The Christmas Hippo

Because I can't make this stuff up- here is the story of how my 3 year old was the Christmas hippo in the Nativity play.

At the first rehearsal, Ella was asked which part she would like to play. Her conversation with the director went something like this:

"Do you want to be a lamb?" No.
"A cow?" No.
"Maybe a dog? I think we have a dog costume." No.
"Did you want to be a shepherd or an angel with the bigger kids?" No.
"How about you tell me what you want to be."

She proudly tells the director, "I going to be a buffalo."

Fantastic. My kid is going to be the Christmas buffalo. Pretty sure there weren't buffalo in Bethlehem but whatever, she's three and it will be cute.

Practice commences without too much of a hitch. Well, there's the minor fact that Ella is obsessed with trying to get the baby Jesus doll and change his poopy diaper. Which she does, several times, pretend poop and all. But it's still all good, since this is only practice, and I'm sure things will be okay by Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve comes. We get to the church. Go to get her in the costume. Like a true 3 year old, she is quite contrary and doesn't want to be a buffalo any more. I ask her if she still wants to be in the play, thinking if she doesn't, that's fine. She is adamant that she needs to be in the play but she is NOT going to be a buffalo. I ask her what she would like to be instead.

A hippo.

After some quick thinking, a few safety pins, and the helpful fact that 3 year olds have wonderful imaginations, I finangled up a hippo costume. She was delighted. Then the director gave her a teddy bear to carry (in hopes of distracting her from changing baby Jesus' poppy diaper during the play) and her joy was complete.

Things started off okay. She went up the church aisle along side the other kids, proudly clutching her teddy bear. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought this year things would go off without a hitch.

Until she went up to the manger, promptly displaced baby Jesus, and put the teddy bear in his place.

Teddy bear settled, she wandered off to go look at the creche. And somehow managed to break the hand off of St. Joseph.

She spent the remainder of the play walking around trying to touch everything and getting the stink eye from the kid playing Mary.

On the bright side, the poinsettias survived this year.

Holiday Gift Guide- Mommy Edition

I figured since I gave all my readers (yes, all three of you) a handy dandy gift guide for the kids, I might as well make one out for myself. You may send your gift to BFE- just write my name on the box and it will somehow find its way to me, I promise. This gift guide will also serve you well for any other mom of young children on your gift list.

1. Alcohol. Moms have to heavy job of ensuring that the next generation doesn't turn out to be little shits. Doing so means that we have to deal with a LOT of whining and tantrums and utter ridiculous sentences like, "Please stop telling the dog to sniff your butt and go get some undies on." I can give you somewhere along the lines of a gazillion other examples but you get the point.

2. Coffee. This is pretty much self-explanatory. I have not slept through the night since 2011. In fact, I'm pretty positive that I am a caffeinated zombie. I need caffeine like I need oxygen.

3. Babysitting services. You know how every single parenting magazine/website tells you to make sure to take time for yourself, go on dates with your significant other, maybe get your hair cut or fall asleep in a movie theatre? What they don't tell you is that (a) babysitters are freaking expensive and (b) finding the Holy Grail is easier than finding a good babysitter.

4. Everyone else to not have a housecleaning service. I discovered a dirty little secret here in BFE- almost everyone I know utilizes a housecleaning service on a fairly regular basis. While it would be nice to have a housekeeper of my own, I'm kind of a vindictive bitch. It would be far nicer to watch everyone else scramble to figure out how the hell to keep a house halfway decent while doing enriching things with the kids and at least 5 Pinterest-worthy projects a day and pretend that you have all your shit together. I'll smugly watch from the sidelines with my alcohol-laden coffee.

5. Hotel room. I have fantasies about hotel rooms. They all run along these lines: I check into the hotel, while singing, "All by myself! I get to be- all by myself!" (Celine Dion re-wrote the song after having kids.) I change into my super sexy yoga pants and grungy t-shirt. I order room service. I watch crappy cable TV. Maybe binge watch HGTV. After eating a meal in which no one throws food or whines about wanting something different, I go to sleep. I get to sprawl over the entire king size bed and no one wakes me up by snoring or needing to nurse or wanting Mommy to come get the scary things off the bed. I wake up the next morning after 12 amazing hours of sleep. I order room service breakfast. I eat and drink coffee- hot coffee, and not hot from being microwaved five times- while reading a book or trashy magazine. I get to shower and pee without company. If it's a hotel room in a swanky place that has a spa, I will love you forever.

Holiday Gift Guide- Toddler Edition

Since the stores are rolling out all the Christmas stuff, people are making their Black Friday Thursday Wednesday Tuesday shopping plans, and everyone keeps on asking me what the girls would like for Christmas, I figured I'd give you all a handy dandy gift guide for the toddler set.

To make it easier, I'm going to start with what NOT to buy.

1. Any toy that makes noise. In case you weren't aware, toddlers make a ridiculous amount of noise without any help from Tickle Me Elmo. If you give a toddler a noise-making toy, the following things will occur:

• They will press the damn button repeatedly until you want to gouge out your eardrums with a spoon. 
• They will press the damn button repeatedly until the toy breaks or the batteries run out. Once it breaks, the ensuing tantrums over the broken toy and demands to go to the store and buy new batteries will make you want to gouge out your eardrums with a spoon. 

Moral of the story: Don't do it. The only exception is if you include a case of wine for Mom and Dad and say these magic words: "It can stay at my house for when Little Susy comes over."

2. Toys that have more pieces than the age of the child. Let's say you are at the store and you see the 100 piece block set. You think, "Oooh, awesome, look at all these blocks! My niece/nephew/grandchild is going to love this! And it's only $10!" Step back for a second while I tell you what's going to happen. Child will see all the blocks. Promptly dump them all over the floor, leaving death traps for the parents. Child will pick out ONE block- you know, the Special Block that was at the bottom of the bin and will require the child to dump out all the blocks in search of this Special Block every.single.time.

If you feel compelled to get the gigantic sets, save yourself some money and divvy up the set between all the kids on your shopping list.

3. Toys with small pieces. I have a deep and abiding hatred for toys that come with small pieces. To begin with, I still have one kid that loves to put everything and anything in her mouth. It's not a lot of fun when I have to tell Ella that she can't play with a toy because it's a choking hazard for her sister or another little kid who comes over to play. Furthermore, the little pieces end up getting lost and then we have a meltdown over "I NEED it!" And I have to explain that I would love to give the piece to her. Except there is a high probability that it's lost in the abyss that is the horrible shag carpet in our playroom. Or possibly taking a voyage through her sister's intestines.

4. Toys that involve a high level of parental involvement. Look, I know the ad shows the parent(s) and kids happily playing with this toy that is too advanced for my toddlers to do on their own but is so super cool that they need to play with it all.the.time. But in real life, Dad has a job and Mom has other things to do than constantly reassemble this thing that is too complicated for the toddler to handle. If you like my kids and want them to eat semi-decent meals, please take a pass on the toys that need an adult every time. Unless, again, you would like to keep it at your house.

5. Electronics. Toddlers are destructive and electronics are expensive. And then there's the whole thing that a two year old does not need an iPad. P.S. If you get my toddler an iPad, you can be assured that I am going to commandeer it.

So what, then, would be a good present for a toddler?

1. Your presence. Even though I'm totally awesome, my kids sometimes get bored with me and like to see other people. Spend the money to come see them. I promise you, they will be thrilled and will be talking about your visit for months.

2.  A membership to the zoo/museum/aquarium/etc. It's something they can enjoy all year long. My kids are 1 and 2 and have the attention spans of gnats (actually, some days that might be insulting to gnats). A new toy is going to be super cool for a week, tops, whereas the zoo is awesome all the time. In fact, some days I'm pretty sure they only keep me around so I'll drive them to go see George and Bobo and the lizards and the bear.

3. A gigantic box. Boxes are cheap and kids love them. Wrap it up in paper for them to happily destroy and you have one amazing gift.

4. Empty toilet paper/paper towel rolls. These are like crack to my kids. Seriously. Combine some with the empty box and you are golden.

5. A personalized photo book. Ella loves looking through our photo albums and seeing her relatives. She'll sit there and tell me all these stories about the photos, real or imagined (like how there's Mommy holding newborn Ella at swim class. Uhhhh....pretty sure that's the hospital bed but okay.).

6. A donation to a charity. Kids are way more perceptive than we give them credit for. Even though she's not quite three, Ella is starting to understand that there are some people who don't have as much as we do. Sure, she may devise devious little plans where (in her mind) some other kid gets all her toys and then she gets new toys (we're still working on explaining the whole charity concept) but she does understand the basic idea of helping out others.

Randoms...

Here's a hodge-podge post of what's been going on here:

-Had an amazing weekend in Raleigh with one of my besties, Kristen from BeerCat Brewing. Almost four whole awesome days of gabbing non-stop. Being back there made me realize just how much I miss living on the East Coast and how much I wish we lived closer to one another. I have lots of friends here in BFE, but none that "get" me in the way Kristen does. I can't wait to have our next get-together.

-Came back from Raleigh and almost immediately got sick with viral pharyngitis. If you aren't familiar with it, it's like strep throat without the benefit of antibiotics. Plus the lovely addition of full body aches, chills, and hot flashes. I lost five pounds from not being able to eat anything besides ice cream for almost a week. During the worst of it I couldn't even drink water, but for whatever reason I could have ginger ale.

-Jim threw me an amazing Mother's Day weekend. Sushi? Check. Alcohol? Check. A date night so horrible that we can laugh about it for years to come? Check. (Note: my side-eyeing of events at the BFE Community Center is now completely justified.) Relaxing morning? Yep. Alcoholic beverages, ice cream, and not having to worry about a single meal? You bet. Super awesome craft "from the kiddos"? Oh yeah. Jim made me a super cute votive candle holder and then had the girls paint it. I know a lot of moms are like, "Eh, I don't want some craft from the kids, give me jewelry." I'm the opposite. I LOVE stuff that my kids make, especially when I'm not the one who has to come up with the activity, wrangle the kids into doing it, and then clean it all up.

-We had our first salad of the season made completely from stuff in our garden. Minus the cheese, of course. Because what is a salad without cheese?

Anyway, now that we are all mostly healthy again and things are semi-calm here, it'll be back to posting like normal.

Happy Easter!

 Happy Easter from our family to yours! We had a fun weekend of dyeing eggs, hunting for eggs, binge eating candy, and hanging out with friends. 

Each year I go kind of crazy with dyeing Easter eggs. I think I might enjoy it more than my kids, although this year Ella got pretty into it. We make hard boiled eggs quite often and every Easter I think we should dye eggs throughout the year (because why not) and then I end up forgetting. 

This year's finished product. Half of them are already cracked because Ella bashed them. 

Nomming on an egg. Not the funnest of teething toys

The mad scientist hard at work

The girls' baskets were pretty minimal. I totally cheated and put the stuff my mom sent in their baskets (a bib for Marian and a book for Ella) and gave them stuff they were getting anyway, like the Annie's bunny crackers that we ought to buy in bulk. They each got an outfit that my friend Laura custom-made (she has a ton of super cute stuff if you want to check out her shop).

Not quite sure what to make of her Easter basket

Modeling their new outfits

Doing an egg hunt with a toddler was...interesting. Last year we simply scattered the eggs around the floor and called it a day. This year we got the idea to actually hide the eggs. Since she did an egg hunt at mom's day out, we presumed things would go smoothly. Yeah, I should have remembered that she is a toddler and things never go as planned. 

We hid the hard boiled eggs around the play room. I thought it would be cute to hid one in the pan on her play kitchen. She promptly found it but refused to pick it up because (a) the stove is hot (duh mom) and (b) it wasn't done cooking yet (double duh). And so on and so forth. 

Then she moved onto the few plastic eggs we had hidden around the living room. She found the one by the couch and decided to re-hide it under a pillow. Every time we asked her to find more eggs she would go back to the couch, show us the egg, and inform us that "it's hiding." 

In any case, she had a fun time. 

Ella searching for eggs

Enjoying a cup of coffee in the midst of the chaos

Poor Marian, on the other hand, spent most of the weekend out of sorts, as she is battling yet another cold. Eventually we have to reach a point where neither kid will have a runny nose, right? Despite feeling crummy, she figured out how to pull herself to standing. Now she demands to stand all. the. time.

Oh yeah. This happened. 

 On the agenda for this week- going for lots of walks to burn off all the Cadbury eggs.

Happy Valentine's Day

From my two little sweethearts- hope your day was filled with lots of chocolate!

Unconditional love is putting up with your crazy sister...

...or your drooly sister who moments before slobbered all over your elbow

At least someone is not jaded by Valentine's Day...yet

Play kitchen

This thing is so awesome it deserves its own post.

Some of you know that we had been planning since the spring to make Ella a play kitchen for her birthday. I had found this neat idea where you repurpose old cabinets or media centers into a pint-sized kitchen. We scoured garage sales over the summer and fall, but still couldn't find exactly what I had in mind. I was about to give up and find plans to make one from scratch when Jim had the idea to use some old Ikea cabinets we had hanging around in his Man Cave.

I realize now I forgot to take a picture of what they looked like before they became a play kitchen. I'm sure if I look through my photos I can find one where they are hanging around in the background.

Anyway, this is what they look like now:

Front view

Top view

Here's what we did (I say "we" because I served as artistic director): 

-Sawed the cabinets in half (the part that is the fridge was the upper portion)

-Flipped one of the bottom cabinets around to become the oven

-Cut a piece of plywood to connect the two bottom pieces

-Cut a hole in the plywood for the sink portion (the sink is just a cheap brownie pan)

-Cut a hole in the oven door and installed a piece of plexiglass 

-Added in a cheap oven rack

-Installed the sink hardware (this was the most expensive portion- I think Jim found it for around $15 at K-Mart)

-Painted the whole thing to match the table and chairs Jim made for the playroom

-Painted and installed the burners, which are cheap wood circles from Hobby Lobby

-Made and painted oven knobs. The circular portions are again cheap wood circles from Hobby Lobby; the raised portion Jim made with a jigsaw. 

There you have it. Ten steps to transform an Ikea cabinet to a play kitchen. I'm sure if Jim were writing this post he'd give you a lot more detail. 

I think it came out awesome. And I certainly like the cabinets better like this. 

Here's a little video of Ella on her birthday seeing it for the first time. 

Merry Christmas!

I'm pretty zonked out still from the combination of Ella's birthday and Christmas, so here's a quick post with a picture* of us looking festive. 

Hope everyone had a fun holiday, and if you didn't, well, that's what eggnog is for. 

*The picture that was taken for the Christmas cards I never got around to sending out because I'm lazy it's more eco-friendly to simply post a picture here. 

Halloween!

In true nerd fashion, we all dressed up as characters from Doctor Who. Pretty sure the girls are going to hate me when they are older. I figure I only get a few Halloweens where I can force them into whatever costume I pick. Ella was a very crabby TARDIS, Marian was a sleepy Melody Pond, Jim was the Eleventh Doctor, and I was Amy Pond.

Marian as baby Melody Pond. Mainly I decorated her stroller since I didn't think she would be particularly agreeable to wearing a costume this year. 

Very cranky TARDIS

No smile so I settled for a glare

Slightly happier after trick-or-treating

The Doctor and the TARDIS

Ella was not overly thrilled with Halloween at first. Before we went out, she had a bit of a temper tantrum because 1. She had decided to use her nap time to strip naked instead of sleep 2. Marian got to be in the stroller and Ella had to *gasp* walk (yes, go ahead and call child protective services on me) 3. I dared to try and take pictures of her 4. It was incomprehensible to a toddler that the huge bowl of candy sitting out on the counter was not for her consumption. 

After we actually got out of the house she got into the swing of things pretty quickly. She still didn't understand why we weren't going into any of the houses and kept on trying to go inside. We made it to a fair number of houses before both girls decided they were done. Possibly the best part of trick-or-treating with a toddler is we were home in time for me to go through her candy, take out all the stuff we don't like, and then hand it out to all the unsuspecting children who stopped at our door. 

Hopefully all my readers (you know, both of you) had a great Halloween too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours! We are heading out in a bit to have dinner with Jim's sister and brother-in-law and some good family friends. If I'm not in too much of a carb-induced haze later on, I'll try to post some pictures of our dinner. Hope everyone has a nice, relaxing, food-filled weekend!

Edit to add some photos from our festivities:

Clockwise from top left: Waiting patiently for food; enjoying cranberries (pretty much the only thing she wanted to eat); the face she made after every bite of cranberries; a view of the spread.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from our family to yours! We had a blast taking Ella out trick-or-treating, and our neighbors got a kick out of seeing her in her costume. 

After taking a gazillion family photos this afternoon (thank you to our awesome friend and amazing photographer, Bob), Ella was not particularly pleased to put on her pumpkin costume and have more photos taken. Here she is riding in style:

She did, however, really like all the Halloween decorations. 

Unfortunately she got scared of a few, and the combination of scary decorations and being up past her bedtime meant that we didn't get around to as many houses as I would like. 

Our little pumpkin is now sound asleep in bed, so Jim and I are going to put our feet up, watch Hocus Pocus, and eat some candy. 

You win some, you lose some

It's going to be a two-for-Tuesday here at Two Nerds. Jim and I both finished up a couple of craft projects we've been working on (although I'm sure he would apply a much more masculine word to describe what he's been doing out in the garage for the past few weekends).

My project was to make a trick-or-treat bag for Ella. Originally I was planning on buying one for her. Then my thoughts about consumerism and mass-production, coupled with Pinterest and pictures on Facebook of cutesy little bags other moms had made, convinced me that I would be failing my daughter if I did not make her a Halloween bag.

I found this tutorial while browsing Pinterest. It looked cute. It looked easy. It looked like it could be accomplished during a baby's nap. All excellent points in my book.

Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. Here is a picture of my finished product.

I think the main problem is that the proportions are off somehow, and that it probably would look okay if it was a Frankenstein design instead of a pumpkin. Or maybe if the face was bigger, or if there was more of the green stuff along the top. Perhaps it's simply that it's closing in on a decade since I last used a sewing machine. Definitely took me significantly longer than 40-60 minutes to accomplish. (Note: This is in no way a reflection upon the original tutorial. The fault definitely lies with me.)

You know it's bad when your husband tells you things like, "Well, it's made with love" and "You tried hard." Now instead of mom-guilt about having my daughter carry around a mass-produced trick-or-treat bag most likely made by child-labor in a developing country (holy hyphens!), I now have mom-guilt that my child will hate me for making her carry around such an ugly trick-or-treat bag. 

Jim had significantly more success with his project. This crappy picture doesn't do it justice, but he built me an amazing butcher block for our kitchen. It's not 100% finished yet- he still wants to add on a towel bar and a wine rack, and possibly more shelving or drawers (that's one of the best parts about doing stuff yourself- you can always change things up). Even so, I think he did an amazing job, and I'm incredibly excited about it. 

   

Pumpkins!

Tonight we carved our jack-o-lantern, and let Ella paint the little pumpkin she's been dragging around for the past week. Messy, yes, but most definitely fun. 

At first she was a little apprehensive. Possibly because it seemed strange that we were not only making a mess, but encouraging her to do so as well, instead of saying, "Eww, yucky!" at everything. 

She very soon lost interest in watching Jim carve the jack-o-lantern, and decided that the gourds were way more fascinating than my attempts to get her to paint her pumpkin.

Demonstrating for the camera her amazing ability to stand up on her own, and rocking some wild hair.

The finish product. Yes, I know she ate some paint. It's non-toxic. I checked in a panic after she decided to try and eat it when I glanced away for a second.

Here's the jack-o-lantern Jim carved. It has the same number and placement of teeth that she does.

One very happy, very messy little baby.

Pumpkin Patch

Some of my fondest childhood memories were going to the pumpkin patch every year. Naturally, I was beyond excited to take Ella this past weekend.

A rare photo of the three of us on our way in

Pretty much as soon as we got there, we had torrential rain. We hung out inside the shop while we waited for the weather to clear.

Ella figured out clapping this past week, and now does it constantly. 

They had some gigantic pumpkins that we of course had to take pictures with. My sister-in-law and I contemplated actually getting some, and I'm not quite sure why I didn't go back and get one before we left.

I told Ella this is how my belly looked when I was 9 months pregnant

One of the advertised attractions was a pumpkin eating dinosaur. What's not to love?

They also had live pig races (how did I not know such a thing existed?!), and a corn maze. I remember corn mazes being a lot more fun, perhaps because I wasn't tall enough to see over it. 

They also had a hay-bale maze for the little kids. Auntie Beth and Uncle Mike took her in.

 And finally, the main attraction- the pumpkins!