Small town Santa vs. Mall Santa

This weekend we decided to take the boys to Medford to visit the "mall" Santa. We took them to see Santa in Etna two weekends ago and that was quite fun. Carter was so giddy standing in line and Miles didn't cry once. All of the local businesses were open and were providing holiday treats. The bank was passing out popcorn and Carter took his from Virginia, then all on his own, turned around and dramatically yelled "Merry Christmas!". It truly warmed your heart to see the boys so happy experiencing a little "hometown" Christmas Cheer. Well, we should have left it at that and totally skipped the "big-town"Christmas.

We knew we were in for trouble when we arrived at the mall to find the line to see Santa was so long that Mall Security was involved. While Bradley took Carter to the bathroom to kill time, I used my communication degree skills to promptly people watch. While observing my counterparts, I also was presented with a price-list for ways to commemorate our trip to see the jolly man. Before I even looked at prices I was aware of the bold letters prohibiting no outside photography. After a few calculations I realized that the only way we would be able to show our kids that we did indeed care enough to put them through this hell, it was going to cost us about $25 bucks. Good thing the line was long enough so that I was able to process these emotions. As we got closer to Santa, Carter was able to see the stuffed animals. At least this year he wasn't running around trying to shoot the big bucks.

While we were within five feet of Santa, Carter (who had been an absolute angel) almost had a meltdown because the autistic child in front of us kept trying to touch him. Carter was okay for the first few minutes, but soon felt his bubble being violated. I appreciate teaching my child about diversity and boundaries, but this kid was a little too much. (He and his three siblings). Anywho, we get up to Santa and he is able to easily get Carter on his lap, but Miles is pretty reluctant. In an effort to make everything okay, the dirty old man offers his lap to me. I promptly decided to sit off to the side, and Miles was happy.

The pictures turned out fine (for 25 bucks they better), except for the fact that I realized I had dressed Miles in shorts instead of pants. Insert Mother of the Year Award here. I guess seeing Santa is all part of the magic of Christmas, but I think next year we will visit Santa and Etna and call it good. We'll leave with our pockets fuller, our children happier, and our boundaries less violated.

In addition to making sure we fill our kids' minds with the commercialism of Christmas, we also made sure to touch on the true meaning of Christmas and the Christmas Story. Carter played an angel in the Christmas pageant (he was so good last year, they asked him to make another cameo appearance), but this year he was upstaged by his younger brother who played baby Jesus. Jesus didn't care much for Mary, and Carter got pissed at another angel who wanted to play with his toys, but I doubt that Mary and Joseph really had that swell of a night in a manger in the freezing cold anyways right?

Daddy Blues

Honestly, lately I feel as if I live for the weekends. However, this weekend was not one I wish to repeat. The fun started early on last week when Bradley was complaining of back pain. Not one to ignore my husband, I simply nodded and showed my "oh, no" face, all whilst still finishing off the nightly tasks. Come Thursday, he simply had turned into a very creaky tin man, and had the attitude to match. I tried to make him a chiropractor appt. for that day, but they couldn't see him until Friday at 3:30. Ah, yes, he will go to the chiropractor and feel better in time to get our Christmas Tree this weekend and hang some lights, Clark Griswold style. We all know what happens when we make plans in the Isbell home. . .

Friday night his back felt much better, but come Saturday morning he was in sheer agony around his neck. Sure he had in fact broken his neck, he spent the ENTIRE day on the couch in a 90 degree angle popping Vicodin I had leftover from giving birth to our youngest. Let me remind you of what Vicodin does to my husband who is already crankier, let's just say it didn't cross my mind to look up the number to 1-800-DIVORCE . Come Saturday night, we were all ready to go to the local tree lighting and had JUST told our two year old that Santa was coming. My husband who was all hopped up on Vicodin agreed to come. No sooner were we ready to go than the power went out. Sh**! Once the two year old was calmed and convinced that Santa would indeed still make an appearance at a later time, we decided to go to Yreka to get some dinner. Once again, the power comes back on, we go to dinner at the Pub, (where someone commented that Bradley looked shell-shocked, no just pain and Vicodin). My parents commented on how bad he looked and called their friend who is a masseuse (yes, my parents have friends like this), to come over the next day. After dinner, Bradley drove us around while we looked at lights. Carter looked at the lights and said things like, "I can't believe my eyes", "Amazing!", and "it's beautiful!".

Okay, so sometime around midnight on Saturday, I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Bradley attempted to go into our hottub to relieve his pain. This was after I had found him hunched over his dresser crying. Anywho, he goes into the hot tub (naked - we do have some privacy), I fall asleep on the couch, and he finds himself stranded in the hot tub and not able to get out. Luckily, he hears our newly retired neighbor out telling his dog to take a "poo-poo". Out of sheer determination to not have to seek help from our older neighbor, while being naked, and slightly "broken", Bradley miraculously manages to get out of the hot tub. He then comes in, wakes me up, and repeats the story, to which I start laughing, which makes him laugh, and then double over in pain.

Sometime around noon the next day an elderly gentlemen, wearing late 1980's NorthFace gear, and with a European accent, (whom we have NEVER met before), comes over and gives Bradley the best/worst massage of his entire life for two hours. Bradley feels better, the gentlemen leaves, and then all hell breaks loose. Apparently, having a massage can make the toxins in your body move around. Well, now Bradley is toxic. He's felt as if he has had the flu all day and has eaten nothing. We're hoping that he feels better by tomorrow.

In the meantime, Miles has been booked for Baby Jesus, in the church pageant, and I may have to forgo our "Griswold Family Christmas Tree" by going down to the local tree-lot. Yes, Fort Jones has one of those now. But the good news is that by next weekend, perhaps I'll be ready to be a "weekend warrior" again.

Pee-Pee for Two

You know there's nowhere for your day to go but up when it starts by getting pissed on. This week at 4:30 am I started my day with a warm stream of pee from Mr. Miles. (Yes, our seven month old shares some of his sleep-time with us, but Carter did the same thing and now sleeps on his own.) Anyways, after I finished changing Miles, and getting him to go back to sleep, while laying out on the coach, my running-alarm went off. I never heard it and Bradley turned it off. Somewhere in there Carter decided to tag-team us and Bradley (who by the way had put his back out and was hopped up on Vicodin), one-leg Charlied it up the stairs, and somehow packed our 40 pound two-year old back down. Although none of us, besides the gimped up father, were in our respective sleeping arrangements we were all dozing quite wonderfully in dreamland, until I was awakened by a knocking at the door. Yes, it was a school-day, and yes, I normally leave at 7:25, but no, this was my mother waking us all up at 7:30 am. I don't know what I looked like that day, I probably scared all of my 4th graders, but I still managed to make it to school by 8 am and wasn't so frazzled that I maimed any ten year olds.

In other news, Carter is seemingly completely potty-trained. I'd like to say that this new-found skill has left us with huge amounts of wiggle-room in our budget, but sadly our dog getting run over by a car last month has triggered a rather larger contribution to our local vet's office. (Which coincidentally is our neighbor). Yes, Carter even wakes up in the middle of the night to tell us he has to pee. He has pooped on the potty for over a year because of some constipation issues (TMI?), but due to the diligent efforts of our wonderful "Eileeny", he has mastered the art of the potty. In fact, he is quite the self-motivator on the potty. Lately he has been really into Bob the Builder and last weekend I could hear him singing to himself, "Can we pee-pee? YES. WE. CAN!". Those of you who know the usual lyrics of Bob and his crew, can appreciate this comment.

Onto other words of wisdom, last weekend I held a baby shower for my good friend and Bradley took Carter on a solo-trip to Medford. Bradley and his friend Steve have been brewing up a batch of "Apple Pie", in Bradley's man-cave and they needed some sort of auto-siphonor from the elusive land of "Black Bird". I truly wanted to experience Carter's first trip to this eclectic store, home to the rightfully titled "Black Bird", but alas didn't make it. Bradley shared that upon entering the store, Carter proclaimed with sheer delight, "Oh, holy Dollars!". I think this comment either points to my fascination with our ever-shrinking budget, or my lack of commitment to the church. Either way, he's a boy after his daddy's heart, a lover of a manly man's store.

As you approach this holiday season, may you live it through the eyes of a two-year old, or an infant. Sheer happiness and anticipation, maybe a few "holy dollars" too. But in the wise words of my own father, I guess maybe it is better to be "pissed off", than "pissed on".

Four days of goodness!

After a month of pumpkin patching it, it's sure nice to have a weekend to catch up. Luckily, with a section cross-country meet on Thursday and Veteran's Day on Friday, it's been a nice long weekend with the kiddos. I'd like to interject here with a short snippet of:

"Sh** my kid says, Vol. 2" - in celebration of Veteran's Day.

"Bi-yah, was a solider?"

"Yes, bi-yah was a solider, that is why we celebrate Veteran's Day for him."

"Oh, I call Biyah?"

"Hi Biyah! You were a solider?. . . And nee-nee was a beautiful princess?"

The above mentioned comment made my mother's month!

As the weekend progressed, I decided that it would be a good idea to replace the baby swing with a baby jumper. Miles was beginning to squirm in his swing, it won't keep him asleep, and quite honestly I think he's past the weight limit. Carter helped (read severely hindered the process) of setting up the jumper. It isn't a "johnny jump-up", but rather a stationary device that the kids just "jump" in. Miles LLLOOOVVEED his new jumper. I am not exaggerating when I state that he jumped for a solid 20 minutes. He just laughed and jumped, and laughed some more. He is full-on crawling all over, pulling himself up on things, and earning many bruises in the process.

Speaking of bruises, Carter decided to replace his old bruise with a new goose-egg this weekend. Just a few weeks ago, Carter managed to meet our low windowsill with a brute amount of force, which resulted in a nice horizontal bruise for about three weeks. No sooner had the remains of this bruise disappeared, when Bradley brings a sobbing Carter into the house. He turned him around to show me his face. Some moms may have been upset, but I have recently learned that there is no need to panic unless the bruise/goose egg remains indented into the forehead. Since this new boo-boo/ping-pong ball was promptly sticking out, I really didn't even worry and in fact had to be prompted by Bradley to get some ice. As our friend Brent put it, "that thing is big enough for a calf to suck on". (They say things like this in the south).

Anywho, taking our bruised children out in public is also really interesting. I just hope people look at us and realize that we are not capable of child beating, but also question if our kids are really that uncoordinated.

I'll end with a third volume of "Sh** my kids says":

"Be nice you two!".

Yes, in the midst of a brief argument (which I will contextualize for you), our son came up between us, smiled, and said these words. I must say I was a bit embarrassed and proud at the same time. I really have a phobia of arguing in front of our kids, and we rarely let words pass between us, but I was so proud of Carter, in the midst of being humiliated that our two year old had to get us to shape up.

To our defense, my right breast was about as bloated as Roseanne Barr on steroids, due to the fact that our youngest's nursing is a bit off-kilter. Seeing as how he was acting hungry I decided to let the little one try to relieve my pain, when the floodwaters were let loose. I'm not kidding, it's as if several small holes were put into a water-balloon with about 380 PSI. Poor Miles is getting drenched in milk, I am soaked as well, and I start yelling for a towel. Bradley clearly does not sense the urgency in my voice and doesn't respond with the velocity I am wanting, and therefore some words were exchanged. Sorry to gross you all out, just really wanted to put our two-year old's words into context.

In other news, we are really trying to enforce going pee ONLY in the potty (or the lawn). He (carter) has gone number two for forever on the potty, but we are trying to save up for college instead of funding the shareholders of Pampers. Anyways, any thoughts/prayers/meditations towards this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank GOD for four-day weekends!

One Big Happy "Toy Story" Family

My attempts to blog once a month have failed. I'm sure super-mom can maintain a full-time job, keep two kids half-bathed, stock local stores with fresh produce, market a pumpkin patch, help coach cross-country, train for a half marathon, be supportive to my husband, aannnd keep up a blog, but that's super-mom. I am just mom. That is unless you talk to Carter lately.

The kid is into role-playing. At first I thought it was just because he was super-excited about Halloween coming up, but no, I'm pretty sure he really does think that he is in fact Woody from Toy Story. The other night I was tucking him into bed and I said "Good night Carter", to which he replied, "I not Carter, I Woody". "Okay, Good night Woody!". His response? "Good night Jesse".

The role-playing continued the next morning when he told me that "we have to get out of the backpack Jesse". I swear, he has only seen Toy Story 3 a few times. He has decided that Miles is Buzz Lightyear and that his dad is Andy. His Nene and Biyah are Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, but is quite perplexed as to who should be Bullsye the horse, so he switches characters between Woody and Bullsye. Things get quite interesting when Woody has to ride a horse.

It's amazing how our entire dinner conversation and evening activities revolve around the needs of Carter and his imagination. Some nights we have "cowboy pie", while others we "blast" each other in between bites. Miles is very calm and just goes along for the ride, but I often wonder what kind of spin dinner will take in another year when Miles has a different imagination track than his brother.

In other news, Miles is SOOOO close to crawling. He gets up on all fours, rocks, then scootches forward or just falls. We all cheer him on, but he just smiles and stares at us. We try to bribe him with toys to come to, but he just looks at us. I personally think he is more intrinsically motivated.

The pumpkin patch is doing extremely well. We have been busy every weekend and have finally broken even on our investment. It has been a lot of fun to see and meet many different people. Carter seems to get a kick out of going on and getting in the wagon, or showing his friends around the patch. I think he may have set a record for the most pumpkins picked by any one child in a season.

Last weekend I went and ran the Nike Women's San Francisco 1/2 marathon. I had a great time with all girls. Right before I fell asleep on Saturday night, I realized that I was about to experience my first full night of sleep in six months. I wanted to run faster than I did, but my alter-ego super-mom kicked in and I was running sub 7 minute miles for the first six miles, when I hit the first hill my legs were toast. I still finished 336th/16,000 runners, and 57th/2,979 in my age group, but I think "Jesse" could have done even better.

Sh*t my kid says - Vol. 1

Everyone always says, "Oh, I should write what my kids say down!" I am going to start folks. Here we go. . .

"Momma, I like your boobies" - while sitting in the jogging stroller enjoying a run.

"Daddy, you probably want to play cowboys with me?" - in response to being told it's time for bed.

"The Doctor told me I have to watch a new movie with you" - after his surgery he has seemed to remember a lot of what the doctor has advised him to do.

"Doctor, where are you?" - this happened in the waiting room of the doctor's office of the immediate care place (small fish allergy incident) after he told my dad he wanted to get down off of the table. He proceeded to open the door and then yell this out into the office.

"Mason has the flu" - he successfully passed this rumor about his older cousin around at daycare. There was some mild concern as some of the children had played with Mason close to the time this rumor was circulated. Bottom line - NEVER believe what a two year old has to say.

I'm sure I'll remember more of what he has to share, but just stayed tuned for volume 2.

Dear Summer: Thanks for the memories!

Really the purpose of this post is to showcase some photos taken by our relative. With summer coming to a close, I have a bit of a heavy heart. Not only do I have to go back to work and leave my kiddos, but it means a change of routine. This summer I have probably spent more time in the garden than in the house, or on the road running. Bradley has a real passion for gardening and I am sheepishly ready to admit that perhaps I may have caught the bug. It wasn't until I saw her pictures and got rather weepy eyed that I realized how much I may have a passion for all of this too. As an individual I can get too caught up in the "process" of life, to sit back and look into what I have accomplished. As I look at these photos I have a sense of pride not only in the fruits of our labor, but in the life that Bradley and I have created for our family. Our kids are happy and healthy, our garden is abundant, and our lives are blessed. As another summer vacation closes and a new school year begins, for the first time in my life I think I am a little reluctant to welcome in fall, but rather surprised at my newfound passion for summer.

On a sidenote, in addition to our six family CSA, selling at the local Farmers' Market, and selling to local restaurants, we also have our own stand at Ray's Food Place in Fort Jones. "Fresh. Local. Sustainably Grown."