossible for a little girl to be upset when she knows ballerinas are next on the menu.

I’m so proud of my little girl!  And best of all, I don’t have to hear a single thing about Santa Claus Lane EVER AGAIN.

Eh, well.  How about one more time:

Five Hours

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Five hours is the on-average amount of sleep I’ve been getting every night lately.

Part of it is owing to stress — ordinarily, holiday excitement and baby preparation would be enough to keep me wired 24/7, but this week we also had the meeting at school for Jeffrey’s Individualized Educational Plan (or IEP).  Nobody likes to hear criticism about their child, so sitting in a room with five educational professionals listing Jeffrey’s problems was not fun.  Even though I agreed with most of what they said — in fact, some of their findings (via testing) matches up exactly with what I’ve been telling them for quite some time now.  Such as: Jeffrey doesn’t need occupaional therapy; his writing is fine, it’s his spelling that needs help.  Or, that Jeffrey is fine cognition-wise; it’s his lack of focus in class that has caused him to fall so far behind the curve.  He needs small-group, individualized instruction. And it looks like he is finally going to get some.  Yay!  Let’s see if the school follows through with its promises.

What irks me is that whenever one of Jeff’s teachers has mentioned his inattention to me (from age 3 on up) they always look at me like I have some kind of magic solution for solving this problem.  I always want to smack myself on the head and say “Why, how silly of me!  I forgot to turn the switch on the back of Jeffrey’s head from ‘naughty’ to ‘nice’ this morning!” 

But, really, there aren’t any easy solutions beyond patience, patience, and more patience.  Our daily one-on-one homework sessions last about 60 minutes, and frequently involve Jeffrey screaming himself red in the face, chewing up his erasers and throwing pencils on the floor.  He’s been especially obdurate lately since Eleanor has begun to bring “funwork” home from kindergarten, which she zips through with glee while Jeffrey struggles to write sentences.  As he tearfully said to me yesterday, “Next year Eleanor will start real homework, and she’ll race so fast ahead of me that she’ll be in seventh grade by the end of the year!”  I reassured him that he’s just as smart as Eleanor, he just needs to work as hard as she does, and he sat down and began to write.  For about 30 seconds.  And then the eraser-chewing began once more.  (And when I say “chewing,” I don’t mean that he sucks on his pink eraser; he takes BITES and then SWALLOWS.)

Yes, educators.  I know exactly how difficult it is to teach my child.  Which is why I need your help.

So I keep waking up at 4:30 or 5:00 — late enough in the morning that my body doesn’t initially “feel” like it needs more sleep, but early enough for me to collapse some time around 9:30 a.m.

The fact that I get nightly ligament pain around my belly bulge doesn’t help, either.  What I call my “tummy tendons” ache constantly unless I get out of bed and walk around the room — for some reason, it helps the pain go away, but not always.  Last night’s session was particularly bad; I still have “phantom pain” in my hips this morning.

Well.  Time for a nap?  We’ll see if my brain can calm down enough for one to happen.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like . . . Well, You Know

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Over the past week we’ve been slowly dragging out our Christmas decorations and setting them up.  Usually we try to get it all done in one day, but between painting our kitchen (more on that later) and my perpetual pregnancy-induced exhaustion, it’s been more of a little-bit-here, little-bit-there, situation.

This, of course, frustrates the kids to no end, who want everything up NOW.

On the first evening, we just set up our tree.  No decorations or anything.  When Brian and I finished this and left to do dishes, the kids decided to Take Matters Into Their Own Hands.  Grabbing up a box of outdoor lights, they went to work on their toy castle:

TA-DAH!  How festive is that?  There are golden fake poinsettia flowers all over it, too.  And in the center of it all, our much loved, much abused nutcracker in the shape of the Mouse King.  (I don’t think it’s visible in the photo.)

The next day, we put most of the ornaments on the tree, excepting a bunch of handmade straw ornaments from Germany and the silver star topper.  Once again, I was doing dishes, and Eleanor and William decided to Take Matters Into . . . well, you figure it out:

It’s an Ella tree!  See the ornaments hanging off her fingers and toes?  She’s using one hand to hold the silver star on top of her head.

This past Tuesday for Family Home Evening, we upheld one of our family traditions and picked out a new nativity set from Ten Thousand Villages.  For those of you not familiar with this store (which is part of a national chain), it is a non-profit organization sells fair-trade gifts from all over the world, and is run mostly by volunteers. I love seeing all the different cultural interpretations of the Christmas story.  So far we have creches from Taiwan, Peru, Indonesia, Kenya, Bangladesh, and a weinachtspyramid from Germany (which I found at a thrift store.  Everything else is from Ten Thousand Villages).

Upon arrival at the store, Jeffrey marched in, scanned the wall of nativities, then cornered a clerk and began asking where all the Roman nativity sets were.  Rome is one of his current obsessions.  “Where are the Roman ones?  Where are the Roman ones?”  I had to gently take Jeff aside and explain that Rome really wasn’t a country anymore.

“What happened to Rome?” he asked, puzzled.

I explained briefly — not wanting to be dragged into a discussion of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — that it was Italy now.

Ten minutes later, he was at the store clerk again: “Where are the Italy ones?  Where are the Italy ones?”

Thank heavens for patient volunteer store clerks!

Brian and I can be notorious for being wishy-washy over decisions like this.  Should we get the little crocheted set from Vietnam?  Or the punched-metal display from Haiti?  However, it was Jeffrey who spotted the nativity that we all fell in love with.  I don’t have time to take a picture of it, but this is what it kind of looks like:

It’s from Uganda.  Our set is just like this, only we have two shepherds, and the stable is made of stamped leather and triangle-shaped.  I think it’s just lovely.  The sheep made of twisted bark are adorable!

 

The Turkey Trot

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Here’s Eleanor’s “Thankful Turkey” that she made in kindergarten:

The words on the feathers are kind of random (peas?  peaches?) and I think she was picking them off of a board of suggested words her teacher made.  Thanksgiving had quite the impact on her class; over the past few days the favorite recess game is a holiday-inspired variation of tag.  As Eleanor put it, “The girls are all Indians, and Fiona is our pet turkey.  Then the boys are all Pilgrims and they try to catch our turkey and eat her up!”

It sounds like kindergarten hasn’t changed much since I was a kid, in some ways.

The funny thing is that even though all of my kids are in different classes — or different schools — they all brought home paper tipis they had made in class.  I mentioned this in my previous “100 thankful things” post, but here’s the picture of the display Eleanor made of them on the piano:

Love that bison piggy bank.

Thanksgiving proper was celebrated at Brian’s parents’ house.  Here is our festive spread — my mother-in-law, Kathryn, found these foil-wrapped chocolate turkeys and encouraged the kids to use them for name cards:

See the funny-shaped turkey in the center of the table?  Brian and I discovered a roasting method called “spatchcocking” — where you cut the spine out of the bird, then press it flat.  Because the turkey is much thinner this way, it takes much less time to roast — only about 70-80 minutes.  This ensures moist, tender meat and a crispy skin.  Brian loves this method, and rubbed a butter-rosemary mixture all over the meat before roasting, which I found fantastic.

After dinner we played games —  a literary variant of Balderdash called Liebrary (in which you make up the first lines of real books, then guess which one is real), and a marathon game of dominoes (dominoes being one of the few games the kids find just as entertaining as the adults).

Jeffrey got bored of games after just one round of dominoes, and wanted to go off to play by himself.  In his social skills class, we’ve learned that this isn’t behavior we should encourage; the rule now is that Jeffrey doesn’t have to play the game, but he can’t go off by himself, either — he has to stay with the group. Since Jeffrey had spent part of the weekend watching the BYU-Utah football game on television with Brian, he decided to stay with us and “call” the dominoes game like a sportscaster would.

“Eleanor passes a 5 to Mommy!” he cried, as Ella put down a tile.  “Mommy blocks it!”  Then, whenever someone played a double tile, “TOUCHDOWN!”