Micah says,

"If we have another child, can I put in a request that both his or her eyes close all the way while they are sleeping?"Picky, picky.

Gingerbrownstone

Alright, let's just get it out in the open. We cheated. But only because the recipe (which we doubled) only made enough gingerbread dough for the front and roof of our building. And since we were out of molasses we decided to build the rest of the thing with cardboard. Not as tasty, but much easier to work with.

And yes, that is authentic NYC tagging on the side. Just keeping it real.

My husband is the coolest

because he got me a lesson at Trapeze School New York for Christmas. Sometime this summer this is going to be me:

Christmas retrospective

Apparently we managed to show some restraint yesterday as we celebrated Christmas all by ourselves for the first time. We only took 103 pictures of our children opening presents. It was really and truly the best Christmas ever. Simon seems to be too young to be greedy, and he really got into the spirit of giving. He was up until 11:00 telling us, "Oliver needs this," as he unloaded about half of his toys onto his little brother throughout the day. We loved every second of it. Well, the "Oliver needs this" got old after about half an hour, but we were still thrilled with the way things played out. Everything is so new to Simon that he had no expectations and was excited about opening presents, but not so excited that he was impatient. He loved helping everyone open their gifts and had no problem stopping to read a story in the middle of the unwrapping. We took our time, took pictures, and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.

(Stephanie Robertson, we staged this last picture just for you.)

Originally wanted to do a nice Christmas dinner, but we decided it wasn't worth it to bake a ham or something for the 2.5 of us who eat, so we made some fantastic pizzas and called it good. Easy. Tasty. No stress. Just the holiday spirit filling our little home. I'm still savoring it.

*Sigh* I love our family. (Falls back into the easy chair, eyes closed, arms spread wide.)

And the stockings . . .

[which were hot off the sewing machine] were hung by the [dysfunctional radiator] with care.

Christmas in the City

Yesterday was sunny and cold, so we put on our happy faces (yes, Oliver too), buried ourselves in layers and layers of clothing, then piled some blankets on the stroller and headed out to The City.

The goal: see the sights while they were there to see and partake of the Christmas spirit as it exists in Manhattan.

Our first stop was the Macy's on 34th Street, where the window displays tell the story of "Miracle on 34th Street," oddly enough. Simon was napping in the stroller at that point, so it really wasn't too exciting.

But he woke up by the time we made it to Lord and Taylor's, and I had a great time trying to get him excited about finding the little dogs in the window displays. (Note: you don't take 2-year-olds to see the window displays because they think it is cool. You take them because you love to think that they think it is cool.)

We had a little bit of gingerbread house envy here . . . ours is in the making, but may not be done until sometime next week. Sigh.

Sidenote #1: It was confirmed to us on this outing that once we start to get hungry, all of the hole-in-the-wall pizzerias that we love so much run and hide. We can never find one when we need one. But they are all over the place when we're not in the market for a slice. Go figure.

Sidenote #2: It was while Micah was out to hunt us down some grub and the boys and I were warming up in Rockefeller Center that I had my first "Oh my goodness, he was just here a second ago, where could he have gone?!?!" moment as a mother. (Insert panicked thoughts and racing heart here.) I was seriously seconds away from finding a security guard, but I scanned the crowded food court-ish area one more time and saw Simon's little brown-checked hat peaking up from behind a chair. He was staring at a baby in a stroller. As if we didn't have a baby to stare at already. Sheesh. He nearly gave me a heart attack.

Anyway . . . Micah came back with the pizza, we ate, warmed up, and took some pictures by the tree. The tree was the only way we got Simon from Bryant Park up to Rockefeller Center, so we thought we would capture the moment. We also wanted to show him the skating rink, but as soon as we found a place to watch from, everybody left the ice. Why on earth would they do that? It was the middle of the day . . . oh, wait. I see where this is going: And I think that's a "Yes." Kind of glad we stuck around for that.

But where were we? Oh, yeah. Window displays. After the tree we had 8 more streets to walk until we hit Bergdorf Goodman. The whole way there Simon kept telling us that he made all the buildings. We assured him that the citizens of New York City were very grateful for his services (and wondered where on earth he got that from). Then we reached our destination and were all rendered speechless. Bergdorf Goodman was . . . inspirational. They did a Lewis Carroll theme and they did it well. Possible Halloween costumes began brewing in our brains and I think we have some good ideas.

(This is from the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland.)

Unfortunately, the glare on the windows prevented us from taking any good pictures. So sad. And after we finished at Bergdorf Goodman, our minds were sufficiently blown (and our toes sufficiently cold) that we decided Barney's and Bloomingdale's probably weren't worth the trek. (We had to walk by them anyway to get to the train station, so we glanced a the displays and our suspicions were confirmed: Bergdorf Goodman put them to shame.)
Oh, and Simon says, "Merry Christmas." Can't you see it in his eyes?

Giving

It says: To Oliver From Simon. Duh.

And the bigger one . . .

Have I told you that Simon is the Vitamaster? Every morning it is his job to make sure we all get our vitamins. Sometimes he is zealous enough about it to put them in our mouths for us.

And also, he likes to dress himself. Which is why his pants look like this
about half the time.

He is an independent soul. I love this kid.

The wee one.

I've had a request for more pictures of this guywho as of today weighs 12 lbs. 4 oz. (44th percentile), is 23 inches tall (31st percentile), and except for a clogged tear duct and a lingering belly button issue is "a perfect baby," according to his pediatrician. I couldn't agree more.

Except that he also got two shots today and he's been screaming his lungs sore if we put him down or move him or shift positions. Or breathe too loudly. But other than that, perfect.

And what the heck, here's another picture. Just because I think he's cute.

Your Favorite Christmas Music

We finally topped off Lizzie's NYU gift card that she won last year by buying a couple of iTunes gift cards. And, rather than follow the true spirit of the holidays by giving them away to those we love, we are going to hoard them and buy ourselves some nice Christmas music for this year and years to come. So far our collection is a combination of MoTab albumns, very random pirated music from my sketchier, pre-Lizzie days, some iTunes Store free downloads, and a nice mixed-tape album from a coworker. So once again, we are asking you to make our decisions for us.

If you had a couple thousand pennies to spend on holiday tunes, what would you get? What do you have that you would recommend? What do wish you had? What should we avoid? We know that you all are much more musically inclined then we are so we would love your advice.

Thanks.

Felt: Now there's a medium I can work with

My sister-in-law sent me a kit to make a felt nativity set last year, but because school was ending and such, I didn't get around to it. I thought it would take forever and imagined making slow progress on it over the next few Christmases. (Don't ask me why I thought I could only work on it in December.) Then I actually sat down with it and got started and wow! Felt is so easy to work with. Micah and I spent a few evenings this past week working on it and before we knew it, there was nothing left to do except for put it on display and take a million pictures, so that is what we did.
Simon loves it, as you can imagine. He likes to line up all the figures so they can play "Ring Around the Rosie."

Cheese and Crackers

CookieFest 2009 is not going to happen. At least not on its previous scale. We decided it was impractical for us to make the normal amount of cookies and deliver them all over Brooklyn when we don't have a car, and as much as we'd love to have 500 cookies lying around the apartment for us to eat . . . oh, wait, no we wouldn't. Way too much sugar. So we decided to go a different route, and last night we stayed up until 1:00 testing this cracker recipe. We kind of forgot to put the sea salt on before baking, so we drizzled some olive oil on after and then sprinkled the sea salt. They turned out pretty well, and, better yet, they were beyond easy. Serve it up with some festive-looking marinated goat cheese and I think you have yourself a winning alternative to cookies. Agreed?
I'm thinking about experimenting with more cracker recipes, so if you happen to know of any good ones, do tell.

O Christmas Tree!

Our apartment smells like Christmas. It glows like Christmas. It feels like Christmas.

Shoelaces in the cold.

Does anyone else find themselves retying their shoelaces more often during the winter? Micah claims the season has the power to undo his shoes: as soon as the cold weather hits, he has to stop multiple times during the day to retie his laces. My shoes are lace-less, so I don't have a problem. Is he crazy, or is it true?

Dr. Phil doesn't want me after all. Phew.

This is what happened: I got an e-mail on Thursday from somebody who works on the Dr. Phil show. She said they were doing a piece on new parenting styles (ranging from helicopter parent to free-range parent) and that they'd read my overachiever piece from Babble.com and they wanted to talk to me and would I be available to fly out to LA for the taping next Tuesday? (That is where the part about "sorta kinda" being invited to be on the show came in.) Please call her asap as she was on deadline.

I called her back and we talked for a few minutes. She wanted to know how I would describe my parenting style and I can only assume that they were looking for someone close to the "helicopter" end of the spectrum and thought from my Babble piece that I just might fit the bill. I told them that I intentionally wrote the piece to sound extreme to highlight the points that I was trying to make, and I think that, generally speaking, I am more hands-off than that. But I do think it is important to be aware of my child's gifts and interests and to encourage and help him to develop those as much as I can. I told her I was available to fly out if they wanted me to be at the taping, and she wanted me to send some pictures of our family, so I did. I haven't heard back so my guess is that a. we're not pretty enough to be on national tv or b. I'm not helicopterish enough to be on national tv or c. I don't speak well enough over the phone to be on national tv. Those are my guesses.

But now I have a great story to tell the next time I play "Two Truths and a Lie," without the stress and anxiety of trying to talk about the complexities of parenting in sound bites.

Me on TV?

I kinda sorta just got invited to be on Dr. Phil.

Seriously.

100 snowflakes by Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like . . . winter. At least in side our apartment. We don't have our Christmas tree up yet -- that's a project for tomorrow -- but we've been busy decking the walls with handmade snowflakes. (Don't you love that word? Handmade? Makes it sound . . . crafted. Like we don't just randomly cut up bits of paper and hope it turns out okay.) We're hoping to have a hundred by Christmas, although it shouldn't be a problem. We've been turning out at least 5 a night and we only need to do 3 a night to reach our goal. I love to see how differently they all turn out, and how beautiful they all are, even though I have no skills or vision of what I want them to be.Conclusion: cutting out snowflakes is fun.

The role of women.

The following is a real conversation between me and Simon that occurred this morning as I tried to get him to wear underwear.

"Look Simon. Look who it has on it. Mr. Incredible. And Dash."
"Let me see Dash." He takes the underwear from me and examines it.
"I don't see ElastiGirl on it."
"Yeah, it looks like they didn't put her on it."
"Maybe she went to go do the dishes."

Of course. The dishes.

Seen in NYC

I saw this big, fat, old guy wearing a shirt with this message on it at Astor Place one time after class and 1. I laughed out loud and 2. I wished I had one.