Here I am on Thanksgiving with my two brothers and my two sons. You wouldn't believe how often I start to call Henry (oldest kid) by the older brother's name (Christian) and same with the 2 baby boys. I especially do it a lot when we are all together like this. It's like I'm caught in a time warp: am I the big sister or the mother?
Wilfred is the brother who lives in Australia. He brought those koala bear ears for my kids supposedly, but he and Paul seemed to spend a lot of time wearing them. I think all Australians must actually walk around with koala bear ears. I'll have to visit someday to find out for sure.
We had a wonderful almost-week of holiday stuff. Wilfred and Paul visited us at home for a couple days, and then we all moved on to mom and dad's house. Henry's behavior was much improved over last year. It may be because our visit was shorter, but I like to think it is also because he is growing up.
He and Tommy came to the dinner table a bit early, and were finished eating their crescent rolls and cranberry sauce right about the time the rest of us sat down. But he was overall much more agreeable about getting off of Grandma's computer and complying with other requests. And when the boys and I went to the zoo on the day after Thanksgiving, we had this exchange:
Henry: Can we please stop in the gift shop?
Me: I don't think we'll go to the gift shop today.
Henry: Why will we not go to the gift shop today?
No yelling or running away or bolting into the gift shop in defiance. He just calmly asked me why not? He did proceed to make the same request several more times, but I held my ground, and he held his composure. Yay for us both!
MG was right on about the #&*@!&# water heater. It died a horrible death this weekend and we had to get a new one. Just what you want to spend hundreds of dollars on during the holiday season! Luckily, Lowe's decided to give us some credit, and provided emergency same-day installation, so it had a somewhat happy ending.
7 comments:
Oh Poop! about the water heater. Spending money on that kind of stuff is never fun.
I am so impressed by how Henry responded at the zoo. Sometimes I wonder the same thing about the changes that maturity brings. Is all of Oliver's "progress" because of the therapies or because he is just getting older? Maybe a little of both.
Also: LOVE the ears!
Oh I'm so happy to hear that you didn't end up with a big ol' technicolor moldy wet mess in your basement like we did -AND that they got your heater installed so quickly!
Kudos to Henry for keeping it together. He did a great job.
Love the ears, too!
so great to hear about your lovely holiday and WOW i LOVE how flexible henry was! talk about going with the flow!
Don't you just breathe a HUGE sigh of relief when a holiday comes and goes with no major meltdowns??? I always feel like I hold my breath through holidays and don't really enjoy them til they're over and I can look back and see that she did ok!
Thanks, Gretchen! I TOTALLY appreciate your extremely helpful wisdom!
That's cute how you get the big and little boys names mixed up.
Henry certainly is growing up! And you, holding your ground...WAY TO GO to both of you!!!
Sorry about your water heater :o( Ours bit the dust this year too. I noticed it was leaking water all over our basement floor.
I love the Koala ears.... and a big WOW for Henry and his WHY question about going into the gift shop!!!! Very cool. I get so excited just knowing that someday Gabe may ask me a why question. I suspect it will be about food. (lol) "Mommy, why can't I have more Perky 'Os???"
A big smile.
Henry is doing such a great job.Yeah Henry!
Kristin
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