November is nearly gone and I haven't posted since Halloween... how did that happen? Well, actually I know exactly how that happened... one word - Nutcracker. I jokingly told a friend the other day that it felt like I woke up from a Nutcracker-induced coma to realize that Thanksgiving was only four days away. November has just been a series of running and going. Nutcracker rehearsals ramped up both frequency and duration that culminated in four performances last weekend, my dad came for a visit, and Clara's soccer season came to a welcomed end.
My dad visiting was a surprise. He usually only visits in the summer, so this was really nice. He was able to see a little bit of our real daily lives. He was able to see one of Clara's soccer games. He was able to watch Clara's Nutcracker rehearsal and see her in her costume. He was able to walk Clara to school in the morning and be there to pick her up in the afternoon. He got some good bonding time in with the boys, too. Eli started expecting a share everytime "g-pa" grabbed an apple. The only thing that "rained" on his visit was the rain... and the cold.
I attended Lucas' parent-teacher conference. I liked the way that Lucas teacher approached the meeting. It was a bit different than any other PT conference I've attended. Mrs. Winston, Lucas' teacher, made a list of all the great points of each kid in her class. I wish she had made a copy so that I would remember all the great points that she listed for Lucas. She mentioned that he's a very smart boy, he has a good (yet dry) sense of humor, listens well, follows directions, and plays well with his peers. She only listed one point where she would like to see a little improvement: his communication with her and his classmates. He is such a quiet little boy, she wants him to speak up more and let everybody in on more of what he's thinking. I would love to see that happen at home, too!
Before I get too involved in talking about the next big events: Nutcracker, Thanksgiving, and Jason's birthday, I wanted to devote a bit of space to Eli's developing vocabulary. Not only has his word count increased (ceiling, street, motorcycle, helicopter, remote, etc.) and he creates his own words (e.g. "boing" to mean bouncing), but he has started talking in sentences (e.g. "Mommy sit down", "love you too", "read books please"). Although there are times that communication is still a bit of a struggle ("uck" could mean "stuck", "duck", "truck", "fork", "clock", etc.), I love that there is much more of a give and take to our conversations.
Ok... the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker encompassed 2 1/2 months of our lives with rehearsals and fundraisers and volunteer activities, conflicted with soccer practices and games, and required Clara to leave school an hour early each day that last week of dress rehearsals with a series of late nights. However, now that I've said all that, I think I'm just going to focus on the performance weekend for this post. She had four performances (two on Saturday and two on Sunday). Jason and I went to see the very first one on Saturday afternoon and everything that I predicted happened. She was absolutely beautiful and I was so full of pride at seeing her up there that my eyes overflowed. I came prepared to photograph and videotape her, then right before the curtain went up, it was announced that all photography/video was prohibited. It was incredibly disappointing, especially when you consider that she was only on stage for about a minute. I'm still not sure what harm it would have done, but I'm a rule follower, so instead we paid way too much for the DVD. I took Lucas to see her on Saturday evening. That was a mistake. He was miserable... too tired. My hope is that he took away something positive from the experience and won't remember how he whined, tried to lay down on the floor and then buried his head in his seat. Sunday, I volunteered to help backstage for the last performance. What chaos!! It's amazing how polished and organized the stage production is compared to what happens backstage. There were too many over-hyped, highly emotional girls in a relatively small space, which led to a few meltdowns, some makeup crises, at least one costume crisis and adults who couldn't hear each other over the din. And after it was all over, Clara announced that she is going to do it again next year.
This Thanksgiving was our first Thanksgiving not traveling to Florida or Missouri. It was nice not having to worry about the whole travel aspect, especially the packing part. And I was actually excited about the idea of cooking my very first Thanksgiving dinner, so excited that I may have gone a bit overboard. I cooked our Halloween pumpkin and used it to make the pumpkin pie (also non-Thanksgiving related, pumpkin soup and pumpkin cookies so far). I also did the stuffing from french bread that I cubed. I had to put Jason in charge of the turkey as I am just too squeamish dealing with raw meat of any kind. It would have been nice having more family around the table, but it was a very successful first Thanksgiving.
Jason's Birthday was today. I made him a chocolate-pumpkin cake with orange cream cheese frosting. It was delicious! After an exhausting morning of getting our holiday pictures taken, he spent the afternoon up on the roof, cleaning the gutters and putting up the christmas lights. It turns out that birthdays as we get older are just days with cake. It makes me wonder though... at what age or what point does the special fade from our special day.
And now... on to December!
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