Christmas Wrap-Up

This is where I go through all the pictures and videos we've taken over the last month or so and share them, because I'm not getting to these things quickly or efficiently enough anymore to come up with pithy and catchy themes/titles for my blog posts. But, the kids being funny has always been the point anyway, so here goes.

I'm not sure if I've posted anything else about this before, but this was something Gabe started early in December. One day, after school, he started, well, pratfalling. In the living room. He just started running a little ways then falling on the floor. When simple falling wasn't as amusing anymore, he started jumping up on the couch or bouncing off it onto the floor. And he had a name for this activity. The Funny Nationals. This is him doing some of that outside in the little bit of snow we got the week before Christmas (I figured I better get the kids out in it to play since last year we only got one snow of about this much and it was pretty much gone before we even had a chance to get out in it).

This was a game of some sort that sprang up from Norah wanting a cookie. This has been a difficult holiday season in terms of Norah's portion control--in fact, she has lost all sense of it. And she had problems in that area to begin with. We're going to have some work to do in the coming months to get her back off the snacks, which is getting more difficult now that she can reach just about anything she wants and knows how to open the packaging. She's also started hiding food. Each of the kids received the required stocking stuffers of chocolate Santas and assorted mini chocolates. Most of them ended up in a community bowl--in fact, we thought ALL of them had. But over the course of the next two days, I kept finding little Hershey Kiss wrappers around the house (the candy bowl was up on the hutch so the kids at least had to ask for something, so they weren't coming from there). After the second day, I discovered that Norah had secreted a stash of Kisses into one of her Hello Kitty toys and was periodically going upstairs to sneak a few candies out.  I have to give her props for adapting to her environment, to creating the reality she wants, but man it's tough teaching her about portion control and getting her to grasp the concept.

The second half of the video. I'm not sure what the point of the game was, again, but it was pretty funny all the same.

Norah's punching balloon skills.

The Jumpoline. Norah's big present this year. This thing was a nightmare to put together. It took four adults (well, two adults, then three adults, then I reluctantly stepped in to help for the last half hour) over two hours to put this thing together. Our goal was to put this upstairs, probably on the landing. Which we didn't remember until AFTER we'd put it all together. It doesn't fit up the stairs. Not by a long shot. And there is no way we're taking it apart again. So this might become an outside toy, which will ruin the music/noisy electronic thing on it--but that's no real loss, as you can hear on the video. To date, this was the worst Christmas assembly we've experienced.

Yes, she's on the toilet. No, this doesn't have anything to do with Christmas. But it's still pretty funny.

Norah's fashion show. Modelling some of her Christmas clothes, but mostly just being Norah.

Just a few pictures to add.

Self explanatory, really.

Libby made Gabe a set of dinosaur bone wall stickies out of thin foam. This was the first one Gabe put together, a kind of Land of the Lost Sleezstack looking thing. My budding conspiracy theorist!

Norah in her new headwrap thing. In the bathroom, of course, where all good pictures are taken.

And, finally, Gabe and Finn wearing beards. Not sure why Gabe doesn't have a shirt on. He often doesn't, for no good reason.