Advent Update

Week one of the Advent calendar has come and gone. It has been sort of a rollercoaster experience. Some days are GREAT, some days are not-so-great. How do you teach a child to be appreciative? I know it's his age, but I get so aggravated when Caleb is ungrateful for the small items in his Advent sock. Tonight, he got stickers and said, "I already have those. I'm throwing them away." I thought I was going to wring his neck. I work with so many kids who are ungrateful. I refuse to have a child who is that way. As he gets older, I will look for ways to teach gratitude. Right now, my fear is that he will be embarrassingly rude to someone when he opens a Christmas present. I would be absolutely mortified if he said something like that to one of his grandparents or great-grandparents.

The things in the socks aren't what it's all about. I kind of wish I hadn't put them in there at all. I wish I had just done the activities. So far, those have been pretty well received. We've watched Charlie Brown Christmas, read books and read the Christmas story with the Nativity set as props.

This past Friday night, Jan came in to spend the night with us. She was excited to participate in our Advent activity. We made pine cone birdfeeders. Caleb LOVED it. I put peanut butter on the pinecones and then Caleb put the birdseed on them. He thought that was the coolest thing ever.

On Saturday, our activity was going to see a kids' theater production of The Polar Express at the Bentonville Library. Caleb loved going to the library and liked watching the kids, but his favorite part was getting to clap for them. He got a little tired toward the end and laid down in the floor to play with his car. At least he didn't make a bunch of noise or ask to leave. I considered it a success.After the performance, Jan, Caleb and I met Rudy for lunch at Einstein's. Caleb loved having his Grandma in town and going to lunch with her.

After lunch, we went over to Nana's to hang our birdfeeders. We only have one little puny tree in our yard, but Nana's house is in a wooded area, so we thought the birds there would enjoy the seed. Nana had the stomach flu, so we didn't even go inside, but left the feeders in her backyard for her birds to enjoy. We came home and hung one of our feeders on our little tree as well.

Our weekend was a good one. Rudy and Caleb went to see some of Rudy's students play basketball yesterday. I went to a movie with Stacy last night. Caleb and Rudy tried to go for a hike this morning, but the trail was closed, so they played at Lake Atalanta instead. We played hooky from church this morning for the first time in a while. I've been having a really hard time sleeping and have gotten pretty worn down from it. I was finally getting some good sleep this morning, so we stayed home and I slept in. I finished up our Christmas cards today and did massive amounts of laundry. Caleb and I made some foam craft magnets for our Advent activity tonight and then he got to spend some time playing games on my computer, which he rarely does. He's getting the hang of using the mouse and likes it, but gets bored with it pretty quickly. I guess that's a good thing. He would much rather be playing with cars or playing football with his daddy.