Cowboy Zebra

Last week on Presidents Day, I was teaching the boys about President Lincoln and President Washington. They made little puppets with the two presidents on them. That evening during dinner I asked them to name their president that they had made. Ian said, "That's Father Abraham... Lincoln". Yes, he's been singing lot of Father Abraham at AWANAS! The boys also call the McDonalds restaurant "Old Macdonalds" or "Old Macdonalds had a farm". I'm waiting for the day that they ask me why it's called that since there's no farm there!

Maggie went pee-pee on the potty last night! I'm sure it was quite accidental, although she did ask to go potty right beforehand. She's been wanting to sit up on the little Dora toilet seat, but until last night she just sat and nothing happened.
In other news, Maggie can now climb up onto the chairs and then continuing up onto the kitchen table. This is quite inconvenient!

We've had this debate in our house about whether to "do" Santa Claus or not. I grew up knowing the story existed, but not believing Santa was real and brought you toys. Nathan grew up fully believing otherwise. As a kid, I never once wished we did the whole Santa thing. Christmas was terribly exciting without him. As an adult, I just couldn't justify lying to my kid about Santa. Speaking with other adults about the whole Santa thing, there seems to be a general commonality. People who grew up believing Santa can't imagine it any other way, and people who didn't grow up with Santa can't imagine it any other way either and have no regrets. Anyway, last year when we went to the mall to get pictures taken, I took the boys to go see the Santa set up. Ian was pretty intrigued and when I asked him if he wanted to go up to see Santa, he shook his head and clutched my leg. Springtime, Ian brings the Santa thing up. "Mom, why doesn't Santa bring me any presents?" I told him it must be because he didn't ask him for any. This summer he asked, "Is Santa real?" "No, he's pretend, but it's fun to pretend he's real." But then I was corrected. "No, Mom, he IS real. I SAW him. Remember at the mall?" He kept insisting, so I told him he could believe that if he wanted. This November we went back to the mall to get more pictures taken. Ian asked to go see Santa. And this time he marched right up to him with Elliott in tow, and they plopped down on his lap to make their requests. "See Mom? I TOLD you he was real". I asked Ian if he'd asked Santa one of his recurring questions, how does Santa get into the houses without a fireplace? Ian said, "I don't think he'd want me to ask him that." When we went to a restaurant at a mall while in Mobile at Thanksgiving, Ian stopped for a moment and said, "HMmm, I wonder if Santa's here?" He paused for a second, head cocked to the side before realizing this was a totally different mall far away from where he'd had the encounter. He shook his head, "No,this isn't the right mall".
So apparently Santa is coming to our house this year to leave a present under the tree. And when he asks me anything to do about Santa I just say, "Well they say...."

It was a very rainy week...thankfully there's fun to be found in the barn!

I bet you didn't know this!
Ian has been learning about the Pilgrims, Squanto, and the first Thanksgiving. He's also been learning about satellites from books we got from the library. We were reading a book today about the first Thanksgiving and it mentioned that the pilgrims gathered the corn stalks together. I wondered aloud why they might do that. Is it food for their animals or used for fires? I told Ian that we'd have to research it and find out. Ian says, "The thing is, the computer won't know. So the computer has to find out from the satellite. And I bet the satellite was launched with a rocket into space before the Pilgrims got there. Then a littler satellite would talk to the bigger satellite, and it would see what they used them for."

Our church is holding their annual fundraiser for the local crisis pregnancy center here and so they have been handing out baby bottles for people to fill with money. I came across ours today and said to Ian, "Oh, we need to fill this with money for the babies!" Ian said, "No! Babies don't need need money Mom, they'll choke on it!"

This afternoon I had to take the truck into a tire store to get the tires aligned. I told the boys ahead of time what we were going to do, and Elliott said to me, "Okay, Mom, but don't put the pedal to the metal, okay?" While we were waiting for the truck to be finished, we played several games out on a grassy field. We played Ring Around the Rosie (Maggie's new favorite), freeze tag, Red Light Green Light, and London Bridges. While we were playing London Bridges, Ian said, "Okay, when I get caught I'm going to be a superhero and bust free!" Boys...

Maggie took her first steps tonight!

Maggie learned how to shake her head "no" last week. It's pretty funny because she really had to think about it at first and get her eyes into the action. She's also been pointing recently and started saying "night night" last night. She knew the sign language sign for it, but now she says it, too, and it's pretty cute.