Santa

In our advent calendar, yesterday's "present" was that we get to write letters to Santa and take them to him at Macy's the next morning. We told Aaron he could go late to school so that we could go see Santa when it wasn't too crowded. (Last year we went in the morning and there was no line at all. It was absolutely painless. So we thought we would repeat that experience again this year. Well, we went this morning and it took us about 45 minutes to get to Santa, which is really short for the Macy's Santa but still too long for our tastes. I guess there were a bunch of schools that had off today, which we didn't know until it was too late. So we stood in line and tried to enjoy ourselves. Ben came with us, which was a treat.)

Here are the kids' letters to Santa:

This is Aaron's letter, of course. In case you can't see it, it says, "Dear Santa, I would like a medium fishing net."

I think the American flag on the boat is really funny... I've never seen him draw that before.

And here's Elliot's letter, which I wrote for him. It says, "Dear Santa, I would like a blue lollipop for Christmas. And an ice cream cone." Then he signed it at the bottom. He has been hoping that Santa will bring him a blue lollipop for about a month now. I think it started due to an accidental mixing of conversations. He was talking about how he wanted a blue lollipop and we were talking about Santa. He, naturally, equates the two together now. Let's hope Santa will deliver and bring him that lollipop...

Elliot and I drew these pictures on the back of his letter. Elliot colored them.

Libbie in front of one of the Christmas trees in Santaland.

The five of us with Santa. Whenever Aaron looks at this picture, he wonders why Santa looks so grumpy. "Why didn't he smile?" A good question.

Sleeping

Libbie was sick last week. Usually I don't worry when the kids get colds, but Libbie was sick for a little bit and then just when I thought she should be getting better, she got worse. She started sleeping badly, coughing a lot, throwing up (sometimes milk, sometimes just mucous balls), and just not quite herself. I took her to the doctor and they said she probably has RSV but there's not much we can do besides put her in a steamed up bathroom and whack her back a bunch to help clear out the mucous. So we did as we were told and she is already much better. Here are some pictures, though, of her when she was pretty sick. She would just fall asleep wherever she was.

Especially when Tato was holding her...

And here's a picture of her from Thanksgiving, before she got sick. Aunt Kori got this outfit for her.
(I can't get enough of her curly hair... I'm pretty sure it's not going to last but it is so cute in the mean time!)

And, to finish off the sleeping theme, this is what I found last Sunday evening when I went into the kids' bedroom to find out what was holding Ben up.

By the morning, I ended up with Libbie in Aaron's bed. When Aaron woke up, I asked, "Was that fun to sleep with me and Libbie?" He said, "Well, yeah, but where's Tato? That was SO FUN last night to snuggle with him!" I thought that was pretty great, since usually he's all about being with us girls.

Bryant Park Tree Lighting

We went to the tree lighting ceremony at Bryant Park today. On the way down, there was a moment on the subway when all the kids were either crying or whining. Ben and I kept wondering why in the world we were taking our kids out into the late night coldness when all they really wanted was to do was read stories and go to sleep. I'm writing this now because I want to remind myself that in the end, it was worth it (as it usually is). It is difficult to get out the door and get to our destination, but once we get there it is almost always a positive experience. They had an Olympic figure skater perform on "The Pond" and a team of synchronized skaters as well. The boys really liked watching the skaters. The music was good but a little out of reach for the kids (several opera songs and a few slow Christmas songs). Elliot stood on his chair the entire time watching whatever was going on on stage or on the rink.

My view for most of the show-- my boys and the Empire State Building... not too shabby

The best picture I got with all three in the same frame

Aaron and Libbie

Little Miss Libbie

She still loves to play with hats/hair

Ben lifted up Aaron so he could see the tree better

The fifty-foot tree, in all its lit-up glory

First Lost Tooth

Well, Aaron has been anxiously awaiting the day one of his teeth would come out. A few weeks ago one of his teeth was loose. It only took one knee-knock to the mouth during gym class for the little guy to come out. And just in time for his sixth birthday, too.

He wanted to put "eight hundred thousand million" (or so) pictures of the missing tooth up here, but we settled on a few instead. Here's the cute smile. He talks funny without that one little tooth. He has a few other loose ones now. We're hoping they're out by Christmas.