Do you think I should perm my hair?

Anyone that knows Max knows that he has a bit of a hair fettish. Ever since he was little, he has liked to play with my hair. He wraps it around his hands and rubs it on his face, especially when he's tired. Sometimes he will play with Brielle's hair if I'm not available, but most of the time it's my hair that is his comfort object.

This is an actual conversation between me and Max.

Me: "Max, do you have any friends in your class at school?"
Max: "I like Kaylie!"
Me: "Is she cute?
Max: "YES!"
Me: "What does she look like?"
Max: "Kaylie has TOO MANY curls."
Me: "Too many curls?"
Max: "Yes, I like her curls."
Me: "Do you ever play with her hair?'
Max: "No."
Me: "Do you WANT to play with her hair?"
Max: (pauses to think for a moment) "Welllllllllll......................"




I'm just waiting for a call from the school.

Three year olds are random

Tuesday is our garbage day and Max's favorite day of the week. I need to open the blinds in Max's room and make sure there is a chair in front of the window for him to stand on. A few weeks ago, I forgot to open the blinds, and we heard the garbage truck on our street. Then I heard Max screaming in his room "IT'S NOT OPEN! IT'S NOT OPEN! OPEN IT! OPEN IT! OPEN IT!!!!!!!!"
I ran in the room, opened the blinds and lifted Max on the chair just in time for him to see the garbage truck. His little heart was beating about 280 beats a minute.
Last week he discovered that if he looked out the kitchen window, he could see the garbage truck on the street behind us.

I've never seen him so happy.

Each day, Max takes his cars and big blocks and puts three of them in front of every door in our house as well as the couch and chairs and refrigerator and dishwasher and filing cabinet and.................well, you get the idea. We have blocks and cars all over the floor.
These aren't ordinary blocks and cars, however, they are "garbage cans." Max crawls on the floor and stops at each grouping of garbage cans, picks one up, lifts it over his head and dumps it then returns it to it's original place. Then he lifts a second one over his head and dumps it, puts it back then moves on to the next pile.
He went around the room doing this and finally I asked him why he was only picking up two of the three blocks/cars (excuse me, "garbage cans") and leaving the third one there.
He looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said "Because I'm the garbage truck and those are also the recycle cans. With I come back later and be the recycle truck and get the recycle cans"

I stand corrected.

Silly me, I don't know why I couldn't tell those were recycle cans.

Aaron and Brielle are now off track from school and won't go back until January. This means that Max has two friends to play with, who NEVER annoy or tease him.
Several times yesterday, we accidently bumped or kicked one of his rows of cars/blocks, and this brought Max running from whatever far corner of the house that he was collecting garbage "NO! NO! NO! YOU ALSO LEAVE THE GARBAGE CANS ALONE!! YOU NOT MESS THEM UP!!!!" Then he would very carefully line them back up in the proper place, and his heart rate would return to normal, until the next time that one of the kids would move them, then it would start all over again.

Multiple times.

Each day.




Yesterday we had Christmas music playing on the radio all day. When it was time to get Max ready to go to preschool, I asked him to come into the bathroom to get his hair combed. He stood outside the door, shaking his hips to the music and said "I can't. I'm dancin' "
I said "Do you think you could come dance in the bathroom so I can comb your hair?"
"Nope" Max said as he boogied away "I'm still dancin'."

He went to school with messy hair.

When we picked him up from school, I asked him what he did in school (as I do every time I pick him up) he said "We got to watch room five's Christmas program, and they also watched our program."
"How fun!" I said "What kind of songs did room five sing?"
And Max replies "They singed too much songs!"



Last night we attended CJ's band concert (which by the way was fabulous! The band is great) Max did pretty well at the concert, but we got home later than his bed time, and he'd had it. We decided to have some ice cream as a treat, but only after everyone had their pajamas on.
Apparently, Max didn't feel the need to put his pajamas on but still expected to get ice cream. He threw such a fit that he got put in time out.
I won't go into great detail, but eventually he got the pajamas on, but he didn't get his bowl of ice cream until after everyone else had finished theirs, and he was sad.
I hugged him and we talked about it."Max" I said "the reason you didn't get your ice cream sooner is because you were having some issues with pajamas." and Max says "I not did! I have issues tomorrow!"
(Yes, I'm looking forward to his "issues" today)

In the end, he took one bite of ice cream then decided that he would rather have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Trimming the tree (with OCD)

Tonight I realized that we had so many things to do this week that if we didn't get the Christmas tree put up now, it would be a while before we could get to it. (and if we wait too long, we run the risk of "Why bother putting it up now, we'll just need to take it down in a week")

The first thing we had to do was to get the tree upstairs. I went to the closet under the stairs in the basement to get the large box with the tree along with all the boxes full of Christmas decorations.
What I found was all of the kids Halloween costumes for the last two years, tossed in the closet on top of all of the Christmas stuff.
The costumes are supposed to be put away nicely on the top shelves of the kids closets, not dumped conveniently in the storage closet under the stairs.

I yelled politely called to the children to have them put the costumes in their proper places.
Eventually this was done and we were able to reach all of the Christmas decorations. CJ and Aaron carried the heavy box with the tree in it up the stairs arguing humming Christmas tunes as they went.

DH got the tree out of the box and put it together. I bent the tree branches causing them to return back into their previously not smooshed state as they were before the tree was stuffed into the box last February 11December 31.

The children helped me fix the branches because I forced them to they like the tree to look nice and uniform too.
Next we put on the lights. I explained to the children that they were not to mess with the little box on the lights that controls the speed of the blinking. I like the slow glow setting. It calms me.
Every year, without fail, one of the kids will set that puppy to the tracer lights and it makes me dizzy and nauseous.

Next, we started to decorate the tree.

Now the single most important thing that everyone must remember is;

E.S.O.

Evenly. Spaced. Ornaments.

One thing that drives me batty is when there are a bunch of ornaments on the same branch, or worse than that, three of the same ornament within inches of each other.

THIS JUST SHOULD NOT HAPPEN!

Evenly spaced, people. Evenly spaced.

I let the kids put all of the ornaments on the tree themselves. CJ is now taller than me, so he can reach all of the higher branches.
I sat on the couch and watched as they completely ignored the ESO rule merrily decorated the tree.
I kept telling them EVENLY SPACED! REMEMBER THEY NEED TO BE EVENLY SPACED!! offered suggestions of where to put the ornaments, and the children basically ignored me did a great job of decorating the tree.
It was then that I got a stabbing pain in my eye. Someone had sped up the blinking of the lights. I growled inquired as to who might have adjusted the lights, after I had made it known to everyone in the room that I would have a coniption if they touched the light control box kindly requested that they leave it alone.
One of my darling children apparently didn't listen to me the first time explained that they had misunderstood and just thought that I didn't want them moving the control box from it's original spot.
We got the lights fixed, and redistributed the 12 ornaments that Max had put on a single branch on the backside of the tree where I couldn't see it.
It was finally finished, and it was lovely!

OK, seriously, they really did do a great job!





We even got the outside lights put up yesterday.

Yay us!




This concludes my last post for NaBloPoMo, or as I prefer to call it "NaBloPowhatwasIthinkingwhenIdecidedtodothisMo"

I'll be back tomorrow.
Or not.
I might take a week off.
Or not.
Or I might just wait until I actually have something interesting to write about.