Holiday Mish Mash

A little of this and a little of that is probably what this post is going to evolve into, hence the title of "mish mash."

First of all, the daycare has been going extremely well. Better than I could've hoped actually. It's the first time in years that I've been able to truthfully say that I love my job. Yes, I have my "want to pull my hair out" days, but that's life. I have wonderful kiddos and families. It's so wonderful to see Boo have so many delightful children that he can count as friends. Granted, if he had his way, maybe he'd have his friends over a little less, but overall he does a wonderful job of sharing his home, toys, and his mommy with others. So this Christmas season I feel so thankful for the wonderful families and kiddos that I work with. Not only do I have great families, but I have filled every spot. It's hard to believe that five or six months ago I was wondering if I'd have to throw in the towel on the home daycare idea. It's been a huge exercise in patience and trust, but I do believe that God has taken care of us.

We've been crafting and creating X-mas and winter themed art this month. It's been so fun. We've also done a few Montessori-inspired activities with a X-mas theme. One of my favorites was sorting light bulbs into X-mas tree shaped silicone candy trays. It was a fun way to work on color recognition and sorting. The kiddos really seemed to enjoy it.

I took Boo to the $ store to pick out presents for important people in his life. This was fun, but I must admit that the experience was not quite the peaceful and perfect endeavor that I had envisioned in my head. I had such a vision of lovingly helping him make choices between this or that object for so and so. Instead I had a whiny toddler who wanted to look at everything for himself and didn't really care much about picking things out for anybody. Ah - toddlerhood in all of it's egocentric glory! We did end up choosing things, but the process was much more chaotic and stressful than I had pictured. Oh well. I'm still glad that we went though. Even if he doesn't quite "get it" yet, the idea of giving to others is something that I want instilled in my children even at a young age. So I guess enough experiences like the $ store experience will lay that foundation one little piece at a time. And perhaps one day I'll realize that he "gets it" and there won't be one defining experience that taught him about giving but a mish mash of chaotic, whiny, disorganized experiences all mushed together that instilled the value of charitable giving.

Sidenote- what's with my use of "mish mash" this month. Seems a bit much. Oh well.

Wally's coming along quite nicely. He seems as though he's starting to mellow a bit. I'm loving that. As he mellows more and more his time out of his crate is extended more and more. I dream of the day that he can wander freely in the evenings. Right now he's kind of like Wonderpup the wonderspaz when he's out. He can be a bit much. Even Boo finds him overwhelming much of the time. They are doing MUCH better together though. There was a time when having them in the same room together was a constant cry fest for Boo and a constant nip fest for Wally. I would say that Wally's definitely a non-nipper. This is saying a lot considering he turned into a little alligator for awhile after we brought him home! And he's so great with the daycare kiddos. He feels very protective of them. When the big people (aka parents) come in and start handling their children during pick up and drop off, poor little Wally goes a little nutso. It's a bit comical how he watches out for them. His crate was moved from the kitchen to the office, known as the "special room" to the kiddos. It's so nice for him to be more a part of things. The kitchen was a bit too isolating for him I think. And there's much more to absorb the sound when he barks in the office, versus in the kitchen where the sound just bounced around and gave me the world's biggest headache! I love my dog, but owning a dog is so different than I visualized. Not in a bad way, just different. My dog can drive me so insanely batty some days, but I still love him. In that way, he reminds me so much of a toddler! I never understood this until I became a dog owner. I'd always seen other people with their dogs, happily petting them, watching them perform tricks, and all of those cutesy things. But it's in the maddening times I think where the depth of your relationship with your pet develops. Practically anyone can love a dog when he is "behaving", but to care for a dog and love it when it's being infuriating is a whole new level of love. I think this is so similar to how I feel about parenting - the depth comes from the struggles!

Oh, we now have a three legged rabbit. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that. Poor Oscar had a tumor and had to have his left rear leg removed. He was supposed to have his staples out Monday, but he had an area that became infected. So he's on a different antibiotic and we go back tomorrow to see how he's doing. I really really hope the infection is gone. The vet talked about cutting further up if we can't get the infection to heal, but I don't know. I don't want to keep chopping the poor bunny. I'm just hoping he heals this time so that we don't have to think of alternatives. He's definitely more with it this week. I wonder if the pain medication he was on last week made him lethargic. He's hopping around, eating, drinking, and seeming more like himself. He's just having a harder time keeping himself clean. We've had to really step up the grooming in order to try to keep infection at bay. Hopefully we've done a good enough job of it this time around. So I'm hoping for no infection when we go to the vet tomorrow.

Right now kiddos are napping peacefully. Naptime - my favorite part of the day. My kiddos are so good about laying down and napping. Another thing to be thankful for!

Well, I guess it's time to stop writing and get wrapping. There's still lots of gifts to wrap. I'd like to get it done so that we can focus on getting the train/craft room ready. I guess I didn't mention that. We're using our second bedroom as a train/craft/someday school type of room (for when Boo starts his homeschooling). I'd also like to store extra toys/daycare materials/art supplies in there. Yes - it's going to have to be organized to the nth degree in order to accomodate all of that. So anyways, we've been piling bags of junk that have been gathered up around the house in this room. We've gotten through a lot of it in the last week, but we still have more to clear out in order to make way for the train table. There's now way the room will be finished before X-mas, but we just need to make it functional enough to put up Boo's train table, wrap it up, and stick a big bow on top. The boy is getting trains galore for X-mas. We ended up doing a train theme for his gifts. It was definitely not intentional. It just happened. Every single gift, with the exception of stocking stuffers, has to do with trains! I'm eventually going to get my sewing machine and supplies set up in this room. The idea is that if I don't have to spend 1/2 an hour finding and dragging machine and supplies out for sewing, I might actually sew? We'll see how that works out. I do miss sewing!

We have a slew of busyness coming upon us in the next few days. There's a lot of family gatherings. It'll be good times, but it will be busy and hectic. So I'm going to try to remember to stop and breathe, look around, and intentionally take in life around me. I'm going to try to enjoy the precious memories as they're happening and focus on my little one's face and expressions and words as he enjoys this X-mas season.

God Bless!