Christmas

First, these pictures were taken a few days before Christmas when the snow fell. She's waiting for Bug to return, as are her stuffies.

This picture is of her recognition that Bug has not returned with M and is at a playdate. A bit bewildered. A little let down. Bug is the center of her world, and I don't blame her. He's a great guy.

Here, she has decided that M returning is good news, even if it's not with Bug. She's giving him a thumb's up anyway. She's yelling at M, "It's okay! It's okay!" As in, it's okay you didn't bring Bug home with you.

Christmas can best be summed up in the folllowing: G's favorite gift was not the handmade garden playmat complete with a house and little girl. It was not the cool clothes from any of the relatives. It was not the wooden bulldozer from Bug. Her favorite gift was from Nana and Bopa in Arizona, consisting of two plastic lizards that she's named Shiner and Junior.

Doggles

G calls these "doggles" and again, I don't correct her. The correction will come soon enough and I think we will call them doggles from now own. The kids like to wear their doggles all the time when they aren't swimming. The chlorine is heavy in the pool where Bug takes swimming lessons. So, they do ask to them to wear doggles. I feel a bit of the grumpy old mum about this, "When I was your age, I never wore doggles. Never! For three hours in a pool! An olympic sized pool where I swam with your Aunties! I swam up hill in the snow both ways for three hours without doggles!" Bug is at the age where he moves every limb all the time and still goes nowhere in the pool. Every so often his teachers throw him forward about 3 feet and say Good Job! One told him yesterday that most people don't talk when they are trying to take a breath with the front crawl. He said, "Great! I'll try it!" It's not helped just yet. Early days you know. In other news, the center of G's world is Bug, just in case you didn't notice and Bug is happy for the friendship...

Lion Head

I thought that Maddox will ask for a mohawk or to grow it long and dye it pink. I thought that this request for statement hair would be at least a decade away. Not so. As usual, my kids outpace my expectations in interesting ways. He likes lion's hair. Leave it to him to find a non-conformist non-conformist's statement hairstyle. Mohawks are so eighties and they don't come with sound affects like a lion's roar which I daresay is audible in the picture below.

The Jesus Cut

As you may recall, G had hair like this for a few months. This was after the preceeding year-long struggle with barrettes and ponies and headbands and placement of said hair accessories. You may think she's pulling the long face because of her hair, but really she's pulling a long face because the train conductor wanted to actually see the ticket in her hand. Like I'm going to give my young kids' life over to a life of short-changing the public transport system...but I digress as usual. A few weeks ago, G pulled out one of her hair elastic bands and also pulled out a disturbingly large clump of one of her ponytails with it. The baby hair was so fine that it didn't hurt G, but Bug and I were home and we both gasped. Then we were amazed that there was indeed a bald spot and there was indeed a noticeably bizarre difference in her ponytail heft when we tried to remake the ponytails to cover the bald spot. It was Sunday night. I had just spent too much money on a haircut that was questionable of my own so I thought, I'll cut it myself. G sat nicely on the kitchen counter, I replaced her lollipops when they became intolerably hairy and below is what we got...

I find it to be a sweet little girl's bob with fringe as they call it here. Bangs in the States. A woman in our toddler group, from Sweden no less, thinks it is a chic French bob! It does make a perfect nest for a wild animal or 2 or 3 or even 7. Come to think of it, yes,I'm sure there is room for 7 sparrows some mornings. But when I was finished with cutting her hair, Bug came in the room and said, "Oh, she looks just like Jesus!"

Now, we do have friends and family with so many beliefs reading this blog, but I think I can say this for sure. No matter who you find Jesus to be for yourself, and even if you believe there is a bit of Jesus in all of us, I don't think Jesus ever looked like a 2 1/2 year old girl with sparrows in her hair and pink heart jammies...Just a guess though. Despite these theological musings, I really am not sure if this statement is a compliment or further proof that Bug is indeed in a world all his own.

Gifties

I don't buy my kids a lot of stuff. Di has said on more than one occasion that if she were my child she would probably throw more tantrums because of the lack of toys. My mom thinks it is in character with my delightfully odd self and mummies from our new school comment on my relatively spartan collection. We've moved from the States and had to abandon a lot of our beloveds with friends and charities. More than the hassle of moving toys that may or may not be loved now or in the future or in the past, more than the financial and political implications of buying toys, I don't buy toys precisely because of the early mornings at our house. This morning, my son and I talked about the Spiderman jammies he was wearing from Mimi, G wore jammies from Nana, a handwoven scarf from Grandma Linda became a pirate sash over a pirate shirt from UB, Lightning McQueen from Zizi flew on a plane picked out by Bucka to bowl of oatmeal. A cloth from the Netherlands, which is usually a cape, became a hotel for the cars collection from Bopa, and a horse from the Darwins became a guardian horse of a polar bear from Mae and blocks from Grandpa George. We practised math in workbooks from Phoxie and cuddled under a blanket made by C-9 while reading about dinosaurs in a book from UDP. When I do give them things, like the glow-in-the-dark Dudolph noses and antler sets, they ask, "Who gave us these?" I say, "I did." They say, "Why?" I say,"Because I thought you'd like them," and then my son says, "Oh. You know these noses are plastic." I say, "Yes, but I decided to lighten up a little bit." He says, "Oh." I ask, "Do you like them?" He says, "Yes, but I like them more from someone." So, A) I am left wondering if I am "someone" in his eyes and B) That's why I don't get my kids a lot of stuff. We are surrounded by friends and family from far away and everything we use has a story about someone (preferably not me).