winter play

 

We were going to head to Ikea today and at the last minute decided to stay home for another lay low day. At some point we realized there was a considerable amount of snow outside...not just a dusting. Enough to play in and certainly enough to get the tractor back out! I pulled the kids in the sled and then we found all the toys I had stored in the pole barn for the winter. Ivar was thrilled to find his dump truck again, "Oh thank you mom for restoring this for me! I have missed it all my life!"

Winter play is a whole lot of work with little kids. While getting our snow pants on Elsie stepped in melted snow so that I had to run upstairs with my snowpants on to get her a new sock. And while I was gone Ivar decided he was way too hot and had taken everything off again. It was only with the bribe of hot chocolate that my kids went outside. It's so much work to get them bundled, but once outside I remember how worth it it is. We played hard and came back in with rosy cheeks and running noses and ready for that hot chocolate with "twelve marshmallows! and christmas sprinkles!"

a fun idea

Just before it was time to go to church for Christmas Eve I whispered to Ivar, "Now Ivar, lets you and me go upstairs and very quickly and quietly get our church clothes on and come down and surprise daddy with our nice looking outfits."

Ivar whispered back, "Why did you say that like it was a fun idea?"

 

a very merry christmas 2014

I'm just going to level with you. I have written this blog post all day long with nothing in particular to say. So far I've written about how awesome this Christmas was and how fun it is to have a two and four year old. I wrote about how nice it was to have kids who are way more self sufficient than they were last year ie: they could sit at the kids table by themselves! Then I wrote about how I kept waking up on Christmas Eve because I was so, so excited for the kids to wake up on Christmas morning. Then I wrote about how grateful I am for friends who give me hand-me-downs for my kids to wear on Christmas Eve. 

But I deleted all of those posts because the truth is, I'm totally scattered today and like everyone else, wiped out. As a result, we took a sincere day off, played with lots of toys, tried to gain control of the toy explosion in every room, got the kids outside with the promise of hot chocolate when we came back inside. Mostly we read books and watched movies. It's been a lovely day.

And I took the time to look through all of the christmas posts I have written. All the way back to 2008! That's pretty awesome. We had the flu a few of those years, and it made me grateful that we stayed healthy this season. If you, too, are laying low, some of these are fun reads.

Christmas 2013: Little Elsie

Christmas 2012: Ivar and Elsie sing a song

Christmas 2011: Pregnant with Elsie and down with the flu

Christmas 2010: They year I gave the tutu's

Christmas 2009: Iced in at our apartment in Nebraska

Christmas 2008: Picture-a-day Holiday

indoor snowmen

Well, there is no snow to build a snowman outside, so we're building them inside! Ivar built these snowmen at ecfe and told me about the snowman pictured above, "This is daddy giving me a piggy back ride!" I found it very clever. Daddy even looks a little weary of giving such a big four year old a piggy back ride.

And then he built this one and said, "this is you and daddy. you're holding hands because you are married and that means love." It made me think about the time Rory and I went to the St. Paul winter carnival to walk through the ice castle. It was one of our first dates, and the very first time he reached for my hand. Oh man I remember everything about that moment. Mitten to mitten we walked through the castle and it was magic.

I think Ivar is right when he said holding hands means you are in love. Because we never let go...even when we got to the car he opened my door and 14 seconds later was reaching for my hand again as he started up the car. Everything was so new and exciting. Makes me want to go find my man and grab his hand...

making the magic

Oh man, these two. They are keeping me on my toes lately. They are the best of friends. Ivar begs me not to put Elsie down for a nap. He wants to be with her every moment. But then she gets in his business and he's yelling and she's screaming and I'm walking to the freezer to self-sooth with another Christmas cookie...

Yesterday I went to Target with Ivar and having him along was like shopping with a ball and chain around my ankle. A cheerful ball and chain. But a really pokey ball and chain. We had to stop at every display. He had to tell me that he "never told Santa I wanted this! But I do!" And I kept a positive self talk reel in my head about the actual joy in the season, the brilliance that is Target marketing and the fact that we are lucky to be able to afford any of this anyway.

And today he helped me wrap presents and it took hours. Because he needed me to cut every scrap of wrapping paper into microscopic pieces so that his train under the tree had scrap to haul to the scrap yard to weld a christmas tree for Gordon the train. I didn't fight it. I had seen the episode too. And it was clever. But I could have had those gifts wrapped in 30 minutes flat if I could have just thrown my actual scraps into the trash can.

It's a lot of work this whole Christmas thing. I am a bit weary already and we've only just begun! I wrote about being the magic maker a few years ago when pregnant with Elsie and I think it's a good read, and a good pep talk for pulling off all that still has to be pulled off.

So press on Magic Maker. And be sure to keep yourself fueled up on Christmas cookies.