No Rest for the Weary

It always seems ironic to me that kids, who don't appreciate sleep at all, get the most of it. :) I mean, I love sleep...please, I'll take a nap and sleep for 12 hours a night any day. Sleep should be appreciated. But no...there must always be weeping and wailing at bedtime. Begging to watch TV *that Merrick really won't watch anyway* or to have a snack, or to have more tractors added to the growing pile in his crib.

Miss Tirzah hasn't, as of yet, been quite the sleeper Merrick has. But she's working on it. Last night she went for 11 hours...much to our relief. Right now we are just thankful that she is a hard sleeper, when she actually sleeps. At the taking of this photo Billy was watching the Texas-Nebraska game...and not very quietly either. She slept right through it, although I'm not sure how. She seems to have a little more faith in The Longhorns than we did...Billy was watching the game through his fingers and pacing around the room. She had no doubts they'd pull off that last second win. ;)



This week at I Heart Faces the theme was Sweet Dreams...check out their site for more great photos!

Daddy's Girl

I don't know that Tirzah is specifically a daddy's girl just yet. She seems to be an anyone-who-will-love-and-adore-me's girl actually. :) But her daddy is really really good at making little lady laugh. I don't know if it's his scratchy face, that thankfully I don't have ;), or if that he's a little bit more willing to wrestle up the kiddos than I am...whatever it is she just laughs and squeals at him. Here's a video of the two of them playing the other night:

Heavenly Peace

There aren't many things that get this reaction out of my crazy blond bundle of energy. I noticed over Thanksgiving, with all the time we spent at my mom's place...that Merrick couldn't get enough of the movie Madagascar.

I am not really a fan of kids watching too much TV...and that's never been a problem with Merrick...obviously. He won't usually even acknowledge that it's on. But as soon as I put in "watch yion" as he calls it...which means watch lion, his favorite character...he drops everything and just stands in awe.

I'm not planning on making a habit out of playing Madagascar. But I'm glad to know I do have a secret weapon should I need it.

...and Scrooge liked it.

I had to do a little arm twisting to get our house decorated for Christmas. I have mentioned previously that my usually so cooperative and helpful husband is something of a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas. He argues with me every time I say this...but I told him it was pretty much set in stone when he told me that Christmas music made him depressed. ;) Who says that kind of thing? Um, Scrooge.

He told me yesterday that he would get all our decorations out of the shed so that we could put them up. Yes, I probably could get them out myself...I'm all for being efficient and taking care of things myself, but there are bugs in the shed. I don't handle bugs very well as you know. So I waited.
When he got home, it was pouring down rain. Like we really need more rain over here at the swamp. :) So he tried to put off my little Christmas decorating event that was planned for the evening.

I had to do a little good old fashioned pouting, but he finally decided to get the stuff into the house. I decided to spare him the Christmas music, because that just might have made him move out. Wouldn't want to depress anyone you know. ;)

I'm thinking that now that everything is up he's feeling a little better about Christmas...and we did actually have a great time putting up all the decorations together. Thankfully Tirzah was napping, and Merrick has only pulled half the ornaments off the tree already. This photo is of him plotting to unplug it. I used to use this spray-on pet repellent on the tree before we had kids, to keep my cat from climbing our tree and eating the ornaments. I wish they made one for kids. ;)

This week over at YouCapture the theme was *Tell a story using photos that make you happy*. I can hardly tell a story on this blog without using photos. I can hardly walk around my house without taking photos, who am I kidding. Not like that's noticeable or anything. And infecting Scrooge with my overflowing Christmas cheer definitely makes me happy, too. There's hope for that boy yet. ;)

Friendly-ish Competition

I love holidays. They are fun, cozy, crazy, busy and relaxing all at the same time. I especially like holidays because the whole family is back together again, thanks to breaks from school, time off work, etc. Our family always loves a little friendly out for blood competition when we get the chance to hang out.

This past Thanksgiving week was fun because my sister, Amanda, was home from LU, along with her boyfriend. Billy and I are usually up to our eyeballs in diapers and baby formula, so it was a lot of fun to hang out with some other adults *and I use that term loosely on all of us...because I still don't feel like an adult 90% of the time ;)* and have a good time. The guys got to go climbing on Wednesday, and we got to cook all day. *I'd much rather have been climbing myself, but don't think the boys can handle Thanksgiving dinner on their own. We'd probably have had Wendy's or something. ;)*

Amanda and I did challenged the boys to a best-out-of-three game of pool after all our slaving away in the kitchen. It was fun, and we were sure of our win, until the last minute. We decided they couldn't handle a loss, and it would be better to let them win than to hear the excuses they would make if we beat them *wink, wink*.
It was fun, and we are looking forward to putting the boys in their place sometime in the near future.