WOW. Who am I? My mom? With the posting once a week? Damn, next thing you know, I wont have posted since April.
It's been pretty crazy. We are in the full swing of the season... the holiday season and the soccer season, plus finishing up my last duties for TA-ing. Soccer has been great. We've been on a tear: we're 10-2-1, right now. We have three more games before Christmas break, two against cupcake teams... one against a team that whom we owe a beating (Taylor). When/if we win tonight, it will have been exactly one month since we last lost. That is an eternity in the high school soccer season. Even crazier, if we beat Godby tonight, West Gasden tuesday and Taylor on Thursday, we'll have a thirteen game unbeaten streak. That's definitely some type of record for WHS... :)
I gave them yesterday off, so they could start preparing for finals next week. Which meant that I could do some crafts at home with Nico last night. This is where I will admit my latest obsession. Martha Stewart glitter. ZOMG! I die! This ain't your granny's glitter! That is all I am saying!! I recently got a subscription to MADE magazine, which is actually about DIY, crafts, etc. and not about the acceptance of lower level mob guys into mid-level leadership... in case you were confused.
See them for yourself HERE.
In any case, when I saw this in the magazine, I became convinced that this holiday season would not be perfect until I had a bunch of these that I could call my own. Of course, this is completely ridiculous, because we have opted out of putting ornaments on the tree this year (since I am not sure Nico's obsession with it won't result in a repat of the Christmas 1986 (when Nicole and I caught beat downs from Dad after JJ pulled the tree over because he tried to climb it). Thus far, I have caught Nico trying to take a garland of the tree and I have also caught him hitting the tree. Yes, I just said hitting the tree. Part of this wonderful phase he is in. Oh yes...
Hitting and biting. I dont think he is doing it to be mean- I think he is doing it to see what I will do. Because as soon as I tell him no, he becomes obsessed with doing it. So I have tried the really serious Dad face... he used to lower his chin and cock his eyebrows real stern like and lower his voice and you knew he meant business. Nico hasn't quite gotten it yet...
He is definitely a talky mctalk lately. He tries to repeat a lot of the words we say... and he knows a lot of words, like for body parts (head, hair, mouth, belly, hands, feet). Sometimes he gets ears, eyes and nose right... most of the time he gets those wrong. He knows tissue, toothpaste, toothbrush, dog, Dada, Mama (sometimes), bathroom, laundry room, bath. I didn't realize that he was learning body parts until just before Thanksgiving... and I was a little mystified. Who was teaching him that? How did he know what tissues were? Well, school. They actually teach things at his school. Can you believe that? I am stunned.
So going along with this interest in talking is his increasing frustration with not being able to communicate. So we've had a LOT of meltdowns lately. Sometimes the afternoon is just one big meltdown. One of my favorite things that he does is when you take something he wants (like the broom) he stomps and spins himself around in a circle. He is so mad... but it is so funny. And, he doesn't want to do anything you want him to do. So like yesterday, I was starting my long awaited MS glitter christmas ornament project. Now, mind you, I wanted to do about a dozen of these damn things to take to Nico's school this week. And guess who wasn't pulling his weight? Yeah, Nico. For real. Wouldn't use the paint brush to paint glue onto ornament.... but wouldnt let me have it. I handed him an ornament at one point because he was being kind of gentle... which he responded by throwing it on the floor like a ball (to be fair, he probably thought it was a ball). But definitely a crank.
We're also in the process of changing up the sleeping situation in the house. While we do love this new house (A LOT) it is definitely a 60 year old house. SOOOOOO POORLY INSULATED. Seriously, I can feel cold air blowing into Nico's room. Drafty much? Since we have a fireplace, Dave and I are trying to take a different approach to energy management in our house this winter... simply because as blase as I am about spending thirty dollars on martha stewart glitter, I still have a coniption whenever Dave is like, "Yeah, the power bill was $400.00." WHA-WHAT?
So we set up the Pack and Play in our room, with the idea that we would kind of close off Nico's room while it was cold... mostly because I felt like it was too cold to leave him in there at night without the space heater on... but Dave has this fear of setting the house on fire. So by having all three of us in the same room, we can have the space heater on (and know relatively quickly if it catches fire). Plus it will lower our energy bills, I think... we get the fireplace going in the evenings and when we head to bed we are really only heating two rooms. But this has meant that Nico's sleep has been all jacked up, but it was before- this started back just before Thanksgiving. So he hasn't been sleeping through the night... which I get. But in the last week or so, he's been waking up and STAYING up. Which I am definitely not a fan of. At all- cause now I am just cranky and tired :(
love that glitter!
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