Hmmm, I'm SAD!

I'll explain my title in a bit. First the diet. It was actually very filling for a cleanse. Lots of fruit, salads, some hearty cabbage soup, rice and beans. Brandon said he felt hungry the whole time but I never did. Laylah has been eating so well too. She's been eating all sorts of fruit and brown rice and chicken and peas and corn. I've been very proud. We're on phase 2 now that is to reintroduce stuff like meat. Last night we had a spinach salad, brown rice, left over cabbage soup and blackened chicken. The chicken was really good, I was surprised. Next topic, this will jump around a bit. We decided that since we didn't have any big plans over the weekend we'd make a a potty training marathon. We put the potty in the living room, put Laylah in big kid underwear and watched Elmo's Potty time about eight times. We sat her on the potty and read books and did puzzles and talked about when she needed to go. AND SHE WENT POOPEE ON THE POTTY!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO! It's a breakthrough! She was excited too, so happy, she helped me flush it and got a sticker and a Lindt truffle, which she calls a Daddy chocolate, they are her favorites and a good way to get her to do anything. Especially since we get the variety bag and she gets to pick the color and then looks forward to another color for the next time. Of course as we save money on diapers we'll spend it on chocolate. Oh well, worth it. We also took her to Borders to get "The Poop Book" as a reward for her first poop and also the reinforce the lesson. It's a lift the flap book with baby animals and their parents. They each have a special place to poop and you have to help find the poop, then the last page has a bathroom and a little boy who's pooped all by himself in the toilet. She loves it. So this happened Saturday. Sunday she peed on the potty, and Monday too. We sit on it several times a day to try and she gets a sticker for trying but a chocolate and a sticker if she goes. She's also had a few accidents but it's progress. She's wearing training pants now that turn cold if she pees to help her anticipate the feeling. Next topic, we got a really cool phonics book at Kroger for $2. It's called "Pat and the Bat" and has pull out tabs with the word next to the picture so as you go through you find the word on the page and pull it to see the picture. So you can kind of quiz them as they go. There is a whole set of them out there. Laylah recognized several words after just one reading! She already new DAD but she got Bat, Bag, and Man, which is pretty darn good. We'll do it again today and see if she remembers. I'm so excited that she's starting to read, she likes reading me books now, usually ones that she already knows but it's still impressive. I'm a very proud mama let me say. Then there's today. She pooped in her diaper right after she woke up so we didn't have the chance to try the potty but she did tell me as soon as she did it and wanted a change which is good. We got ready and went to the Library for story time, which is every Tuesday. I also wanted to pick up a few more books for her about her potty and one for me about methods of training to get ideas. We got there and the first thing the librarian does is sing "If you're happy and you know it". Now I don't know if it's just a matter of being in a bad mood or that she decided that she was tired of taking orders and wanted to rebel, but Laylah decided, "NO! I'm SAD!" and proceeded to lay on the floor in the corner almost the whole time giving me dirty looks and telling me she was sad and wanted to stay that way! When I asked her why she said, "Hmmmm, I'm Sad. I'm not Happy. I'm taking a rest and I'm sad, right here." It wasn't nap time or anything, she'd just eaten. She just wanted to be sad. I asked her if she was having fun being sad and she said yes. So I let her be sad. As soon as story time ended and the librarian was gone, she got up and started playing and running and smiling. We went and got our books, she was very good about being quiet in the adult section and helped me look for the letters to find the books we wanted. We left the Library and went to Kroger to pick up some mouthwash and she got a Lollypop. Then we came home and she read some stories and is taking a nap. We'll put on underwear after nap and sit on the potty to try again, probably watch Elmo again. If anyone knows of other good Potty movies I would be grateful. Dinosaur Train had an episode about it that's we've watched online a few times. She now knows more dinosaur names than I ever did. Crazy. Anyway, I gotta go, hopefully I'll write more soon. Oh and Brandon has a lunch/interview with a really family friendly firm today and a breakfast meeting with a headhunter (the good employment kind) tomorrow. Things are moving along. Hopefully we'll know soon where we'll be so we can plan ahead a little. Have a good Tuesday everyone and please, don't be sad!

Catch up...fast!

Ok, so I haven't written anything in like a month but I have good excuses. I do! First I was cleaning and organizing the whole house, putting away decorations, getting rid of stuff, finding places for Laylah's new stuff. Then I was getting ready to go to Kelley and Wesley's wedding in Illinois, planning for snow, formal occasions, hotel stay, airplane, it's a lot to cram in. Then we actually went to the wedding, and then there was the day of unpacking and cleaning, and then the inevitable, I got sick. So, now that I am somewhat recovered, still have a cough and stuffy nose, I am writing again. For the most part everything went well over the past month. The wedding was better than we expected, and it was nice seeing so many people from Brandon's side of the family. Laylah got totally spoiled having soooo many people to well, spoil her. She did really well on the plane, the CARES worked really well, without it she would have been sliding around in the seat and totally squirmy. We rented it off Ebay, totally recommend it. After the wedding getting sick was not fun. Especially since it was the weekend of Brandon's birthday. I had all these plans to make it special and I was totally unsuccessful. I dragged myself to the store Friday to get some stuff for her birthday dinner at least, which turned out well. Getting ahead of myself, so we woke up and went to Mary Mac's Tea room, an Atlanta institution of Southern Cooking. DO NOT GO! It has soooo many reviews of being soooo good, and a tradition you can't miss, believe me, you can. First they only serve lunch and dinner, no breakfast of any kind which was annoying, And it was in Brandon's words, "Bad Cafeteria food." He had chicken fried steak that was lumpy and covered in tasteless brown gravy, I had ok fried chicken (supposedly the best in town but Wayside in C-ville is sooooo much better, no comparison) and the mac and cheese we got for Laylah was frankly inedible. The only good thing they had was their sweet tea, and really? how hard is that? Although northerners seem to think it's magical. Just put the sugar in while the water's hot, stupid. Anyway, it sucked, especially for a birthday breakfast that we were looking forward to and I dragged my sick miserable self to. Then we went home and passed out for three hours. Then Brandon called Lee and they thankfully went out to have some fun since I just couldn't. We were going to go to a museum or something but there was just no way. I think Brandon had fun with Lee though. Laylah and I stayed home and we baked a birthday cake, she picked out the type. Rainbow sprinkle cake with butterfinger crunchies mixed in with buttercream icing mixed with cool whip and more butterfinger crunchies on top with blue sparlky writing. She was a good helper. I took pictures. I also cleaned and got everything together for dinner. Brandon came home with Lee and they played around on the Wii with his new Resort game thing I got him and drank some more beer. When Lee left I made dinner. Grilled aspergras with lime, smashed red potatoes, and rib eye steaks with blue cheese onion cream sauce. It was stupendous. Oh and a salad. It was actually so filling we had it the next night too. The sauce is soooooo good, I think I'll do filets next time though cause the rib eyes the recipe called for were just too fatty for me. Very easy to make too. Brandon loved it. And then we had cake too. Brandon let Laylah help with the candles. We put her to bed and then watched something on TV I don't remember because I was practically comatose at this point, then we went to bed. Sunday I was supposed to go out with my mom friends to Maggianos and to see Leap Year. I was really looking forward to it and up till 3:30 I was really trying to feel better so I could leave at 4, but alas, I gave up and didn't go. Of course they had the best time ever and went to the Cheesecake factory after the movie too to get drinks and desert. Ugh! I would have loved that! I'm super jealous. I stayed home and tried to breathe. Oh well, next month. It would have been unfair of me to go anyway because I didn't go our with Brandon for his birthday so I would have felt guilty the whole time even if I had felt well enough to go out. Anyway, now it's Wednesday. So far this week I've been to the dentist again, yay. with a stuffed up nose, soooo much fun. And to the grocery store. We went to boobie wee today and a playground cause it was nice outside, which then led to getting lunch at Chick-fil-a. IN my defense she hadn't been in more than two weeks and had been asking for it since before the wedding, and I am going on a total cleanse four day diet tomorrow. Which will be my next set of things to talk about. I am not fasting, it's a cleanse, lots of fruit and veggies and fiber and brown rice. It's in this book called the "Four Day Diet" and so Brandon and I are going to try it. My idea is that since February brings with it my big dr's appointment to start trying to having another baby, I want to get a healthy start on it. Brandon agrees. Laylah will probably love the rice and bananas and strawberries but she's not doing it. K, that's enough for now. sorry it was so long. Hope you are all caught up. Fun Laylah fact, she has started putting her hand in front of her eyes at parts of movies that she doesn't like. It's so cute. I never taught her that, totally instinctual, not closing her eyes, covering the open ones so she can still peek. She's a cutie!

Happy New Year!

Bringing in the New Year with a very small child is always somewhat of a challenge. Since the holiday is primarily celebrated with adults in mind, (alcohol, parties till 3am, going outside at night in the cold, getting dressed up) celebrating at home with someone that goes to bed by 8:30 presents some interesting choices. First, finding a babysitter, even if you wanted to, is pretty much impossible because all people without someone to babysit, ie their own bundles of joy, have plans, big fat fabulous fancy plans. But, we did not particularly want to go out. We weren't invited to any parties because almost everyone we know either has kids and isn't going anywhere either, or knows we have kids and it's useless to invite us anywhere. And the option for outdoor celebrating, (meaning freezing among a thousand other stupid people to see something that you can always see better at home on TV), was the Peach Drop. Yes, a Peach. Suffice it to say, we stayed in and created our own partay! The day before Laylah and I blew up about fifty balloons of different sizes and colors, then I took two garbage bags, cut them each down one side and then sewed them loosely together with yarn. I then taped half the garbage bag to the ceiling and filled it with the balloons and then taped the other half up. This became a constant source of fascination for Laylah, "Want Boons Down!" But I told her that they were for the New Years party and she only asked every ten minutes until we actually did the balloon drop the next night. What patience my child has! We also made two noise makers from Pringles tubes which we filled with unpopped popcorn and balls of tinfoil, and put construction paper on the ouside that Laylah colored on. Then we made a sign for the wall saying Happy New Year! and we were set to go. The day of we stayed in, played with her new toys, made a slide out of her mattress because we changed all the sheets (I just like the idea of sleeping on clean sheets to start the new year) and she loves doing this. We balance her mattress on the otoman of her chair in her bedroom and she proceeds to slide down it, slide her cars, trains and animals down it, it's a great time had by all. We made twice-baked potatoes, cooked for eight hours with a hunk of ham so they are not at all healthy green beans, and some very nice tenderloin steaks for dinner. Brandon wanted to get a whole tenderloin to cook in the oven form a recipe he found in GQ, but getting a whole tenderloin was just way too expensive so I just got two steaks. I made really good horseradish sauce to go with it. We showered and dressed around 5pm, having spent the day in pj's. I wore a sparkly purple evening gown complete with fuzzy socks and thermal underwear, Laylah wore her pj's (she refused to take them off) plus a dress pulled over it, and flowers in her hair. Brandon wore his black suit with his new red shirt and red pocket square. We ate dinner with red wine for us and sparking blueberry juice in a plastic wine glass for Laylah. Go some cute pictures of her being a lush. After dinner we celebrated new Years in England, meaning 7pm. We did the countdown with Laylah's microphone, she helped by counting up as I counted down. Then the balloons pdropped, we stomped on big buggle wrap, shook our shakers. We ate our 12 grapes, drank rasberry champaign and wrote out our wishes for the new year and put them in our Christmas stockings so that we can find them next year when we decorate and see whether they came true. We danced, we sang. we popped all the balloons, mostly by Laylah sitting on them. Then we did the usual bathtime and bedtime ritual after talking to Tita and Tito on the phone. Then Brandon and I watched yet another episode of Dexter, soooo good. Brandon then promptly fell asleep at 10:30 and I stayed up to ring in the New Years at midnight on the couch. I did go give my two loves kisses at midnight but I doubt they noticed. Today we got up and had breakfast, went to the store to get more balloons, she's become obsessed. Then after Laylah's nap we hid gold chocolate coins all around the living room. She went around finding them. The idea being that finding coins is good luck, and finding chocolate ones on New Years Day has to be better! It think it's a fun tradition to start anyway. We also watched lots and lots of football and the Rose Parade. I think we made up some good traditions to celebrate New Years with little ones that we will continue for years to come. Hopefully Laylah will remember them fondly and celebrate with her children this way too, after she has a few years of going out to parties, dressing up all fancy shmancy and going to stand in the cold with thousands of other people and seeing something she could be seeing on TV better, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun, well at least until she has someone worth staying home for.

NO! Boobie first!

First off I have to say that the snuggie is possibly one of the best inventions of the twenty-first century, or twentieth for that matter, and why the heck had no one thought to put arms on blankets before? It's....heavenly. Everyone should have one, the government should hand out snuggies at birth with social security cards. For those of you living in Hawaii I would even go so far as to say that you should order one, pump up the AC to frigid, just to feel the full effect of wonderfulness, however this may negatively affect your electric bill. Anyway, today I'm writing about a control mechanism that I find both funny and extremely annoying at times. Every time, without fail, that I get up from doing anything with Laylah, even if it's to go to the bathroom, to get a different book, get something she's asked for, make dinner, anything, she grabs hold of me and says, "No! Boobie First!" she proceeds to have to nurse not just one but both breasts, even if for only a second each, before letting me go do whatever. Brandon thinks it's because she think I might be gone a while and wants to make sure to top off before the opportunity goes away, but I think she knows I generally let her nurse whenever she wants and it's not that she does it only when I leave the house, not that I almost ever do that without her anyway, I think she does it to show me who's really in control. You can go but I'll be watching, you can go but before you do, remember your real purpose, you can go but only because I'm letting you go, not because you want or need to. And in some cases it can get desperate, trying to a explain to an almost potty training (in other words trying to persuade her to potty train and rarely succeeding) that you have to go potty when you have to go potty and you can't just go in your pants, well, it does not work. Actually applying any kind of logic to any situation doesn't work at the moment. No, Mommy can't go down the baby slide with you, have you noticed that Mommy is big enough to squash it if she wanted to? No, Mommy does not fit in your crib to jump with you. Now there are times when lessons can be demonstrated and logical conclusions reached by a two year old. For example, the day after Christmas Laylah decided she wanted to take her baby for a walk outside with her new stroller. She had not gotten dressed yet and didn't want to, would not even put on shoes to go outside in below forty degrees. She proceeded to have a fit about it when I tried telling her it was too cold to go outside sans shoes and coat, let alone getting dressed. Finally I said fine, if she insisted on going outside in the cold with no shoes, go, see for yourself little princess. Brandon was dressed so he took her outside. She made it to the end of the sidewalk where the cars are parked, turned to Brandon and asked where now? Brandon said for her to decide, she looked around and said, "Home!" then she ran back to the door. I let her in and she told me, "Mommy, I'm COOOOOOOLD!" while hugging herself. I said, yup, that's what happens when you go outside without shoes and a coat in winter. I can hope she learned the lesson but I doubt it, maybe after a few more tries. Still, it was kind of nice getting to say I told you so to a two year old, and for a moment having the control in my hands. Didn't last long, her next words were, "Boobie NOW!"

Christmas part deux

Like the Charlie Sheen reference? hehe. Anyway, Christmas morning. Laylah wakes up, I jump out of bed to tell Brandon to get the camera ready so we can tape her expression when she sees the wonder of Christmas presents under the tree and what does she do. She lays down on the floor outside our bedroom and acts like she just wants to go back to bed! I'm like huh? So I ask her if she wants to go night night again and she says no, sighs, stays there. Then I tell her to go see if Santa came. She finally stirs and tromps into the living room where Brandon is waiting. She walks in, takes a look at the presents under the tree and kind of gives it the look of, "So? That's there every day. What's the big deal??" Meanwhile I'm hopping up and down and exclaiming that Santa came and does she want to open presents and which one and look at the cookie Santa ate, and she kind of looks at me like, "geez Mom take chill pill already!" I finally convince her to go sit under the tree to open something and she starts getting excited and stupid parent that I am I hand her the one gift that will prolong the present opening phase at least four hours. A tube of plastic fish. Yes, a tube of plastic fish. It was $5. She must have it open right NOW! and then we don't get her attention again to open anything for what seems like an hour. We try to tempt her with dollies, books, she looked up briefly for the all important sparkly shoes, which had to be put on over her footy pajamas right NOW! But always back to the plastic fish in the tube. We took a break, ate Monkey Bread and coffee. Anyway, it took a long long time to open presents. Once she got into it and put aside the plastic fish we still had to open every toy, book, and box, right NOW! She got two babies, a stroller that had a take out bed part, some dresses, several thousand books, a tea set which Brandon and I spent time each taking turns playing with her with at her little table, a little people airplane and car, a talking alphabet book, a talking thomas the train laptop, puzzles, craft books, stuffed animals, and of course the red hat, pink hat, sparkly shoes and green present. The all important green present was actually the tube of fish so maybe she knew all along why she wanted a green present, it was fate. After most of the presents were opened we went to bed to take a nap, all three of us. It was cozy. When she woke up I wanted to get her dressed and tae pictures with all her loot and open stockings and video with grandparents, but this did not work as planned. She refused to get dressed. Struggle struggle, scream, kick, and don't change her nasty stiny poopie diaper for the love of GOD! I'm beginning to think she grows attached to her stinky diapers, like they are her bestest friend. Today she went so far as to run screaming to the diaper pail after I'd put in the latest addition and try to open it to get it back out to put back on. It was actually quite funny if it wasn't also totally disgusting. Anyway, I digress, The not getting dressed part lasted well into talking to Grandma. I'd given up at this point and told her if she wanted to be naked and cold that was just fine. I had to make dinner. I made "Ode to our new Home" Ham, (meaning Coke basted Ham), cranberry wild rice dressing, aspergrass, (yes that's how I say it too!) biscuits, and sweet potato mush. It was all pretty good. Except that we got it all done, ready to eat, table set, and Laylah had a fit about not eating at the table. She wanted to eat on the floor. This lasted another ten minutes because I really wanted to have us all eat at the table and enjoy christmas dinner together like we did at Thanksgiving, it's a rare thing and I wanted it! But no, so I put her food on the floor and Brandon and I proceeded to eat our dinner at the table while she complained the whole time. When she realize she was actually hungry she wanted to eat my dinner, at which point I let her because frankly it was Christmas, she eats nothing as it is, and I was just tired. After dinner we all played with more of her toys. She's very good with the laptop game and the alphabet book. Knows all her letters, pushes the right buttons when they ask, it's quite fun to watch her. We also had fun pushing her babies in the stroller and giving them bottles and babas. She then took a bath with all of her plastic tube animals (she actually got four tubes worth of them) and then we read ten of her new books before putting her to sleep a very spoiled girl. Brandon and I watched another episode of Dexter, which was actually the last one in Season 2 so now we can't get more till netflix actually send them instead of watching them online like we were. Ugh. OH, also, I got red flannel long underwear pajamas with feet from Brandon, with a buttflap. Very sexy I must say. I also got several books to enjoy in the new year, a beautiful necklace from my parents, a snuggie (best thing ever), more pajamas, dvds, gloves, socks, calendars, and chocolates. A good haul all in all. Brandon did well with two new video games, clothes for work, lots of books, and gift certificates. Laylah won Christmas by far with the most presents. Here's the thing though, next morning she wakes up, runs into the living room, looks around with a confused expression and turns to Brandon and says, "Where my presents?" She totally thought it was going to be a daily occurance from then on. Maybe this is why she's been such a little brat lately. and I don't say that lightly, I would not call my child a brat unless she royally deserved it. But maybe she thinks every day when she wakes up that there will be presents under the tree for her and when there aren't it just starts her day off on a bad note. That's what I'm telling myself anyway, I'm really hoping it's not her sincere wish to watch Mickey Mouse Club every second of every day, to never change her diaper, and to scream and kick every time Mommy asks her to do anything. It's just that she is feeling what every child feels, Christmas is over and it won't come around again for a long long time, and I remember how that made you sad even if you'd had the best Christmas ever, you were still sad to realize tomorrow wasn't Christmas anymore.

Christmas is...magical?

This last week we celebrated all that is related to Christmas. It was busy to say the least. Brandon had Christmas Eve off so we did have more time to spend together, but as we'd apparently not planned on having a toddler who suddenly has decided that everything we usually do, as in every day routines, are now call for outright rebellion and murderous screams. We had a nice breakfast Christmas Eve morning, Laylah didn't eat a bite. Then Brandon went last minute shopping while Laylah and I made cut out cookies to decorate. This was mostly successful except for the fact that she kept insisting, no matter what I did, that the cookies cutters should cut the cookies backwards, and when I'd try to show her how to do it right so that the cookies were actually cut and not just squished all over the place, she of course had a fit. After this we tried napping, I put her down in her crib and she went to sleep, then I went out to get one last thing for her stocking. Brandon had returned at this point. Apparently she woke up the minute I left, and I was back about thirty minutes later and she was still upset. So I lay down with her. She finally kind of slept but woke up at 3. So we still had to ice the cookies and we sat down to do this, these were the cookies we were leaving for Santa so I wanted her to have a part in them. It took maybe fifteen minutes and then I started trying to get her dressed. This has started to be one of the biggest tantrums of the day. Screams, kicks, tears, will not get dressed, will not let me change her diaper that is falling off it's sooo full. I've tried letting her pick stuff out, Brandon doing it. Telling her far in advance, explaining that we are going out and where to get her excited, telling her she'll get a treat, letting her watch tv while getting dressed, nothing works. Anyway, we finally forced her into her dress, by this time Brandon is seething, we're leaving the house on Christmas Eve for mass at 4 at 3:45. Well, the thing about that is that I'm the one that asked him when he wanted to go, did all the research, he didn't seem to care, when I proposed going at 4 because it said it was the nativity scene thing with kids, it did not say it was a mass, I thought it was an actual little nativity play, he said fine. So we get there, of course there's no parking, he gets more angry by the second, we get in the overflow area, of course there is nowhere to sit, and guess what, it's a mass. So I take Laylah down to their school area where there are several kids running around while he stays in the church. I ask this, I'm not Catholic, I don't know all the terms, what everything is, why am I in charge of figuring out when we should go and where and all that and then when it's not what he wanted get blamed for it? He was pissy the rest of the day because the church was too full. Well, what did he expect? should we have gone at 2 to get parking and seats and sat there for three hours with a restless toddler? Apparently so. Anyway, after mass we went home and I made fondu, which turned out well except again Laylah ate nothing. I seriously don't know what the child lives on. We watched MIracle on 34th street and talked about Santa and stockings and presents, we did her last advent chocolate which she loved. We then put out the cookies for Santa, tried reading NIght Before Christmas except she wouldn't let Brandon sit next to her so it was difficult. When she was finally in bed we dragged out all the boxes, wrapped some last minute things and somehow fit it all under the tree. Then we had some eggnog, the good kind and watched Dexter, for those of you who don't know is about the un-christmassiest thing you can watch, it's about a good serial killer. She's up now and I'm having issues typing while she's trying to fondle/nurse on my boobs, so I'll go now and write the conclusion of our wonderful holiday extravaganza plus ham next time.

Crafty Goddess

Yes, that's me. I've crowned (does a goddess get crowned? ordained? dieified (how the heck do you spell that word???)?) Anyway, myself the crafty goddess. As you've all learned by now I've been making a lot of home made christmas presents. Which reminds me, Christina, I will get you those pictures of us for your thing, I'm just having issues right now getting to the pictures on the laptop because Brandon has put them all on an external hard drive and saved them who knows where and then when I import new ones they all go to the same place and I can't find them!!!! Anyway again, so today started out kind of icky because I had yet another dentist appointment, never quite as fun as you hope. When I got home Laylah was in full art mode as the babysitter had been coloring with her and they were tracing their hands. Laylah wanted me to continue this so I decided it was the perfect time to try out a new crafty thing I'd thought up, Christmas tree Feet! hehehehehe. You'll think this is genius! To explain, we made Rudolph hands earlier in Dec by tracing her hands onto brown felt and then having the thumb be the head and the fingers the legs. I added a red cotton ball thingy for a nose, added a tail and pipe-cleaner antlers, and a googly eye. Then put another pipe-cleaner on the back for a hook. They were super cute and a great memory of making them and seeing in however many years how much her hands have grown. So with the same inspiration I thought hey, I haven't done anything with her feet! So today we traced her feet, she loved this and helped with the marker, onto green sparkly felt, added a brown stump at the bottom (the toes) and then decorated them with pipe-cleaner gold star, tinsel, and sequens for balls. She loved it, of course she also spread about a pound of various sized and colored sequens all over the carpet, but she did help clean them up after. We put another pipe-cleaner on the back for a hook and there ya go, Christmas tree feet! They are super cute and now we have feet and hands to mark christmas 2009. Next year I'll have to come up with something new, can't have twenty rudolph's in various sizes and nothing else. Maybe Santa feet? mouse hands? who knows? by the time she's 18 we'll have every variation I can come up with. hehehe. It was fun though. Too bad I didn't think of it in time to send them with the other stuff for christmas presents, but maybe for reyes. Mom, Dad and Jane disregard that last, you do not know what you are getting from us for three kings and you will be very surprised and delighted when you receive whatever it is. :) Little miss Christmas Tree Feet herself has awoken from her very short nap so I shall wish you all a good day and a Silent Night!