Chad's Holiday Prep

This is the first year that Chad understands what Christmas is. OK, to be fair, he's pretty clueless about the Jesus being born in a manger part of it. We've been working on that. But he does get that the trees and lights and presents are because it's Christmas season, and that when Christmas Day gets here he can open ALL the presents. He also understands a little bit about Santa (he keeps telling me, "I'm not afraid of Santa.") and he knows that he has to be good if he wants Santa to come give him gifts. Fortunately, he has no clue about any of that Elf on Shelf crap, which is a blessing because I do NOT have time each night to set up an elf with Swedish fish in the toilet, or having a tea party with stuffed animals or any of those other scenes which, according to my Facebook feed, any good parent spends hours each night preparing. Instead, we arranged for him to receive a personalized video message from Santa:

Chad's message from Santa!

That was the free version of the message. If we had been willing to pay, we could have had more pictures of him from the past year. He seemed happy with just the free version though. We must have watched it 10 times already.

When Chad began shouting present ideas at Santa, we told him it would be better to write Santa a letter, so he would get these requests in writing. Chad dictated, and I wrote it out. And then he drew pictures of what he wanted all over the writing. This is what his letter said:

Dear Santa, Please bring me a leaf blower. Please bring me a weed whacker. I want that. The blower and the weed whacker. I want to break the grass. I want to spray the grass. I want the lawn mower. Nothing for inside. Love, Chad

(The "nothing for inside" part referred to me asking him what kind of toys for inside the house he wanted. But all he wants is to become a one man lawn service.) Although he already has a toy lawn mower, weed whacker and leaf blower, he would also like the real ones they sell in Lowe's. We have to look at the leaf blowers every time we go in there.)
We put the letter in an envelope and wrote "To: Santa, The North Pole" with a return address of "Chad, on the Nice list." But our nasty mail lady wouldn't pick it up. (She really is nasty. I've watched her throw our packages up our stairs, and she has intentionally hit our garbage cans with the mail truck.) So the letter will be saved for future generations to read.

Chad has also told us he wants a belt. He said, "I need a belt. These pants are too big. They aren't working for me." I passed this message on to a certain Cool Aunt Steph, who is taking care of that request.

We've also prepped by decorating our tree:

His Polar Express train track had to be modified, but it works for encircling the tree! 

See that little cradle with the blue blanket behind him? That's a baby Jesus that I've had for forever. Chad is obsessed with it, and checked on the baby multiple times the first week the tree was up. He even asked me to fix the blanket so the baby would stay warm.

And we made painted sugar cookies!!

The painting part went OK, but things got messy when we brought out the sprinkles:

Chad's cookies pre-baking: Clockwise, from the top, you can see a stegosaurus, an octopus, a snake, an elephant, a shark and a caterpillar. We kind of strayed from the Christmas theme.

Some of our finished work.

And at school, Chad has graduated from the 2s, thanks to his mastery of potty training! He starts in the 3s tomorrow. We are very sad that he is leaving Miss Alicia and Miss Danielle. :( But he seems to like the action in the 3s. His new teachers are Miss Demetrius (the kiddos call her "Miss Meet",) and Mr. Brandon (yes, his first male teacher!) The 3s seem to follow a more structured and intense curriculum. The class' theme for December is Fabrics and Textures, and the first day of this theme, his daily sheet said that they spent the day doing an "Introduction to the new curriculum." However, it's not all work. On Fridays they are granted extra "Free play."

Chad put his new knowledge to use by cutting his shirt with safety scissors.

I thought the point of safety scissors was that they couldn't do real damage.

Not much is new with the Valen-twins. Our 28 week ultrasound showed that they were both 2 pounds, 7 oz., which means they're holding steady at the 50th percentile with 0% discordance from each other! Crazy good growth! But Epic is still breech. :( The next ultrasound is on Boxing Day. The doctor said that if we all keep looking this good, they would consider letting me go to 39 weeks if I want. I told him sticking with the original 38 week plan is fine with me, thank you very much. Let's not drag this out much longer- I'm already bigger than I ever was with Chad. :(

That would be 30 weeks preggo with twins, before Andy's department's party. These babies owe me big time. I'm the size of a house, and even worse, I couldn't wear any of my favorite heels.

I wasn't sure I wanted to wear this dress, so I asked Chad for his opinion. We had the following conversation:
Me: Chad, does this look bad?
Chad: Yes. Take it off.

Andy: Chad! That was NOT nice.

Chad. Sorry. Take it off, please.

Alas, my options were limited, so I had to go out looking "bad". Lucky for me, it still fit last night for my department's party... where the twins got their first chance to break it down on the dance floor to the Cha Cha Slide. I had to modify parts of it when the hop counts got above three, and couldn't get as lo' to the flo' as usual, but the three of us made it through. "Everybody, clap your hands!"

The twins also got some love from my co-workers at a baby sprinkle. I started to take pictures, but then gave Andy the camera (he had pockets) and then somehow no more pictures were taken.

31 weeks down, and we're just five days from our next goal: if we can get to 32 weeks they can be delivered at the hospital Chad was born at. (Otherwise we'd have to go to the one with the better NICU.)