Christmas Spirit Elf

I have ranted before about my dislike for Santa Claus, and I have an even stronger dislike for the traditional Elf on the Shelf notion, yet I have still been captivated by all of the fun and magic he brings. So last year when I saw the idea of the Kindness Elves, I knew that was something I could get on board with, while not having to follow the traditional "be good or else" theme. After searching on Pinterest for more ideas/ ideas that would work for us, I decided our elf would be a "Christmas Spirit" Elf. He would facilitate the spirit of giving and gratitude and also some Christmas activities like building a gingerbread house and decorating the tree. I also wanted our own elf (not an Elf on the Shelf doll), so I made us a Waldorf-style elf to fill the part. He introduced himself this morning and the girls decided to name him Buddy. I will keep this post updated with the Christmas spirity things Buddy gets up to. :)


Monday, December 1
We set the Christmas tree up last night and this morning the girls came down to find it all lit up but undecorated, with Buddy sitting on one of the branches. His message read:

Hi Laura and Rachel!

I am your Christmas Spirit Elf

and I will be visiting you for advent.

Each day we will do an activity

to foster Christmas Spirit. 

Today we will decorate the tree!

I am looking forward to 

spending advent with you!

P.S. Will you please give me a name?

Thank you!

Tuesday, December 2
Today Buddy made a very big mess of the playroom, getting out every single one of the girls' toys. It was a good visual for them to see just how much stuff they have! His message read:

Good morning Laura and Rachel!

In the Spirit of Christmas

I have brought you a gift!

But wow!

You sure have a lot of things already!

Maybe you should sort through them today

and find some to give to some other kids.

Love, Buddy

Wednesday, December 3
When we were discussing potential 'elf activities' Josh had suggested we teach the girls about other customs around the holidays. I took out a stack of books from the library for us to look at today so the girls (and I!) would be cognizant about things like solstice rituals, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, etc. This was the first morning they seemed excited about the elf and giggled at his set up. <3

Hello Laura and Rachel

I have some books here 

to teach us about Christmas customs 

and ways people celebrate 

the holidays around the world. 

I hope you enjoy them! 

Love, Buddy

I had a really nice afternoon with Laura spending time looking through the books and learning about a lot of neat different customs. Definitely something I would like to explore further in future years. :)

Thursday, December 4

Dear Laura and Rachel,
Today would be a really great day

to send Santa a letter about yourself

and your Christmas wishlist!

Love, Buddy

Laura addressing her letter to Santa :)

Friday, December 5
The girls found Buddy set up with popcorn and hot chocolate watching The Polar Express this morning. He had "tickets" (I printed from here, Thanks Pinterest) for them for their movie night. (Laura recognized them in the movie later on - "Hey! Those were like our tickets from this morning!)

Laura and Rachel,

Here are your tickets

to the Holiday Family Movie Night

at Rachel's school for tonight.

Maybe you can help Mom

make some treats to bring along?

Love, Buddy

We ended up making the Santa fruit pops in this post and lemon meringue cupcakes to bring along.
Also, Laura received her letter back from Santa today (already!) and she was so excited! Adorable.


Saturday, December 6
In keeping with yesterday's theme, we wanted to take the girls for a special treat: a train ride on the Santa Claus Express with their friend Avery, who loves trains.

Good morning Laura and Rachel!
Today is a special day 

because we are going for a train ride

on the Santa Claus Express!

I hope you enjoy your 

special Christmas treat!

Love, Buddy

Sunday, December 7

Dear Laura and Rachel

At Christmastime it is nice 

to think about others

and what you can do to make 

Christmas special for them.

Today we are going to take

the dogs for a fun day out

because they like to have fun

and play games too!

Merry Christmas Chester and Willow!

Love, Buddy

One of the images we received from the Canine Christmas fundraiser we attended <3

Monday, December 8

 Hi Laura and Rachel

Christmas time is a time to give,

a time for generosity.

Today we are going to share

some food with people

who don't always have money

to buy it.

Love, Buddy

Tuesday, December 9

Laura and Rachel,

Let's make some cookies

for the neighbours today

and spread some Christmas cheer!

Love, Buddy

white chocolate and cherry shortbread

Wednesday, December 10

Hello Laura and Rachel,

Wasn't it great giving cookies

to the neighbours yesterday?

I love doing things for others!

Today let's show some love 

to the birds and squirrels

and make some seed cookies for them!

Love, Buddy

Thursday, December 11

Hi Laura and Rachel

Aren't candy canes great? 

I think they are great,

so great that I think we 

should share them with

a whole bunch of people today!

Candy canes for everyone!

Love, Buddy

Friday, December 12
   Unfortunately yesterday was a ridiculous blizzard and we couldn't even leave the house. So we didn't get a chance to hand out candy canes or to hang out the bird seed cookies we had made on Wednesday. Buddy did not approve:

Dear Laura and Rachel

I am on strike today

because you have some 

catching up to do with

your Christmas Spirit activities!

Please take the birds their 

cookies, and don't forget to

share those candy canes!

Love, Buddy

The girls shared candy canes with all the people in line when we went to the post office, and then with the candy
canes we had left, Laura suggested we take them to the police officers. We also hung a few on people's car doors.
It was really fun to watch people's reactions and I think we'll definitely keep this activity for future years.

Saturday, December 13

Good Morning Laura and Rachel

A little birdy told me that today

is Laura's Christmas Recital!

I stayed up all night practicing the songs

in hopes that I can sing them 

as well as Laura does!

May I come watch your performance?

Love, Buddy

Laura spreading Christmas cheer: being a ham at her concert

Sunday, December 14

Dear Laura and Rachel

You did a great job of spreading

Christmas cheer yesterday at the concert!

And today there will be even more 

fun to be had at the Christmas party

you're going to!

Love, Buddy

P.S. Do you like my party hat?

Monday, December 15

Hi Laura and Rachel

Do you have Christmas presents

for everyone yet? No?

How about we make some today!

Love, Buddy

Baking soda clay ornaments

Doggies got in on it, too! <3

Tuesday, December 16

Dear Laura and Rachel,

I am so proud of you two

and how much Christmas cheer

you have been spreading to everyone.

Keep up the good work!

Today you could spread some cheer

at home by helping out Mom & Dad!

Love, Buddy

Wednesday, December 17

Laura and Rachel

Your Christmas Spirit 

seemed low yesterday.

Today we should go see

Santa to cheer you two up!

Love, Buddy

Thursday, December 18

Good morning Laura and Rachel,

I hear that Rachel's Christmas concert

at nursery school is today.

Make sure to smile lots 

and spread your Christmas cheer!

Love, Buddy

Friday, December 19

Dear Laura and Rachel,

Tonight, after dark, 

let's go for a drive 

and look at all the beautiful 

Christmas lights around town!

Love, Buddy

Saturday, December 20

Dear Laura and Rachel

Today is your last swimming lesson of the year!

Since you love them so much,

it would be nice to show your teacher your appreciation 

- perhaps bring her some Christmas cookies?

Love, Buddy

(The best part is that their swimming teacher is named Ariel) :)

Sunday, December 21

Hey Laura and Rachel

Did you know that, where we live, 

today is the shortest day of the year?

It's called the Winter Solstice

and we are going to celebrate 

the sunnier days to come!

Love, Buddy

gingerbread cookie making at our Solstice get-together

Monday, December 22

Laura and Rachel

Let's build a gingerbread house today!

Love, Buddy

Tuesday, December 23

Hi Laura and Rachel

Look at all this CANDY!

I LOVE IT!

You should finish up

your gingerbread house today

so I can live there and eat it!

And maybe you could 

decorate a gingerbread man

for the mailman.
Love, Buddy

No matter how hard I try, the gingerbread house always ends up being a two day project.
This is our "witch's cottage" from Hansel and Gretel, as per Laura's request. :)

Wednesday, December 24

Laura and Rachel

Tomorrow is Christmas, 

it's practically here!

And that means that

today is the last day of advent,

and I, in my cap, 

will be laying down

for a long winter's nap. 

I've left you some new jammies 

for you to remember me by.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love, Buddy

An Interview With the Girls

As per the recommendation of the hilarious Amber Dusick of Parenting, Illustrated With Crappy Pictures, I started trying to do this interview with Laura at age three. She only answered a few of the questions because she wasn't really into it at the time. Then the draft of the post got buried. I found it when she was 4.5 and asked her the questions again and got more responses. <3

An Interview With Laura

• What makes you happiest?
  age 3: When I go to gymnastics. (?!?!) Oh, and when I play in the pool. I am happy when I play in the pool.
  
  age 4.5: playing sneaky squirrel

          ETA age 5.5: cuddling with you at night

• What do you want to be when you grow up?age 4.5: For Halloween?
  (No, for a job.)
  Cooking food for everybody in my whole family *big smile*

          ETA age 5.5: A grown-up. A mommy.

• What are you afraid of?age 4.5: Dragons. Dragons and bears. And really big dogs. (What about willow?) I mean dogs THIS big *spreads arms as wide as she can*
  
  ETA age 5.5: Monsters
  

• What makes you laugh?
  age 3: When Chester makes noise. Daddy's noise. (What noise?) balfneokefasdjhliwe.
  
  age 4.5: when I sit on Elmo and he says, "Elmo is SO happy to see you!"
  
  ETA age 5.5: When Daddy makes funny faces.
  

• What is the hardest thing to do?age 4.5: try to catch slippery soap.
  
  ETA age 5.5: climbing up a rope.
  

• What are you good at?age 4.5: I'm good at playing sneaky squirrel.
  (Anything else?)
  Good at being brave when I'm going down scary slides.
  
  ETA age 5.5: playing with my little sister and playing mario kart. I have two talents: playing with my sister and playing Mario Kart. That's my two talents.
  

• What makes you mad?age 4.5: When you don't play something fun with me. Do you know what makes me the maddest what you do? When you won't take me to fun places. All the time. But sometimes you drive me to swimming lessons, Story Book Park, Disamy World - three stuff I like. 
  
  ETA age 5.5: I don't know. Um, when Rachel has my things.
  

• What does love mean?age 4.5: a heart. 
  
  ETA age 5.5: love people that you like. And I love you.

and here are Rachel's answers:

• What makes you happiest?
  age 2.5: When I go on rollercoasters myself!
  
  ETA age 3: Rowing down the stream.
  

• What do you want to be when you grow up?age 2.5: super big!
  
  ETA age 3: Be a big girl.
  

• What are you afraid of?age 2.5: Monsters, when they see me I go "ahhhh!" And ghostes
  ETA age 3: Ernies. Ernies are monsters too.
  

• What makes you laugh?
  age 2.5: [does not understand question]
  
  ETA age 3: Daddy makes really funny faces like this. *makes face* I like that.
  

• What is the hardest thing to do?ETA age 3: breaking cheese

• What are you good at?
  ETA age 3: Doing a monster
  

• What makes you mad?age 2.5: Bears.
  
  ETA age 3: A monster makes me mad
  

• What does love mean?age 2.5: *sings* love love!
  
  ETA age 3: I love bunnies I mean

My Baby

This morning Rachel woke up before Laura (as usual), but for once didn't wake her up. I quickly scooted out of bed to let Rachel out of their room (she still relies on other people to open doors for her), and she came and joined me in bed and asked to nurse. She is nursing less and less frequently these days, and I was more than willing to have some cuddle time in bed to slowly wake up. She nursed for over 20 minutes (extremely rare), and it was just so nice.

Fast forward to tonight. She recently has been stalling at bedtime for so long that she gets to a terrible, over-tired place where she cannot go to bed without tears, which I really dislike. Tonight was no different. As I lay in bed with her trying to sing softly and rub her back to calm her and transition to sleep, she was bouncing around wildly and being ridiculous. I told her several times I was going to leave if she didn't lie down and try to calm herself. So eventually, it came to that. I spelled off with Josh, hoping he would have better luck. Nope, worse. Stalling included two bathroom trips with him and negative progress in the calming down department. So eventually he left her up there, and she was crying, now in that over-tired state. Often, if we just give her a few minutes, she self-soothes and goes to sleep. She has always been a really great self-soother, and from day one has been able to put herself to sleep. But not tonight. I went back up and climbed into bed with her once more. She was ready to be calm now, and I was able to rub her back while we snuggled. She turned around and cuddled right into my chest, and within minutes was snoring. It was so lovely to be able (and needed) to put her to sleep like that. It makes me glad I haven't completely lost my little baby yet.

Happy Family

Tonight my bubble was burst. I go along thinking that we have it pretty good, I stay home and can be with the girls all day; we don't have a lot of stress and we aren't too busy - all things I have intentionally done to keep as much peace and harmony as possible. And though I am not perfect, I perceive that I am doing an all right job raising my girls. I mean, they are pretty awesome. I consider things happy. You know, for the most part, anyway.

But tonight I was reading to Laura while we were waiting for Rachel to fall asleep, as we do most nights, and in our book ('Ramona and her Father'), Ramona asks, "Then why can't we be a happy family?" Her father replies and tells her that they are, and that having a happy family does not mean that everyone in the family is happy all the time. This sparked a discussion with Laura and she brought it to my attention that she didn't think we had a happy family either. Slap. In. The. Face.

We ended up having a long talk about it, which involved a lot of tears from me, about what she thinks a Happy Family would look like. It is my soul goal in life for my kids to be happy. I mean, I'd like for Josh and I to be happy, too, but really, hearing that my kids don't think we have a happy family was really about the worst insult you could give me. And I know she wasn't trying to insult me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized things from her perspective: I harp on Josh for some little thing pretty often. Probably almost every day. Its nothing major, but its negative. She sees that. To me, its not a big deal, just something that he could improve on, or whatever. But maybe I should try to turn that around. Maybe instead of nagging, I should consciously try to compliment him on something he did well, or something that made me happy. It is so easy to focus on negative things. And the kids, well, I do make more of a conscious effort to positively reinforce behaviour I like, but lets be realistic, they receive a lot of correction throughout the day too. So, even though to me, I think things are going pretty well, and am happy most of the time, when I think about it a little more, I can see why Laura might think our family is not 'happy'. Reality check.

Part of it, too, I told myself, is that she is a child, and so her perception is a little skewed. She has no idea how bad a truly unhappy family could be. But then, does that really matter? That her perception is, in my opinion, skewed? Not really. She sees unhappiness, and that is her reality. Sigh.
She doesn't see my constant struggle to react calmly to situations I reflexively am angry about. I literally struggle with this on probably an hourly basis. Sometimes I tell her, "I really wanted to ______ when ________ happened, but instead I stayed calm and used my words (or whatever)." But I don't think she realizes how hard I try to model the behaviour I'd like to see. And though I fail daily, I like to think that overall I'm doing all right. But apparently she doesn't think so. Heart. Breaking.

I'm sure the tears on my part did not help. Laura immediately changed her stance, not being able to stand upsetting me in this way. She called Daddy to come up and help me stop crying, and also continued displacing her discomfort with the situation for much of our discussion. Oh. My. Soul. Feeling like such a failure tonight. :(

Operation Christmas Child

     As a kid who went to a private Christian school, I am well-acquainted with the Operation Christmas Child initiative. However, I haven't given it much thought since participating as a child... until this year. While I was brainstorming ideas for our Christmas Spirit Elf, I remembered this program. I realized that the boxes probably needed to be sent off before the first of December (when our elf is due to arrive), though, and when I looked into it, I found that we just had a little over a week left to pack a box! Luckily, Rachel's preschool is run out of a church, so we were able to get the information there.
     I had the girls watch the OCC promo video so they had an idea of what our project was all about, and then asked them which age/ gender of child they would like to pack for. Big surprise, they chose GIRL 2-4. :)

I took them out shopping, and with a little guidance, they picked out enough to fill two boxes of goodies to send to some special little girls overseas. They also donated a few of their own things that were new and unused.

We wrapped our boxes with pretty Christmas paper and packed them up. We also personalized them by tracing Laura and Rachel's hands on the inside saying "Heart to heart and hand in hand we stand." The girls also coloured pictures for them and we wrote them a little Christmas note. Hopefully we make some little girls' day when they receive them. :) <3

PS I am secretly dreaming of being able to go to help hand out the boxes one year. I think that would be amazing.

Rachel: Two-and-a-half!

Rachel is 30 months old today!

I will really miss when she stops adorably mispronouncing things like:

•  oatmeal ("emeal")
•  rice crispies ("rice creves")
• chipmunk ("ricrunk") 
• potatoes ("petoes") 
• remote ("meeyote")
• library ("bribary")
• candy cane ("candy candy") 
• heffalump ("humpahump")

Amusing, but she can pronounce some big words perfectly, like trampoline. :)

Clever little chicken she is. She has been pretty well potty trained since about 27 months, with a few accidents/ regressions here and there. Still nursing once in a while (maybe once every couple days) and still has bottle before bed (we brush teeth after though). Likes to be pantsless. She goes to school without a fuss now, and will resume going two days a week in January. Pretty independent - likes to feed herself and toilet on her own. She really likes most things her big sister is into (My Little Pony, etc), but also has her own interests. She loves colouring and making art. Loves gymnastics (though currently not enrolled) and is very serious about learning all the techniques correctly, yes, at 2.5 (and younger, even, she has been like that since she started lessons 6 months ago). And she loves playing with her big sister. They get along really well for the most part and engage in imaginative play together on a daily basis. It is so nice to see them get along so well. <3

Naps are quickly becoming a thing of the past. She only needs them about twice a week anymore. I am grateful that we don't have to plan days around sleep times anymore.

She can count to ten with little help, and she knows her colours fairly accurately.

She is a feisty little firecracker and knows what she wants. I am happy that she has the personality type to stand up for herself and what she thinks is right/ what she wants - much preferable to being a push over. I couldn't love her any more. <3

Daylight Savings. Bah.

Parents seem to always complain that the time change wreaks havoc on their children's rhythms, but I had always dismissed it. We rarely have to be anywhere first thing in the morning, so it really didn't matter if the girls got up at 7 or 8 or 9, or when the went to bed, for that matter. We could take as long as we needed to to adjust to it naturally.

The problem now, is that Rachel wakes up at the first hint of any light coming through their black out curtains. And when she wakes up everyone else has to, too! So Laura has still been going to bed at the same time she was used to (9:00 post time change) but getting woken up close to an hour earlier because of her darling sister. This past week there has been a lot of sleep deficit in our house. And lots of meltdowns, subsequently. I'm officially in the "Time Changes Ruin My Life" Camp.

It's been a week now, so hopefully they have mostly got it sorted out. Blerg.