A day of rest.

I did it! Christmas robots were assembled enough to be given on Christmas. A Christmas email replaced Christmas cards (sorry, anonymous, but you're fated for another cardless year. do what you must to console your wife for me). Andrew loves his robot and the weird Ikea night light Lisa sent him made him decide to spend his first night sleeping in his own room. Post-Christmas dinner was brillant and delicious, and my visiting friends decided to stay an exta night. My present, a laptop, is on its way in the mail, and despite my thwarted attempt to shop locally (if only local merchants would co-operate with my attempts to buy things from them) I still got it for a good price. Dave took Andrew sledding today while Aaron and I hung out and read "The Very Busy Spider" about a thousand times and folded laundry/played peek-a-boo, and otherwise I mostly just hung around the house today. All in all, a successful holday was had by all in the family. Hooray!

Now I just have several crafty things to finish up and mail and give away, and then I will have lots of lovely things to post for your viewing enjoyment (I just don't want to spoil anyone's surprise by posting it here before they get it in real life).

Only when you are making dolls is a bag of miscellaneous limbs a good thing. I can't reall post anything, but I have many half-finished stuffed creatures around the house right now. I'm working on the boys' robots by night and some dolls by day. I don't think I'll get the robots totally finished, but if I can get them stuffed and put faces on them by Christmas I'll be happy. I can then do the control panels later -- if I can manage to convince Andrew to give the robot back to me for a few days. He has coveted every robot I've made so far and I promised he could have one for Christmas, so he's pretty excited about the possibility of getting one.

I was super stressed out about finishing everyone's toys by Christmas, but then Dave reminded me that I'm doing this for fun. So I decided to try to finish the toys of the people who live here, and then send out the others late when I get them done.

Funny, funny boys!

I have lots of pre-Christmas goodness to post, but I don't have time to download and then upload the photos right now, so suffice it to say its beginning to look a lot like Christmas (or as much as it ever does) around here.

For now, though, just had to tell everyone in cyberland what Andrew said in the middle of dinner tonight: "Excuse me, but I have to go put out a fire. Oh, but I guess I'd better finish my dinner first."

Also, the other day he said he didn't want to eat anything because it wasn't dark yet, and I asked him if he was celebrating Ramadan (Dave was there, so someone did get the actual joke). Andrew replied, "I'm not a Dromedon, I'm a boy!"

Also, Aaron is starting to walk. He's hilarious, though, because he stands up somewhere, then waits until everyone / anyone in the room is looking at him (usually), then he sticks his arms out with limp wrists, like a zombie, and with great concentrations takes about four steps, then sits down. His other new trick is giving "five" which he will do for as long as you keep holding your hand out. I guess I know how I'm keeping him amused next time we go to Saskatoon . . .

How do these things always happen to us?

Well, I am in Nipawin. I was supposed to be here for three days while Dave went on his secret cross-border shopping mission. However, something came loose in our car engine and rattled around in there enough to trash the thing. So dave is hanging around in a town in North Dakota until it gets fixed, and I am here, as I have no car if I go home, and am not really into trying to grocery shop, etc, with the boys on the sled, and this keeps my boys occupied playing with other kids so they don't have enough time to constantly fight with each other. And I have other adults to talk to.

So here I am, until whenever the car gets fixed and Dave gets back. It is getting kind of surreal now. Today I felt like I was in some sort of strange dream all day, becuase yesterday I drove back home to feed the cat and then drove back here. Ever since I was in my house i've felt like I accidentally drove back into some parallell dimension. Very strange.

Fortunately I had decided to bring some of my craft stuff with me to do, so I finished a quilt and have got quite a lot of future fun fabric goodness cut. But I still have a ton of sewing and stuffing and embroidering to do when I get home, not to mention getting a Christmas tree, decorating, wrapping presents, sending Christmas cards, baking . . . we might be a bit short on time this year. Ah well, no one really expects to get their card from the Chapmans before New Years anyway.

Sickness guilt.

This always happens to me. After two or three days of haraunging Andrew for being unreasonable / failing to eat / waking up at strange times / complaining about obscure things (such as hurting bones) / wanting to be held and carried all day / not being able to walk fast, he invitably starts throwing up, wakes up with a fever, or suddenly has a runny nose. Upon analyzing the data from the last few days I then say "Oh, you were sick. Sorry for being so exasperated. That must have been terrible." I am then wracked with guilt as I remember dragging him through the snow on the way home from playgroup calling "its cold! hurry up! no, I can't carry you!".

Then a few days later, when I get struck by the first, hidden symptoms of the same sickness (a terrible headache, chills and a low grade fever, or hurting bones), I feel even more guilty. I am an adult and I wish someone would snuggle on the couch all day with me. Fortunately, Andrew is usually up to the all day snuggle job, as long as I read him the same book a hundred and fourteen times while we are snuggling. The only problem is that then when I need to get something done he is insensed and unreasonable that I expect him to find something independent to do for 5 minutes while I change the baby's diaper or peel carrots.

So yeah, we're all sick around here. I'm in the stuffy head / sinus infection stage and the boys are in the rattly chest cough, if only we could get this phlegm up we'd be happy stage of a really nasty cold. Fortunately, since I didn't feel I could foist my very sick self off on any of my friends for three days, Dave decided to pospone his secret mission for a week. Whew.

Making a Thorough Examination

Aaron is at that stage now where he is pulling everything out of everywhere -- all my cupboards, bookshelves and toy boxes are emptied daily. His examination routine has become more elaborate over time. Before it used to be pretty simple: Can I pick it up? Can I shake it? Can I eat it? Can I drop it? After a "yes" or "no" answer was added to these boxes (generally ending with either eating or dropping said object, or as a variation, carrying it around in his mouth like a dog) he would carry on. Now we are getting into more complex evaluation. Added to the list are such questions as: Can I spin around in a circle on my bum while shaking / holding it? Will it fit inside my Weebles farm? Will it go down the slide of my Weebles farm? Can I push it around on the floor? Can I push other things with it as I push it around on the floor? This has led to the discovery that Andrew's sippy cup will fit into the Weebles farm (we tried about 10 times just to prove the theseis), but will not go down the slide, while Andrew's toothbrush will go down the slide.
Of course the ultimately entertaining question is, "Will it elicit a scream from big brother if I touch it?". The joy of having multiple children.