Monthly Archives: February 2014

Christmas Decor

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I always decorate for Christmas. I love it. It’s part of what makes Christmas fun. I usually do it the day after Thanksgiving. I pull out the plastic bins of decorations, crank up some Carpenter’s Christmas music and set up my house – fill it with Christmas cheer, if you will. Here’s this year’s decorations:


We got this tree from the Clark’s. Our little fake tree is a modest (skinny) 6.5 foot tree. It worked nicely in the past, in our tiny MI home, but this year, we have 9 foot ceilings and our house is twice the size. So, when Christina called me and said she just picked up a free, 9 foot, pre-lit, Costco tree and wondered if I wanted to use it this year – I leapt at the chance! This is the free tree she found on Craigslist. She would have used it herself, but their ceilings wouldn’t allow it :)

Before Santa came:

After:

the little game we play

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I have so much to blog about – Christmas, the boys’ latest Valentines for school, beach trips in January … all very good stuff accompanied with many pictures. But I don’t have time to do all that. I will tomorrow, but today I wanted to document the little game Ray and I play.

On Friday night, Jeff and Christina came over to watch a movie with us. After Jeff put Emily down to sleep in the pack-n-play in my closet, he came downstairs and said, “Did you know that all your medicine is in your tub in your bathroom?” I nonchalantly answered, “yeah”.

Every day I need to shower (we’re using the words “every day” loosely here), and I usually have time to do it after Noah and Liam go to school. I’m so busy in the mornings making breakfast for everyone, making lunches for everyone, driving kids to school and trying to work out that I don’t have time to shower until it settles down, mid-morning. But by then, Ray is wide awake and not ready for his afternoon nap yet and I have no one to watch Ray. So I get in the shower anyway.

My shower is a glass stall, so I can see the bathroom around me just fine. I close the door to my room, bring in toys from Ray’s room and let Ray meander about my room (doing a drunken, stumble walk) while I shower. And we play this game where I pretend not to see him doing dangerous things – like playing with medicine. In my defense, I know that all of them have child safety caps on them, so that makes it better right?

For some reason, he never plays with the toys I bring in my room for him, no matter how interesting they are, nothing compares to a bottle of Advil, evidently. So, because I can see him, but not really get out of the shower, dripping wet and stop him from opening and closing, opening and closing and finally opening then playing with the contents of the medicine cabinet, I let him do it. It’s wrong and dangerous and I am a terrible mother, I know. He usually takes the medicine out, then dumps it in the tub next to the shower and I just watch. I used to yell from the shower, “Raaaaay, no. Stop! Ray, close the door. Close the door, Baby. Right now. Raaaaaay, close the door. yeah!!! Good!!!! Thank you …. no. wait, close it, stop. Put it back buddy. Noooooo, put it down. Down. Yes, now close the door” … you get the idea. I spent the entire shower coaxing a 20 month old to stay away from the medicine cabinet. Anyway, I finally went to Target and got the child locks and I will install them tomorrow, but for a little while, that just happened.