me: less than $200 all-in with coupon. pleeeeeeeease. these will bring immeasurable joy to the lives of your beloved wife and daughter, the shining beacons of your...
kevin: where will we store them?
me: they fold up and fit back in the boxes! brilliant!
kevin: they'll never fit back.
me: i'll fit them.
kevin: fine.
fa la la la la, la la la la! violet and i rushed home and assembled before kevin got home. ta da!
kevin put on an enthusiastic smile for his daughter while mumbling something to me about burning the house down.
soon after, kevin spent some daddy time at home depot and worked out the wiring. ta da!
i got an almost immediate text from our neighbor with two young children about how much they love the reindeer. violet played "reindeer petting zoo" every night for three weeks. kevin helped me, with nary a curse word, fit them back into the boxes. glitter continues to dust our house with magic.
inexplicably, violet spent a good month declaring that this was her "reindeer face":
more joyful for kevin than xmas decor was violet's first ice skating. she knows he played ice hockey growing up, so she feels confident that she's going to be a good skater too. she loves to tease me about my lack of ice skating ability, which i can't help but think has something to do with my earliest ice skating memory. when i was in first grade, my girl scout troop went to the local rink to celebrate juliette lowe's birthday, and while one of the moms was lacing up my skates, a woman stepped on my middle finger and her blade took half my nail off. i can clearly recall my blood trailing in the porcelain sink, and days later, the last little bit of my nail turning black. but i digress. i'm happy to report that violet had a much more pleasant first skating experience at the little seasonal rink in burbank. we rented "bobby the seal" to help her balance, but of course she preferred riding.
in other happy news, joan's on third opened its second location in our neighborhood. merry christmas to me!
clearly bakery hopping has become normalized for violet, something i think she assumes all people do. "today was a hot cocoa day," she'll tell her teachers nonchalantly. we still don't know if we're starting her in the transitional kindergarten class this fall or not, but either way, our friday morning bakery stops are numbered. i mean, not that i'll stop going, but it won't be the same without my little partner.
kevin recorded a holiday special on the food network called "kids baking championship," and violet got really into it. she started running up to friends at school to tell them about how cody had to go home last night after the pate a choux challenge. she isn't really deterred by the blank stares; she just tells the kids that her mommy will tell their mommies how they can record the show too. we still have the final episode in our queue because she says, "i don't want to watch it until zoe and elizabeth catch up." umm...
as you see above, max and ruby are still part of her life, but her imaginary play with them has dropped off in favor of her current obsessions with frozen and jake and the neverland pirates. kevin does a stellar captain hook impression, so they play that all the time. the other day she told me, "mom, i never want us to go to neverland because i want to grow up and do all the things you do, like wash dishes without a step stool, and cook with a chef's knife. i really want my own chef's knife."
nana came up to bake sugar cookies with her in early december, and since we ended up making it down to san diego a couple days earlier than planned, they baked another round there.
the best was when kevin surprised us with this shirt:
"i'm just here for the cookies" has become a family catch phrase.
we also had a girls day out with nana and auntie courtney for violet's first nutcracker.
the production was a shortened version intended for kids and with mostly kid dancers, including some very talented teens in the main solos. i was worried violet wouldn't be able to sit still for 45 minutes, and while she did get a little antsy in the middle
she reengaged once the story picked up. i was also nervous because she had insisted she would be scared of the mouse king, but she didn't end up being afraid, probably because he looked like chuck e. cheese from our vantage.
her very favorite character? clara's brother, fritz, of course. she still has a thing for older boys. she kept asking me when fritz would be back onstage, and i thought there would be at least one more scene with him, after clara wakes up, but he didn't end up returning until the final bow. i could see violet was a little disappointed but clapped eagerly for him anyway.
she also got to ride an awesome reindeer carousel at the adjacent mall.
we considered the santa line, until we found out the wait was already over two hours, so i did what i did last year and took her to the grove at 9am on a tuesday. it was rainy
which helped secure our position as second in line behind a pair of seriously dolled up toddler twins. i've started to realize that my child looks like a ragamuffin most of the time. she has zero interest in sitting still to get her hair done, which perfectly matches my level of interest in actually doing her hair, and we let her pick all her own clothes out of laziness rather than a conscious attempt to empower her with decision making, as i would like to lie.
violet asked for a baby giraffe, glitter tattoos, and a canopy tent. she was very shy with santa, but we still got a cute pic. auntie remarked that she looks so grown up here.
violet was eager to eat the gross packaged "marshmallows" that the elves were handing out (what happened to mini candy canes?), and she licked at a couple before declaring she was done, to my relief. she was much more into her first roasted marshmallow
at the san diego botanic garden. big recommend for holiday lights fun! the giant horse-drawn wagon was impressive, especially for its old-school precariousness. you sit really high, and i was just thinking to myself, man, we could literally die if this thing tips when violet piped up for the whole wagon to hear, "i want the horse to canter!" everyone laughed, and i had to explain that we aren't an equestrian family, just fans of dr. seuss's all about horses.
before we got to san diego for christmas week, we had of course put up our own tree. kevin can't understand why i insist on having a christmas tree for just three weeks (since we take it down before we leave town), and while i can't rationally justify it, i know some of you know. it's two things, really. getting to visit the christmas tree lot
and then the pine and the lights, and the gifts too, a symbol of happy anticipation.
violet is old enough now to really understand the pleasure of gift giving. braggity brag, i'm sorry, but i was happy with how happy she was to give out her gifts this year. even though "giving out" meant a lot of mailing.
auntie courtney asked me if violet could open "just one little early gift" from our friend wendy, which turned out to be this not so little olaf.
in conclusion, gift giving < gift receiving.
on christmas eve, violet was very well behaved at bernard'O for our fancy dinner.
an early reservation left us time to snuggle afterwards for a charlie brown christmas. nana and auntie sandwiched violet right away because they knew if they didn't that she'd beeline for her usual perch next to poppy.
christmas morning was the best. i said it last year too -- these years are priceless.
every year we make new rules about less gifts, yet somehow the living room still looked like this.
the big gift was from auntie courtney -- a big wheel just like the one she remembers from her own childhood, except this one is dora themed and has buttons with audio like "vamonos! izquierda!"
here's one with the glitter tattoos from santa
and here's one that i don't remember the story behind but that somehow speaks for itself.
violet was excited to receive the book with no pictures from her cousins. of its famous author, she declared, "i'm the one who told bj novak to write the book with no pictures." "you are?" i replied. "how do you know bj novak?" violet shrugged: "i just texted him, write a funny book, and so he did!"
even though 2014 was a hard one for us (and seems to have been for a lot of our friends), i can't look at these pictures and say it was a bad year. after all, 2014 was the year of the official best christmas ever. the road into 2015 hasn't been any less rocky, yet i see i have so many great pictures and memories waiting in the wings already. it was a happy new year, and today it's happy spring.
