Hug Twice

My son says that about a hundred times a day.

I think it started because I have been bemoaning the amount of “stuff” we have. We drive several hundred miles to visit relatives over Christmas and then have to bring everything back in our car. Which is not a tiny car, but is only a four door sedan, so it isn’t like we can pack too much into it. The grandparents love to spoil their grandchildren and they are blessed with an abundance of toys and other random things - all of which must fit in our car. Add to the toys the fact that this year, Matt got new stereo speakers (which took up fully 2/3rds of the trunk space) and, well…. there was a lot of stuff.

But CJ, he LOVED Christmas. He loved opening presents and looking at all the new toys (even if it was overwhelming at times for him and he had to take some breaks from opening things) and to him, all the “stuff” I was cringing at was a thing of beauty.

But mommy… I love stuff. I love it. I love stuff.

Every day he tells me how he loves stuff. If I ask him which stuff he isn’t very specific about it, and if I query any specific toy, he simply tells me he loves it, not matter what it is. So, basically, he loves anything that can be classified as stuff. So much for my goal of teaching the kids about finding joy in simplicity and learning that less is more.

What have we done?

(Although I have a gift card to Bath and Body Works that is just buring a hole in my pocket right now so… I am not one to talk. I have my own “stuff” issues.)

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So you thought I was done talking about the stomach flu, right?

Well, almost, I promise. In my sick delerium I concocted this little ditty. Please accept this post-Christmas carol with my apologies and have a really great weekend!

At the 12th Hour of Sickness, My Dear Son Gave To Me…

• 12 Dirty Blankets
• 11 Feverish Whimpers
• 10 Hugs and Kisses
• 9 Sips of Water
• 8 Emergency Cleanups
• 7 Loads Of Laundry
• 6 Dirty Diapers
• 5 Little Einsteins Episodes
• 4 Doses of Medicine
• 3 Pillows for his Head
• 2 Soon-to-be-Sick Parents
• And his little sister just threw up on me…

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This morning I was reading through my email, and I read the latest issue of the local Zoo News. We are members of our local zoo, and it has been a great place for us to bring the kids on a regular basis. In fact, the summer I was pregnant with Alexa, I think CJ and I practically lived at the zoo we were there so much. It was a safe place for him to explore and run around and I could just follow him without thinking up much in the way of entertainment. For a 7 months pregnant person, this was a godsend. And I got some exercise, too!

Well, our zoo had three tiger cubs. As the tiger cubs grew into tiger adults, there was talk about moving two of the cubs to other zoos so that they could breed and help perpetuate the tiger population. One of the cubs was moved before the start of last summer, and in today’s email, I read that the second tiger was just moved to another zoo, and shortly our zoo will be receiving a tiger to mate with the remaining tiger in our zoo.

That made me a wee bit sad, well the fact that our tigers had moved, but I was more sad about the first tiger moving, truth be told. I was oddly fond of the tiger “triplets”.

But what I read next almost stopped my heart. The first tiger, that was moved that year, unfortunately was attacked and killed by her mate in May.

I don’t know why I am so sad about this but I really am. I first was irrationally angry with the zoo for moving her, and then just generally upset and anxious about the whole thing. I’m so sad about the tiger. I have pictures of CJ looking through the glass face to face with the tigers. Maybe it was her he was looking at. I’ll never know of course (I couldn’t tell the three tigers apart at all) but now that picture has a little twinge of sadness attached to it for me.

I get upset over the strangest things.

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My daughter is obsessed with baby wipes.

When you change her diaper, you have to give her a baby wipe to hold, or she totally freaks out. Once she has a wipe, she happily plays with it and is a perfect angel the entire change. Well, unless she tries to crawl away midstream… but she’s happy, at least. But look out if you don’t have a wipe! There is no surer way to incite her wrath than to not have an Alexa wipe handy.

If she finds a wipe container left within her reach, she will attack it with a baby glee like no other and steadily pull out every single wipe until the container is empty, and then crawl off with one in hand. It is not uncommon to find a baby wipe in our house under a table or behind a chair where Alexa has presumably stashed it for later.

I don’t leave them for later though. She hasn’t noticed them missing, but I think her memory is not long enough yet for her to remember where to find them. Yet.

I don’t know what causes her wipes obsession or where it stems from in the baby psyche, but she is certainly single-minded about it. And it does provide a simple way to keep her entertained if she’s bored. As long as you remember to keep some wipes on hand at all times.

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In an ideal world, Christmas would be celebrated much differently in our house. Well, first off, it would be celebrated in our house. Not in our relatives houses over a thousand miles away.

As I’ve had kids and my kids have gotten a little older, especially CJ being 3 1/2 now, I am starting to see that it would be not just easier for me to have Christmas here and not away, but it would be better for him. No long car trip, no shuffling from house to house, having Christmas at home. I find it hard to get excited about Christmas and decorate my own house because I know we’ll just be packing everything up and transporting it to celebrate with my inlaws on Christmas Eve and my parents on Christmas.

In an ideal world, everyone would come here for Christmas. The problem is distance. My parents and my inlaws only live about a half hour away from each other by car. We, on the other hand, live 12-14 hours away from each. And we are the only ones. All of our extended family lives within a short radius of my parents and inlaws, so Christmas at their houses involves our siblings and my grandfather, who is too elderly to travel thousands of miles. We have the accommodations and the space, but we are located too far away to make everyone coming here for Christmas practical at all.

I know that the important part is family, and the fact that we have to travel to be with family should not dampen my Christmas spirit. Next year it will be a big priority for me to make our house feel as Christmasy as possible, even if we won’t be here for the actual event. The kids deserve it. I think we’ll even hang some lights!

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