The Queen's Rambles

December is just flying by. I know there are always the same number of days in a year, but a Saturday Christmas just seems to make everything go faster. It was Erik’s birthday yesterday and tomorrow its Christmas. How does that happen?

I discovered a big present for Elsa that I bought this summer off one of those deal a day sites. Whew! I’ll take Heather’s suggestion and shop my storage area for the rest of her gifts. Except a couple of small things. But really? Why spend the money when she’ll never know. I have to wrap up some stuff though, just to keep the magic alive for Erik.

Still don’t have Christmas cards out. I better get them out because I paid a pretty penny for them, but I can’t seem to get my act together. I really wanted to do a Christmas letter to relatives, but I think it is going to turn into more of a small Christmas note.

Erik and I went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader today. What a fantastic series of movies, despite the heavy handed Aslan as Christ message. I’ve read the books so I know that is very true to the spirit of C. S. Lewis, but it still grates. Otherwise, fantastic. Erik was mesmerized, and so was I. The biggest mystery of the 21st century remains. How did Narnia cast total unknown children who all turned out to be wonderful actors and Harry Potter couldn’t get a single decent child actor (maybe Malfoy would count as decent?).

I was going to let Erik see HP1 last night and I started looking through our movies and realized we didn’t have 1 or 2 because I didn’t care for them. I should have taped them when they were having all those marathons.

Elsa, my sweet, is starting to eat! The doctor sort of thought I was full of shit when I said she wasn’t swallowing anything. How could I possibly know that? Ummmmm. . . her poop hadn’t changed and I had eyeballs that could see her spit it all out. She started eating Thursday and her poop has changed. I knew feeding Erik wasn’t as messy as feeding her, but now that she’s eating I can see why. The food is going into her tummy instead of everywhere else. She’s also sleeping better at night. I’m a happy mommy.

I can’t stand the thought of buying jarred baby food because I’m a cheapskate. I don’t have a lot of time to do the puree prep that I did with Erik. My problem was solved by a friendly neighbor I barely know. She dropped by with two huge bags of jarred baby food that they don’t need for their little guy. Score! I felt kind of guilty at first, thinking I should take it to the food bank. I’m not going to feel guilty any more. It’s being used. She gave it to me. If she wanted to give it to the food bank she could have.

Does anyone else have an overly sensitive five year old? If you’ve been reading long, you know Erik doesn’t have a sensitive bone in his body. Now? Oh. My. Lord. Will someone send me some heavy duty sponges to soak up the tears? If you look at him funny he starts crying. If I tell him anything he starts crying. If I tease, it’s tears. Who is this child?

I’ve found myself screaming at him way too much because he just doesn’t listen. He was telling me how scary I was and that he wished he didn’t have a mommy. Talk about breaking my heart in a million pieces.

I’ve been much better this week at staying calm and physically tapping his ear and asking him if he’s listening, then physically directing him up the stairs. Seems to have made things happier, and I guess calm begets calm because I’m becoming a lot calmer.

He got a preschool report card last week that blew my mind. Last year his teacher wrote a couple of sentences and called it good. This teacher wrote a full single spaced page about him (no surprises, except he’s making tremendous progress about keeping comments relevant to the class discussion) and then she graded the kids on 70 different items. Talk about detailed! He did extremely well, so we’re all pleased. Of course I’m not surprised. Sometimes I get my back up when I see what they are doing because it’s stuff we didn’t do until 2nd grade, but then I remember how boring school was for me and I see how successful Erik is and I talk myself down. A challenge is good! I don’t think I had a single challenge in school until I hit college level chemistry. I loved school, but didn’t have any trouble keeping up.

It just cracks me up that she thought it was worth noting that he enjoys math and would like to learn more. If she only knew what we do at home. Other kids color or read or what not. We sit and do addition and subtraction, or write really big numbers and name them. Believe me, none of that is my idea. I find it beyond boring, but if he’s interested the least I can do is support him.

The only area of concern is that he doesn’t understand how to blend th, ch and sh. I’m not at all surprised. He’s so literal that it makes no sense to him that two different sounds would make a totally different sound. He refuses to believe me or his teacher. I’m not even sure he can make the th sound. He always replaces it with f or d, which I assumed was because he knows Swedish and they don’t have that sound. But he hears English a whole lot more than Swedish so who knows.

How about an update on the plumbing? The plumber finally came back (he had to order a part) and fixed a couple of things, but is not convinced he solved the problem. He said to call back within 30 days if it didn’t solve the problem so we’ll still be covered under the home warranty thing as the same claim. He also looked at the other things the other plumbers said MUST be replaced immediately and scoffed. They don’t need to be replaced at all, and then he quoted us his price for replacing them. Literally half! And this guy isn’t working cheap, either. I really liked him, so if you are in the Germantown area (they are actually based out of Frederick) and need a plumber I’d highly recommend Willard Heating. They are professional, determined to get the job done right, won’t gouge you and will work with your schedule. It was really nice to have a two hour time window instead of a five hour time window like the other guys. And it was a time window we agreed on! Not one that was assigned and if I wasn’t there too bad, so sad, guess you’ll never see a plumber.