Christmas sharks

If I thought it was going to be difficult to unpack and get tidy in the new house before, I clearly didn't realize how much worse the situation was going to get with the addition of all the Christmas paraphernalia!  Between the fancy pink Polly Pocket camper (it's called a glamper, no joke) accessories and the noisy baby instruments it may be spring before I find a clear spot on this new floor to set my foot without stomping on something precious or loud.  But we had a good Christmas!  Here's me and my girl in our matching pajamas on Christmas morning.  They aren't homemade; they are from Target.  :)

And baby Worth sporting his White Socks bib (I did sew that, but it was before I knew we were moving) and shark hat.  The hat has a story.  I finished most of my shopping as soon as I found out we were moving, wrapped up the gifts, then sent them off to Nana's.  I blogged about that at the time.  But of course my early shopping did not account for closer-to-Christmas requests from Dorothy.  I could not have predicted that the item she would get her heart most set on receiving from Santa Claus was a shark hat and mitten set that matches those owned by her little preschool crush.  I had to e-mail the boy's mother to ask where she'd gotten them, then get myself to the Gap in the midst of all our move craziness to secure the hat.  Fortunately, the store did have exactly two hats left when I got there--one in Dorothy's size and one in Worth's, so of course I bought them both.  If I'm buying my daughter a shark hat from the boys' department, why not also purchase one for my son?  Dorothy was extremely happy with her her new shark gear and has mentioned several times how she and her little friend will now have matching hats on the playground.  I'm totally charmed that 4-year-old love is taking the form of identical fleece hats in the form of marine predators.  I'm also totally into the hats myself--they are so unexpected on both my pink-clad daughter and my rosy-cheeked baby.  The kids kept getting pawed at and cooed over by strangers at Costco today.  Who knew that shark hats could be such a thing?

This picture is being included just because I love it.  It's Dorothy expressing her love for her newly-unwrapped skunk toy.  I bought a bag of seemingly new (with tag) Beanie Babies at the thrift store for about a dollar, then parceled them out to the kids and wrapped them individually from Santa.  Dorothy loves stuffed animals that are about that size and heft, and I like toys that don't fall apart in the washing machine.  (Beanies wash pretty well, in my experience.)  She told my mother that her skunk and owl toys were her favorite Christmas gifts.  Not a bad second life for those erstwhile "collectors' items."

I'll post more house photos soon!  I'm probably going to spend the rest of the winter on befores and afters, kind of like the camper, but first I just need to get more boxes unpacked. A planned trip to IKEA later this week should help me with some needed storage; right now I'm a bit stymied by not having the right places to put the things I'm unpacking.

The stockings were hung

by our new chimney, with care!  And cheering!  And lots of exclamation points!  We got access to the new house today and rushed over to take care of first things first, like hanging our stockings.  I think we all feel better now.  In addition to our stockings we took over some fragile items (lamps) and some that would be overly difficult to pack, like my stand mixer.  It sure gives me a mental boost to know that my stockings and my stand mixer are waiting for me over at the new house!

Our stockings each have a bit of a story.  Mine (first) was a gift from Rob during the Christmas of our engagement.  Rob's is from his childhood.  Dorothy's (ivory with the silver tree) has eighteen silver hooks sewn on it.  Each Christmas Santa brings her a sterling silver charm representing something special about her year, and he hangs it on a hook on the stocking.  By her eighteenth Christmas she will have a nice collection of meaningful charms that she can choose to leave on her stocking, or put on a bracelet if she wishes.  I like this tradition because it takes up less space than ornaments, and can double as something functional (wearable jewelry) instead of just (pardon me) a box load of crap that she feels like she has to keep until one of us dies.  Not to be all anti-sentimental, but I just am not in favor of traditions that burden people with lots of stuff they must store.  The cat's stocking is next, and then Worth's.  I had a hard time thinking of how to adapt the charm tradition for him, but I did come up with something.  His stocking has big circles on it, and eighteen of them are well-centered on the stocking.  Santa has purchased a good supply of silver letter beads and will string one word in the center of a circle each year.  It's not wearable, but at least it will never take up more room than a stocking.  Santa still hasn't decided what word will sum up Worth's first year, though--for some reason "victuals" keeps coming to mind, as that boy is such a big fan of his dinner!

There's no place like...

Worth met Santa this week!  I don't like screaming pictures with Santa so I opted to be included after it was clear Worth would not willingly participate in a hand off.  I have a similar picture of Dorothy, Santa, and my arms from her first Christmas.  I have no pictures of Santa with Dorothy since then, what with the unwillingness on my part to hand a screaming child over to a scary stranger in a red suit, and her unwillingness to get anywhere near him.  (The picture looks like an old Polaroid because I downloaded this software and am now slightly addicted to using it on my photographs.  You should try it--it's fun to watch the picture develop over the course of two minutes!)

And the packing continues.  Poor Rody Pony, getting squashed into a box!  We were sure we'd have the keys to the new place by now but we don't.  There was a problem on the seller's end with one of the repairs we requested taking longer than expected.  I'm trying not to feel excessively frustrated about it, but it is frustrating to have thought we'd have access to the house by now but not.  My plans to move everyday items (like most of the kitchen and closets) by tote and unpack them directly into their new spots have fallen through, so now we need many more boxes, much more packing paper and a lot more takeout than we'd thought.  Still, I'm trying to focus on the merry Christmas we're going to have around our new hearth, and being glad our conscientious seller is taking care of everything at the new house.  I'm thankful for the Vietnam Kitchen down the street and for disposable diapers for one week only!

Pumpkins

Another busy week around here.  Lots of fall fun, including a trip to the pumpkin patch.  We've had several house-showings, which is driving us a little crazy at this point.  I think we've given up hope of actually selling, and just wish people would leave us alone.  Why do we keep giving free tours of our home to people who will just say things like "oh, it's so cute!  We just love it!  But we needed an extra bathroom."  Or first-floor bedroom, or extra square footage, or garage...it's always something that we clearly didn't have based on the information in our listing, but for some reason people want to come see it (and not buy it) anyway.

This photo was an accident--he looked away as I was taking it, but isn't his hat adorable next to the real pumpkins?  I made that for him last year.  I'd just made a similar one for Dorothy and she insisted the new baby would need one too.  Obviously she was right.  Speaking of her being right, today she was putting on her ruby slippers and talking to my mother-in-law.  She said, "when I wear these shoes, people always say, 'are you Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz?' But I'm like, 'ummmm, no, I'm Dorothy from the city.'" 

When did she become such a teenager?  She also seems to have a particular interest in a boy from school, in a way that seems to indicate to me that she's got a budding awareness of "special" boy/girl relationships.  She always tells me what he's up to, talks about him often, and last night after church choir (which they also both participate in) she said, "C. sat next to me at choir, then I patted his back, and he went [ insert giggle silly face with tongue sticking out and full body wiggle].  Then after choir I gave him three different hugs."  Oh my!

Today we made cookies, without boys.  (Except Worth, I guess, who was kept happy with pea crisps while we baked.)  The last few years I have tried several different recipes for pumpkin cookies, but to be frank they all sort of suck.  I mean, the are edible, they made from butter and sugar after all.  But they aren't good like pumpkin-bread-in-cookie-form or anything.  Today I thought I'd try a different route and make a recipe for applesauce cookies, but sub in pumpkin.  I also added pumpkin pie spice, and substituted chocolate chips for the recommended raisins.  They taste good but are too chewy, and the bottoms basically scraped right off when I severed them from the cookie sheet they were stuck to.  Parchment might have helped with the release, but not the texture.  I think it must be hard to develop a pumpkin cookie recipe because of all the moisture in cooked pumpkin.  If anyone has one, please let me know!

In between house-showings and pumpkin patches this week I did something that makes me feel really smug and obnoxious--I ordered my Christmas cards!  I know it's early, but it was this gorgeous afternoon, the kids were playing out front, and from the basement I'd just unearthed the holiday dress I'd purchased on clearance last year for Dorothy.  It has a matching dress for her doll, which is always extra special.  Dorothy saw it and had herself and her dolly dressed in no time, so I popped the baby into this little fleece Santa suit left from Dorothy's babyhood, and clicked away.  I got adorable photos of both kids in their holiday get-ups, so I figured I might as well finish the task while I was on it and selected a pretty photo card online.  Now bring it on, season-accelerating commercial world, I'm ready for you!  Before you even change your displays from spooky to Santa, my holiday cards are done.  Pow!

I am a dork, but you are reading my blog--please love me anyway.  :)