happy b'day Jesus

i'm officially hooked on christmas. we drove up yesterday afternoon in the rain and then finally, in the snow. after the best christmas eve dinner at jon's aunts, we came back to his folks house. conrad opened his christmas jammies and wanted to change into them right there on the spot and then put the snow boots i bought him yesterday for this trip back on-he has been wearing them since i pulled them out of the shopping bag, even requesting to wear them to bed and in the bath. the two of us cuddled up on the chair next to the roaring fire and read "The Night Before Christmas". after reading the book we got cookies and a glass of milk for santa and put it next to the fireplace then went upstairs and said goodnight.

watching conrad open his presents has made the day even more magical. at first he opened slowly, playing with each thing as if it was the only thing, but half way through it he finally began to get it. tearing into each festive wrapped package, ohhhing and ahhing. though when he tore into his Wall-E toy- a toy he has been eyeing at blockbuster for months now, and even though it's been out of the store for awhile now, every time we go there he wants to go look for it- at first sight of what was inside, he let out a loud WALL-E!!!!

after presents conrad and i got a cookie sheet from gramma and went outside to sled down the hill; we threw snowballs at one another-i just want to say it's a lot harder than it should be not to peg your own kid has hard as you know you can-made snow angels till our clothes were damp and our noses wet.

now truman is sleeping and everyone has gone back over to aunt ruth's for the roast beast.

i've had so much fun this holiday season making gingerbread men and snowflakes that we hung in the window and driving around looking at christmas lights in the ghetto (they're better there. both jon and i agree: the tackier, the better) and drinking hot cider while watching National Lampoons Christmas Vacation that i think i'm going to prolong christmas for a few more weeks.

merry chistmas.

ho ho snow

i really tried to do christmas cards this year. i picked up a catalog from kinkos, bought christmas clothes for the pictures- we even went to the mall and forced our children to sit on a stranger's lap, which conrad was quite pissed off about. but two days till and i have nothing but a bad jpg to show for it. discussing this with a friend, a mother of two, i was relieved to hear that when her two kids were at the age juncture of mine, she too never got to it that year. maybe, hopefully, possibly, but probably not, i'll send out a new years card.

tomorrow morning we're heading out to salem, a three hour drive north. last night jon's dad called to warn us that they have 18 beautiful inches of snow and we best pack man vs wild style just in case our car should get buried under an 18 inch avalanche and we have to drink our own urine to survive.

i can't say whether or not the rest of oregon is crazy, but here in medford they sure are. last week we had a few days of barely there snow- snow that melted as soon as it hit the ground, soon as the sun came up, soon as children started getting excited about making snowmen-and for like 3 days straight school was cancelled or post poned. give them a good rain storm and they start shitting bricks and doing their hail mary's. my first year here i experienced the craziness first hand when at the library and it started to rain more than a drizzle; i wasn't paying much attention to it, being from texas and being use to ignoring tornado warnings for the cause of lettuce wraps at chilis, i was taken back when i looked up from my book and saw everyone in the library glued to the giant windows that surrounded the back wall. i refrained from shouting out that everyone should get away from the windows and take shelter in the basement. i was afraid they would do it.

i'm not too worried about the snow. jon is going to buy snow chains tonight. plus, if we have to eat each other for survival, i'll be last thanks to my lactating breasts.

Picking My Nose and Chewing It

i know this is something every mother in the world struggles with, but for me, two and a half years into it, i'm just now beginning to truly grapple with, and that is how to Do It All.

my list( i'm sure it looks a lot like yours):

clean, clean up after everyone
do laundry
fix dinner
buy groceries
return movies to blockbuster
return bowl and platter to friend
make gingerbread cookie dough for tomorrows play date
stop by Micheal's for craft items for tomorrows play date
make dessert for christmas party pot luck
buy jon's dad christmas present
finish hanging christmas lights
balance checkbook
pay bills
wash conrad's bedding
buy holiday stamps
forget getting christmas cards out this year
and Take Care of Children while doing it all.

anyone who knows me knows i'm not the most organized person, and no matter how hard i try i seem to go in circles. just over the course of the the past two days i've been to the grocery store 1,2,3,4,5 times. which is ridiculous, i know. but even with a list in hand i always seem to overlook something, or the grocery store i'm is out of, say, family pack size of chicken breasts. or, i get home to find out jon just used the last of the flour, or i'm in the middle of making a dinner entree when lo and behold i only have one tablespoon of cumin and naturally i need two. a few months back i went through all the cupboards and made an inventory then posted them on the inside. and while that was great for like a week, it's functionality as past expired and there is no way i'm going through all that trouble again. of course i realize there is some painfully obvious solution to my problem but if i'm not smart enough to figure it out on my own i probably don't deserve to know. and all that to convey much of the exhaustion in trying to Do It All is most likely self-inflicted. i know there are moms out there with double the kids and double the chores who do it without breaking a sweat or needing a drink at the end of the day, i just seem to be a tad efficiency challenged.

i had no idea two year olds were this much fun. after months of internet silence, thanks to not having internet and therefore being forced into silence- that will stand as my opening sentence. toddlers are hilarious; little creatures of endless humor, some of which, i presume only a parent or bill cosby could appreciate. then again, who in there right mind wouldn't think instances such as going in to check on ones toddler suppose to napping and instead finding him in different clothes on with shoes on and a hat on dancing on the bed while singing a mary poppins song isn't something to chuckle about. because it is. it totally is. i wish i could bottle this age up and save it for when he is a teenager and wants nothing to do me. that is when i would pull my bottle of Toddler 2008 down from the wine rack and pour myself a drink of sudden discoveries accompanied with shrills of excitement and big hugs accompanied with "i'm happy mommy" whispered in my ear. he really did say that while i was hugging him the other day, he said it softly and as it entered my ear i knew he meant it to be meaningful and loving. i almost died.

and all that, and then the newest one, truman, who might be the best baby on the planet. and i thought conrad as an infant took the awesome cake, but well, truman is amazing. happy and easy going, mellow and, yes jeremy, he is a tad serious at times. as of a few days ago all he wants are those adorable little toes of his stuffed in his mouth. oh that and gobs of my hair clinched in his fists. he falls from perfection however when the clock strikes 1am and then again at 4am, that is when he dares to make hungry fussy noises, and fussy noises and not crying mind you because crying is something truman doesn't really do unless conrad makes his "ferocious duck" noise. and seriously, apart from that the kid loves to smile and ga ga goo goo and lie or sit where ever i put him while i do what i need to do. he makes this having two kids thing a piece of cake. awesome cake.

that is the summary of the past few months, in the fine print there is a bit about conrad being potty trained in A day, like singular, as in one day. crazy. and it wasn't how the books told me to do it, in fact had i followed the experts advice i'd still be waiting for conrad to be "ready". instead last friday morning i took off conrad's diaper, cleaned his butt, and to his protest told him when he needed to go pee pee or poop he would need to do it on his little potty. as mentioned, he pleaded with me for a diaper, even chasing me around the house holding one- however, i kept to my guns insisting to him he could totally do it and when he did the heavens of sugar would open. and he did, and has since that morning. although the little buger figured out that if he could draw out a pee at five different intervals he would a piece of candy each time, so after two days of pumping him full of skittles and malt balls, we changed the rules to pee pee getting stickers and the poop the candy. it seems holding your crap in is a lot more challenging.

gosh, it seems like there is soooo much more i should remember. but i'm kind of drawing a blank right now. lets see. conrad is 28 months and truman 4 months old. conrad loves race cars and reading books, in particular, A Day On The Farm and Corduroy and The Three Little Pigs and Bear Feels Sick and The Fuzzy Little Duckling and Pigsty and Peter Rabbit. i think it's interesting at how he gravitates and chooses the classics over some of the newer books, even though like how in the Three Little Pigs the wolf eats two of the main characters and how in Peter Rabbit Mr. McGregor eats the main characters father. for christmas i got him Charlottes Web and i'm super excited at starting a chapter book with him. his attention span with books is extraordinary for his age, though i won't be surprised if attempting a book like Charlottes Web is too soon. truman however is more interested in eating his soft books right now.

well now that i've done this perhaps i can get to writing our stories as they happen instead of poorly hashing out the essence of their collective memory.