The Wasians and the Rest of Us: January 2011

Wow, a lot has happened since I last blogged. Everyone knows holiday time is crazy busy so here’s my stab at ours.

It all started with Emma’s daycare Christmas party. Apparently toddler daycare parties generally go as follows: 1) You rush around on a Friday to get off work early so you can get there by 3 or whenever it starts. 2) You then stand there awkwardly with several other parents watching your children eat food. By food I mean they put fruit and cookies in front of your child and wonder which they will eat. .. 3) You stand awkwardly for awhile longer while your child continues to eat.4) you have a gift opening. In our case this means books and so rather than just buying your own child a book you buy a book that someone else gets and hope that everyone in the room has the same taste in books – random side note, I may have come home from Walmart with a $2.50 book. . .which said “$2.50” in big letters on the front of the book, which apparently is a cheap, crappy book. . .anyway we didn’t take that one for the exchange-5) after the gift opening your child already begins to sugar crash and is bed before 6pm. Oh and if you don’t go, even though you didn’t miss anything, your child is that child sitting there with no parents and that has to leave after everyone, so its lose-lose. But hey, we had a nice long evening to ourselves I guess!

Fast forward a week. Inevitably a snow storm is approaching the Midwest and we are trying to figure out when the best time to travel would be. I don’t remember a year since we moved to KC that this wasn’t the case. At least we don’t have to worry about flights I guess. This year we guessed right and only hit about 45 min of snow on the drive home. One bonus of traveling north is there’s a higher likelihood of having a white Christmas. Cooper loves it. He could romp in the snow for hours. We also gave Emma her first real taste of snow, she enjoyed it. The first day we were back it was perfect, no wind, fresh snow, 25 degrees. Anyway, we had a great time in Alden, Emma obviously doesn’t totally get the whole Christmas deal yet. Her favorite part of the whole weekend was walking up and down the hallway at the grandparents and taking magnets off the fridge. It’s the little things. Outside of naptime with grandpa (a notorious rocker) and walking around with grandma as she shows her the ropes. Of course Emma also loves playing with and watching her cousins too, as always we were reminded of our blessings during that time.

Got back to the OP Sunday evening. Emma literally cried from the time we entered Missouri until the time we crossed into Kansas at which time she fell asleep. We crossed into KS about 15 min before arriving home btw, yeah good times. The next day we were driving home from running an errand to see a hawk swooping down to get kill (not kidding) but getting clipped by a truck with Missouri plates. At this point you are likely asking yourself why you care about this. Well this is why – Iowa was playing Mizzou on Tuesday night! So we clearly have properly trained Emma to dislike Mizzou and we were worried that the hawk incident was a precursor for the following night in a bad way. Instead the Hawks faught back and made us all proud. Again, you might not care, but when you have to stay up past bed time to watch your team play a local team, its nice when they come out with a win. Especially when you like to talk crap all the time leading up to the game and the opposing fan based doesn’t understand the concept of only talking smack before the game because real fans know you don’t talk after because the losing teams fans are still upset about the loss. Did I mention I get a bit overly passionate about things and believe there are strong rules to fanhood? Or that Emma’s daycare teacher is a mizzou fan and thus I had Emma wearing hawkeye gear almost every day leading up to the game? Anyway, I digress.

This is where “vacation” began. That brings me to the definition of vacation. Lela’s definition = time when you aren’t at work but you try to get a list of things done that would normally take 2 weeks in 4 days, ignoring that you have a toddler around. Mike’s definition = time when you aren’t at work when you lay around and watch football. Anyway, you know how that one ends. We got a fair amount done. I painted Emma’s room the same color as her room in our previous house (its ridiculous how much it costs to pay the builder to do a different color and to paint in non flat sheen). I survived. I really dislike painting, but its nice to have it done. Emma boycotted naps during that time because she wasn’t in her room so she went to bed early NY eve. This translated into a nice little NYE for us. Lela cooked a great meal, we watched a movie while drinking wine, we even watched the clock strike 12, though we didn’t intend to stay up that late. I felt so old and sophisticated, sitting and eating a quiet meal at 8pm, since normally we are slinging food around at 5:30 while Emma laughs and plays and decides if she will eat anything but bread and pasta. Not that I would trade it for anything, but it was a nice change of pace.

We did a bunch of other things and then had the day of bdaymuch of a martyr. . . Oh and Emma got her first hair cut. It was turning into a bit of straggly mullet so it was nice to help her class up the show and even it out. Sounds like Emma did great. I wouldn't know because I was stuck in a room painting. . . Anyway Sunday afternoon we had 2 bday parties at the same time, about 25 min from each other, so it was a very filled day of cake and lots of other kids’ toys to play with. Emma likes to go into whoever’s house and pick up toys and just begin playing. Luckily, no one objected at either of the bday parties, it was great to see Latham and Clara as all the adult guest, but alas no pictures, we were all pic’ed out so no pics of such events. Oh and happy bday Clara and Latham!!

Daycare party