random recent events

Well, obviously I blew NaBloPoMo. I don't even have a good excuse. I just forgot to post on Thursday, and even though I thought about posting every day after that, I was just like Meh. I already messed it up, what's the point? But I'm posting now, I guess that's the point, and I want to do it more regularly. So. We'll see how that goes.

So just to catch you up, here are all the incredibly exciting things I would've written about over the last six days:

I planned out my Christmas cookie list. It's ambitious, certainly, but (I think) doable. Right now my Cookie Baking Extravaganza is planned for the 15th and 16th of December, but that is subject to change due to my sister's work schedule (she helped me last year, and wants to again this year, because obviously she is INSANE).

This is what I was doing Thursday night instead of blogging. Joe had a softball game, so I was curled up on the couch with the boys watching Yogi Bear. You can see that each boy responded very differently to the movie. (Will has come around to it, though, and has asked to watch it many times since. He calls Yogi Bear and Boo Boo "Daddy Yogi Bear" and "Little Yogi Bear." It's adorable.)

I took Friday (and Monday, and Tuesday) off work, but I still sent the boys to daycare so I could have a day to myself to just...decompress. When I was on my way home from dropping them off on Monday morning, I found a kitten sitting in the middle of the road right in front of our house. It didn't take much coaxing to get her out of the road and into our yard, and she was just the sweetest thing. She was purring and rubbing up against my legs and was just so loveable -- all while I was doing my best not to touch her at all. Even being close to her made my eyes scratchy, so severe are my allergies. I'd made a pork roast the night before, so I mashed some of that up with water for her to eat. I would have loved to have kept her, but I would have been miserable all the time; there's just no way it would have been possible. I posted about her on Facebook and had some interest right away, but of course, I never saw her again after that. I'm choosing to believe that someone else on my street took her in...and not that anything bad happened to her.

So Andrew's preschool teacher lives at the end of our street, and when we went to her house for trick-or-treating she gave the boys some Halloween Spider-Man stickers. And ever since, these stickers have been the bane of my existence. Andrew doesn't have much interest in stickers, so he gave all of his to Will, and I'm telling you, they are like the never-ending stickers. They're too small for his sweet baby fingers to peel, so every five seconds he's asking me, "Can I have another sticker? Puh-leese?" And he gives me this look. It's very cute, but it gets old after a while. And he still has like FIVE SHEETS LEFT.

Speaking of things Will wants me to do for him all the time...he's always asking me to draw him random things. "Draw a butterfly! Draw a caterpillar! Draw a moon in a dump truck with a football!" Over the weekend he asked me to draw him a gorilla, and this was the best I could do. So I guess what I'm saying is: If you ever write a children's book and you need an illustrator, I AM CLEARLY THE PERSON YOU WANT.

On Sunday, the weather was so beautiful that I took the boys to the park for one last gasp of outdoor play before winter descends upon us in all its freezing glory. We were having a great time, until Andrew decided to go down the slide head-first "like flying Mario" and Will, idolizing his big brother as he does, decided to mimic him and ended up face-first in the dirt. It was a fun walk home, that's for sure. (I make light of it here, but he landed right on his head, and you guys, I am just so thankful he's okay, because it could have been really bad. And I was standing right there.)

Speaking of injuries, Andrew fell and busted his lip while doing "Mario whirly jumps" in the living room, and then, yesterday morning at school, he tripped head-first over a truck he was pushing around and slid across the floor with his face. So he got an afternoon at home with Mommy, resting in his Mario jammies while playing Mario on the Wii.

And then, last night the boys decided to pile on one car together, just like the characters do in Mario Kart. Thankfully and surprisingly, no further injuries were sustained by either boy.

I'm hoping this Mario phase passes quickly...although I can't even imagine what kind of behavior and hare-brained ideas other video games may inspire. *shudder*