A Birthday Card for Ma

I'm going to share the birthday card I recently drew for my mom. We kid around a lot, and sometimes I have to immortalize it. I wasn't planning to post it, but Mom said I should, so.

Usually when I Skype with my folks back East, the chats are pleasant. Sometimes, though, when we get talking, I admit I can get started on lamenting or fretting about who knows what (guess we're never too old to unload on our parents), or the boys go overboard smushing their stuffed lambs into the camera and bleating. Either way, it isn't pretty.

Have you ever had calls that get too intense like that and you want to bail ASAP? In those times, I've deduced that my folks have decided to make like, whoops, the feed is conveniently frozen...and, for authenticity, they make sure to be mid-blink or mid-chew, just like when it freezes in real life.

They'd just have to make sure my brother is in on it.

They tell me they'd never do such a thing...

Hooray for Dad

Today is Hubs's birthday, I thought today would be a good day to express my appreciation for something in particular that he brings to our family.

Namely, he has a nonexistent threshold for the kid activities for which I have about two minutes of patience/interest, such as wrestling and snowball fights.

I don't know how many moms wrestle with their kids (we didn't wrestle with our mom. Is it a thing?), but I'll humour the kids for a few flips or being a human jungle gym. RAWRR. Tackle, etc.

Then I'm done and ready to move on. Anyone want to draw or read a book or clean out the fridge?

Hubs, on the other hand, not only wrestles with the kids, he has an absolute ball doing it. They'll be roaring and shrieking for a good half-hour. Yay for Dad, because the kids sure like it.

Same goes for snowball fights. I love sledding, making snowmen and making forts, but snowball fights, not so much. Here is a graph illustrating our respective enthusiasm when the kids invite us to have a snowball fight:

Or, to put it another way,

Sometimes I wish I had a higher tolerance for that stuff. But then, the kids have a more-than-willing participant in their dad, and for that I'm grateful. And I imagine the kids are too.

Happy birthday, Hubs. Love you. I'll be over here drawing.

Advent Calendars

My mom got the kids those cardboard advent calendars with the chocolate in them (still wondering where mine is, Ma!). 

The idea is that you open the door numbered with the current date and have a little chocolate treat each day in December right up until Christmas Eve.

Some kids actually follow the plan. Some, not so much. 

(also add December 3 denial that it was all eaten)

Which one are you?

Candy Cane Problems

I can't unwrap candy canes without breaking them.

Who cares, right? Tastes the same.

Not to kids, it doesn't. It tastes like minty disappointment. There's no greater ruiner than she who was entrusted with a new candy cane and broke it, and no one more insulted than he whose brother managed to get an intact one.

Gingerly peeling the plastic off a candy cane while your 3-year-old breathes down your neck feels much like those people in the movies with the wire cutters attempting to diffuse a bomb.

And if you fail, the results are also comparable.

Big Boots

Purchasing footwear for kids is always a great reminder of how fast kids are growing. "I can't believe it," we say as they tromp around in their new boots.

Well, believe it. They had these adorable little round kid boots last year, and now they have these giant monster truck-tire jobbies with velcro (bought from the OTHER side of Kiddie Kobbler).

I get all faux-traumatized (well, maybe a bit for real), then I remind myself that they sell them large so the kids can grow into them over the winter.

I also remind myself that one day, the shoe tray in the entryway will look like this

and when that day comes, their old Kiddie Kobbler boots will seem still pretty tiny after all.

Family Game Night

We have a decent collection of board games, mostly from the days when we'd get together with friends for "game nights". Nowadays, Hubs and I occasionally enjoy a game of Dominion or Lost Cities when we go wild and try something other than Netflix. 

Board games are fun. We look forward to playing many a board game with our sons, too. 

Not sure when that'll be, though. Big Bro has liked board games since ever. Little Bro does too, but it's a different kind of "like".

As in, "I like to make my own rules",  More of a monkey-wrenchy, sabotagey kind of like.

Family Game Night, circa 2016.

The "Sugar High" Myth

Here's a fun fact to follow up on Halloween candy overload:

Did you know that the "sugar high" is not a thing?

I admittedly sometimes feel skeptical, especially after a night like tonight spending a good hour being mauled by my two rowdy, KitKat-filled post-trick-or-treaters dressed as blanket ghosts.

But, according to research (and this isn't new), an overload of Halloween candy (etc.) doesn't actually make kids into wild baboons. It's the excitement of the day, or parents' expectation of a sugar high that makes it seem related. We see it because we are looking for it.

So how do you like that? The correlation between sugar and craziness was all in your imagination. So when your kids are having a post-Snickers swing from the curtains, or doing donkey kicks in the tub... all in your imagination.

I have quite the imagination sometimes, it seems.