10 on Tuesdays - 1/6/09

1) Wow! It has been a while since I've done one of these... so much to say... I guess the biggest news is that Roman got tubes in his ears on December 19th and is a whole new kid now! He is more focused, more calm, more helpful and is sleeping {a bit} better now {KNOCK ON WOOD. Last time I bragged about his sleeping habits, they abruptly changed for the worse}. He still has a naughty and ornery streak now & then, but he is a 2-year old boy. I'd be worried if he didn't!

2) The other night when I asked him what he wanted for dinner, he said a "pony pizza". It took me awhile and then it hit me... pepperoni pizza. Hey! That gives me an idea for a birthday party: pony pizza, pony rides & pony kegs!

3) We had a wonderful 1st Christmas with Roman. Pictures are on our Shutterfly website {link is in the right column}

• He learned "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" at school and sang it {a lot}, but left out the "is coming to" part.
• He also thought the whole deal was called Santa instead of Christmas {little heathen}. He would point to decorations and say "Santa" whether or not the big guy in red was included in the decor. He also said "Happy Santa" instead of "Merry Christmas". I guess it is an improvement over still calling it "Halloween" which was what he was still doing the second week in December.
  
• The first gift we gave out was to his buddy Lawson. Roman saw the gift sitting on the table and tried to open it. I told him that the gift was for Lawson and I made a big production about it not being for Roman so that he wouldn't touch it. Well when it came time to open gifts on Christmas morning, Roman was associating all of the gifts with Lawson. He'd say, "Lawson gift". It was a struggle to get him to open his gifts. He was quite satisfied with the first thing he opened and Jason and I pretty much opened the rest of them.
• On Christmas morning when Jason brought him downstairs, Jason said "Let's see if Santa came and brought us anything." Roman immediately bypassed his stash of toys and said "Santa hiding" and was trying to find Santa under the table, behind the chair, etc... We had to explain to him that Santa had come & gone and had left all of the wonderful gifts behind. Next year, he'll probably have a better grasp on it.

4) So if you took a moment to view my pix from Christmas and you were curious about the thong-flinging sling-shot photos of my nephews, let me clarify the situation before you call Child Services. My sisters and I were at Target about an hour before our family was set to do our Christmas stockings. We were passing through the "intimates" department on our way to the registers when my sister Leah excused herself to the bathroom. Rachel and I stumbled upon the underwear clearance section and thought to ourselves "Wouldn't it be funny if we put some underwear in Leah's stocking so the whole family would see it?". Well, that snowballed into "Wouldn't it be funny if we put an XL STRING THONG in Leah's stocking so the whole family would see it?". So we put the thong in our cart and then thought that if we added regular hipster underwear in the same pattern for ourselves, it would be more believable and she may not suspect that it was us and instead think it was our mom who generally fills our stockings {I mean Santa...}. So without Leah looking, we checked out and upon returning home, we sneaked all of the underwear in the various stockings. So fast-forward to stocking time... Leah pulls hers out and is immediately embarrassed. That was our cue to pull ours out. Rachel and I are oohing and ahhing over how cute the underwear is and we thanked our mom for them {hoping she'd go along with the joke} and Leah is flabbergasted on why she got the same pattern, only in an XL thong. She even asked my mom, "Do you think my marriage needs spicing up?" Well at some point, Leah must have flung the thong over to Rachel and Brett and Davis {ages 4 & 7} must have thought it was a sling-shot. They had the time of their lives slinging that thing. At one point we told them it was underwear and Brett said "It's not underwear its a sling-shot. See?" and he proceeded to shoot it. They were getting pretty good at it, too, until my dad was so disgusted that he took it away {which prompted several under-the-breath comments about what he was going to do with them.} Then a few hours later Brett asked where his slingshot was and my dad said "Gone", and we assumed he had pitched them and then Rachel found them again on the washing machine {which is my parents' holding pattern for things to go out to the trash.} So then Rachel and I played "hide the thong" the rest of the weekend. The fun never ends with my family, I'll tell ya....


5) So as some of you may know, I whipped myself into shape in 2008. Anyone care to know how many pounds I lifted last year? Well according to Fitlinxx, the program linked up to all of the machines at the Y, I lifted 2,976,117 pounds in 2008! That is almost 3,000 elephants! Weight-lifting has dramatically changed my metabolism. {Can you tell I'm proud of myself?}

6) We now have a full-blown Thomas the Train fanatic on our hands. Until mid-December, we only had a few trains, a few tracks and one building for Roman to play with. His train table was in his room, where he only was before nap & bedtime, so he barely played with them. Then all at once, we inherited 3 families-worth of Thomas stuff, in addition to the Christmas gifts. Now we've got miles of tracks, a gazillion train cars and 3 buildings. Last week, we moved the train table down to the living room and Roman is obsessed with the set and plays with it whenever he gets a chance.

7) I'm so excited for Scrubs to start up tonight. I just don't get what happened to that show. Everyone I talk to raves about that show and so do critics, yet NBC could never make it work. It is hysterical and when it ends I hope the entire cast gets successful shows of their own because they deserve it.

8) Also, being the TV junkies that we are, Jason and I are excited for 24 to start again. I made him hold off on watching the 2-hour "teaser" that we DVR'd in November until this weekend, because I knew it was pointless to watch it sooner than we needed to since it would just make the wait that much more unbearable.

9) So some of you know my frustration in teaching Roman his colors. It was so bad for a while, I wondered if Roman was color-blind. Yellow was the first color we introduced more because Roman's buddy Lawson had learned yellow and the way Lawson said it was so cute, we wanted to hear Roman say it, too. Well the problem is that Roman associated the word "yellow" with the word "color" so every time we'd say "Roman what color is this?" and point to a fire-truck, he'd say "yellow" because we had used the word "color". That was July or August... doesn't matter, it was a long time ago and the only color we've had out of Roman in all this time has been "yellow". Well, the other day he pointed to one of his red trains and said "Santa." Then he did it again when I asked him what color paint he used to paint the red heart on his Sunday School project. So our 2 colors are "yellow" and "santa", which means red.

10) I'm reading "1,2,3 Magic" and just finished up the chapter on "Butter Up". I thought to myself while reading it, "Oh Roman isn't old enough to know how to butter up yet". Just days later, while disciplining Roman, he touched my face and looked me in the eyes and said in a syrupy voice "Hi Mommy!" and proceeded to rub my cheeks and pet my hair, etc... It was text-book "Butter Up." Then another time I was escorting his little butt over to time-out, he said "Go Tigers" out of nowhere {nice try} .

{Sorry for the lack of graphics, photos, etc... I am lacking creativity this week, I guess...}