The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It really is wonderful - but it also gets busy - so I’m going to drop a few pics and a quick story to preserve the wonderment of my 4th child.

First - pictures

This boy is on his 5th and 6th set of frames since he got glasses in August - I could get mad, or I could make him try on sunglasses and take photos that could confuse my son for a miniature Tom (either Petty or Cruise in Top Gun).

I have reached a milestone of achievement as a parent. Showed the girls some stuff on Etsy and they agreed we could make it cheaper - so they did, handmake all of their cousin/friend Christmas gifts.

I had a 36 hour Mom break to hit my company Christmas party in Nashville - and I spent time with one of my besties. I don’t think there could be 2 more different people in a friendship - and she would agree. But I adore her - she is on the short list of forever friends.

When you interrupt your neighbor’s breakfast and they look at you like you’re rude :)

Marlie’s GS troop - making wreaths at the troop leader’s house. I have always let her go to things on her own, to foster independence - somewhere between last year and this year I have become less interested in her independence and more concerned 

Early Christmas presents from Miss Jane!!

And then there is this one. On the back of our Christmas card Hudson’s update just says “google the song Tiny Destroyer”.

When Evan was this age he decided to start not napping as well - and during those months is when things happened like my bathroom being decorated with makeup, a light bulb going crunch in his teeth, and countless other things I blocked from memory. Hudson is keeping the tradition alive!

I got home Friday at 11am after being gone, we did lunch and then nap, and then I had to get on conference calls. After the first call I walk upstairs to find the following scenario having played out (Big H gave me the details).

Hudson took red chapstick from his sisters’ room, smushed it, and drew on the white carpet with it (yea, it’s a rental and old people own it - it’s plush, white polyester carpet). Not wanting to get in trouble he found a water bottle and filled it with toilet water, turned over his step stool, filled the step stool with 4 bottles of toilet water, pushed it to the hallway, and dumped it on the carpet to clean up the mess.

Yea . . . I go back and forth every second of every day with that kid. I don’t know when we get in power struggles if he actually wins, or if I’m caving because he’s my last and I know that in the end, it’s carpet. The combo of my lack of patience and his 4th child mischief isn’t always pretty . . . But I do have an ever present reminder that it’s just stuff or mess - I can clean up and I can fix whatever the boys do . . . the pre teen hormonal rage coming from my female children occasionally, I can’t fix that - I can only hide in a closet and pray they don’t turn into me as a teenager . . .