The Happiest Place on Earth?

So, we finally took our long-talked about first trip to Disneyland!  However in many ways, the experience wasn't all any of us expected it to be.  Let's just say Colby and I are still fine-tuning our parenting skills and unfortunately, some of that had to take place at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Mishap #1: Star Tours

First ride of the trip.  Reid is OBSESSED with Star Wars.  Surely, this will be like a dream come true for him, right?  Wrong.  Both, Colby and I must have forgotten about the droid that was "operating the ship" pretending to have been controlling it for the first time and simulating a crash-landing.  Poor Reid.  He really thought we crashed.  

 

Mishap #2: The Matterhorn

Yes, I wrote, "The Matterhorn".  I know.  Horrible parents.  Should've trusted my intuition when Colby insisted Reid go on it, but it had been over a decade since I've been there, so I let Colby convince him to go on it to see... *cringing* ...the snowman.  At the time, Colby mistakenly believed that if he could distract Reid from seeing the ride while in line and convince him to go on it, he would be unlocking the adventurous side of Reid, freeing him to enjoy the thrill of rides such as these.  I knew it was wrong, even before the ride began to creep into the dark tunnel and Reid let out his long, deafening, never-before-heard shriek that he wanted off and tried desperately to wriggle out of the harness holding him in for the unknown nightmare awaiting him.  The ride seemed to last days, as we were shot through black tunnel after black tunnel, with an occasional ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN flashing in front of us with its red eyes piercing through my heart.  When it was finally over, I hugged Reid so tight, trying to hold back my raging blame towards Colby to help distract me from my own responsibility in it for not going with my intuition and allowing this to happen.  I could tell from Colby's face that I didn't need to say anything, but I probably still said a lot, including, "Snowman?  Snowman????  THAT was a monster!"  Oops doesn't cut it, I know.  If you ask Reid now how he liked Disneyland, I guarantee the first thing he'll say is, "I didn't like the snowman."  It's almost funny.  Someday.

Mishap #3: Yep, there's more.

Apparently 90% of the rides at Disneyland involve an element of fear: darkness, villians, natural disasters, etc.  Even the rides I considered to be "safe" rides, were not so, especially following the trauma of the Matterhorn.  The Peter Pan boat: darkness.  The Nemo submarine: more, even darker darkness, not to mention Bruce, the pointy-toothed, off-the-wagon vegetarian shark making a sudden appearance.  The list goes on...

We eventually just let Reid choose the rides, as we should have from the start.  He ended up sticking to the same few rides, which we all took turns going on with him again and again.  Once we all mostly recovered from the above mishaps, the week-long trip with three days at Disneyland/California Adventure was a blast, as  you can see from all the pics.  We were hugely blessed that both of our moms came along, as well as Colby's dad & step-mom who joined us for a day.

Reid's spirits had noticeably lifted after transforming into Pirate Reid:

Most of all, he loved meeting the characters, specifically Woody and Jesse from Toy Story.  They were so sweet to him, taking time to point out the Toy Story characters on the shirt he was wearing.  

 

 

Reid put his Fisher Price camera to work when we met Goofy and Pluto.  

The shot in the upper-left, he took and is one of my faves  from our trip.  The one in the upper-right was the one Goofy took after taking the camera from Reid!  The lower-left is Reid's idea of getting in a picture with them.  Lower-right, Reid took of Pluto at Goofy's Kitchen.

  

The Pixar Play Parade at California Adventure was also a big hit!

  

 

 

If Ronin could talk, I believe he would say that Goofy's Kitchen was his favorite stop.  The characters were so sweet with him that it almost justified the cost of eating there after Reid decided to suddenly be completely uninterested in any of them.  Chip (or was it Dale) would rub his fuzzy chipmunk finger on Ronin's cheek in a circular motion while Ronin froze in awe for minutes. 

And Goofy went above and beyond when he tucked Ronin's napkin into his shirt at the beginning of our brunch then, afterwards used it to clean him good as new.

  

All in all, it was a blast and we can't wait to do it again!  Well, most of it.  

Reid Can Read!

Outside of our more structured preschool, I try to make it a point to incorporate learning in play time with Reid.  He'll often ask to play our "build-a-word game" in which I'll write the ending of a word such as "at" and have him sound it out.  Once he gets it I'll doodle the animal or object for him, which he loves.  With coaching, he was reading three-letter words (with short-vowel sounds) just a couple days after his 3rd birthday.  Now he's reading three to four-letter, short-vowel words without any coaching.  This is really encouraging and exciting for me.  I think homeschooling will be a lot of fun with this one.

These were taken last October as you can see from the calendar... and Reid's helmet hair:

 

Ronin, on the other hand may be a different story...  At his age, Reid was enthusiastically communicating with several baby signs.  Ronin flat out refuses to sign anything other than "milk" ...And "light", which are practically the same sign.  He seems quite bright, so I'd been wondering if it's pure stubbornness.  That theory was confirmed in my mind the other day during lunch.  He did his usual yell and point to signal he wanted more.  I again showed him the more sign with my hands, which he only responded with another holler and an emphasized point at his food.  When I tried to take his hands, encouraging him to do the sign himself, he jerked his hands back, his cries crescendoing.  I shook my finger at him with an authoritative, "No!"  He then, with a pouted lip shook his finger right back at me!  I gasped and said, "See!  I knew you could sign!!"  (Oh, dear...)

Darndest Things -Pt. 3

This age Reid is at is the most challenging for us so far... especially when he makes us laugh while we're trying to discipline him.

The other night, we allowed Reid to eat dinner in the living room while watching a t.v. show.  Not the norm, so it was kind of a treat.  However, he needed a couple reminders throughout to keep eating.  After one of those reminders, he responded to Colby with an irritated, frustrated tone, "I AM!" 

Colby: Number one, you don't talk to me like that...

(Before Colby could follow up with correction number 2)

Reid: Dad?

Colby: Yes, Son.

Reid: Who's Number One?

(As I muffled my laughter in the background, Colby attempted to keep his composure... aaand that was about the end of that.)

I Do Not Like Them, Reid-I-Am

With Ronin over baby food and a preschooler who can detect the odor of nutrition from a mile away, I was quick to pull out my Deceptively Delicious cookbook (a collection of kid-friendly recipes which camouflage nutritious fruit and vegetable purees into familiar dishes) to make use of the stock of fruit and veggie puree cubes in my freezer.  I've made the whole wheat peanut butter-banana muffins with carrot, apple sauce muffins with butternut squash, pita pizzas with a hidden layer of spinach, butternut squash quesadillas, and yam & ham grilled cheese sandwiches.  

I've also since made it a habit to mix in a yellow squash, yams or cauliflower whenever making macaroni and cheese or scrambled eggs.  I've continued to serve veggies on the side, but with less pressure to eat them, which has actually gotten him to eat certain ones a bit more willingly.  It's also helped to serve in courses, of course serving his visable veggies first, while the rest of his lunch is cooking.  Next on the list: chocolate cake with beets!

On a less stealthier note, Reid and I made Green Eggs & Ham together for the first time.  We read the book first, which Reid loved.  He seemed totally on board with the idea, however while we were cooking, he started with the, "I don't like green eggs and ham..."  I told him he sounded just like the guy in the book, having not even tried them, yet he insisted he didn't like them.  Once they were served and I was able to coax him into taking a bite, his face lit up as he exclaimed, "I DO like green eggs in ham!  I DO like them, Sam-I-Am!"  We've made them several times since then for breakfast, lunch and dinner at his request.

Any other tips on feeding our picky eaters?

Tradition! (The Christmas Post)

Tradition is weird.  It makes you do things before you even realize that you don't know why you do them.  By the way, the title is supposed to be read with a loud, Russian accent, as in Fiddler on the Roof.  Anyway...  

As this last Christmas season approached, I'd been doing a lot of thinking about how I would like Christmas to look for our family.  I hadn't really put much weight into it before kids, but lately these things have become much more important to me, as a mother.  I knew that I didn't want Christmas trees, presents, Santa nor his reindeer to overshadow the birth of Jesus and while pondering that, the voice of Bing Crosby came to me as he sang, "Santa knows that we're all God's children, That makes everything right..." over my iphone's Pandora radio app.  Colby and I decided that it was ok for our kids to grow up enjoying all those things, but we agreed we had to be deliberate with our focus and priorities.  

We envision having a large family and one of the things that we find most attractive about that is having family traditions to reunite for or pass down after the kids are grown.  My goal is to be more intentional with how we spend our time, especially during this season, and not get caught up in the things we (I) feel obligated to do, but don't make that list.  For example, you probably didn't notice that you hadn't gotten a family newsletter from us, right?  :)

Here are some of the Christmas-time traditions we have (or would like to*) start:

• Make Christmas Pancakes with Cookie Cutters*
  
• Bake a Birthday Cake for Jesus, and of course sing (Reid will jump on any opportunity to sing "Happy Birthday", making this one even more fitting)*
• Make a "Thankful Garland" by Writing What We're Thankful for and Making a Paper Chain out of it*
• Creating our own Wrapping Paper
• Staying up Late for a Classic Christmas Movie*
• Taking a Drive to See Christmas Lights
• Letting the Kids Shop for a Toy to Donate to a Child in Need
• Bake Treats for Neighbors*
• Making Presents more Meaningful
• Dinner by Candlelight*
• Visit the local Drive-thru Nativity Scene*
• Visit Del Osso Farm's "Holiday on the Farm"*
• Let the Kids Choose a Donation from the World Vision Gift Catalog 

While there were a lot of things that we didn't get to (we came up with our list half-way through December), there were some I knew I wanted to start right away, especially with Reid entering into Me-First-and-the-Gimme-Gimme mode.  

With his many grandparents asking him what he wanted for Christmas, we've been hearing a lot of "I want..., I want..." out of him, so when I took him to Toys R Us to pick out a couple toys for "kids who don't have many like he does" I wasn't sure how he would take it.  He was completely on board, picking out a couple Shake-n-Go cars, until it was time to drop them off.  He did hand them over willingly though, after another quick discussion of why we were doing that.  I was pretty proud of him.

The other new tradition I didn't want to postpone for the same reason of giving Reid a glimpse of how much we have to be grateful for and also just for the sake of giving was the World Vision Gift Catalog shopping.  I explained to Reid in preschooler terms that our family was going to buy a farm animal for a poor family in another part of the world to help produce food for them.  After he seemed to understand, I gave him the catalog and told him that he could choose the animal.  After perusing the catalog for a few minutes, he turned back to the page with the $500 dairy cow and said, "I want to buy the cow for Ronin!!"  After further explanation (and some negotiating), we settled on a goat and a general donation.

We're also keeping the santa photo tradition because I still love looking back on the annual santa photos my grandma has kept of my brother, cousins and me from birth, through the awkward years.   

Most of us stopped getting in line to see Santa at a more appropriate age, however my brother (at 23) managed to convince the man in red to sit on his lap:

Reid and Ronin's Santa Pics to date:

This was also our second year hosting Christmas for our family, which meant a lot of decorating, cooking and a mountain of presents.  We had our usual enchilada & tamale dinner, followed by presents on Christmas Eve, but exercised our hosting authority to change our traditional Christmas Day turkey dinner to the most amazing brunch... Ever.  

The Decorations (with a retro spin, of course):

The Food:

As usual, I had to take a pictures of the things I cooked or baked that I didn't manage to totally screw up.  No, I'm not being modest.  Ask my husband or mom-in-law.  Here are some of the prettier things I made: 

Peppermint Mocha Cookies, Chocolate Toffee Trifle, the Veggie Tree Colby wouldn't stop making fun of, and a Caramel-Glazed Apple Cake

Ronin proving that baby's prefer the box over the toy that came inside of it:

My Attempt at Capturing a Serene Christmas Morning Picture of My Boys:

Thanks for making it to the end of this obnoxiously long post!  I'd love to hear from you on what your favorite childhood Christmas traditions were or any new ones that you and your family have started!