Somehow we are already creeping toward the end of December and fully into Christmas season. After a nice Thanksgiving dinner at cousins house in November- where the kids mildly grazed and pretty much ate cucumbers and carrots for dinner- the girls were thrilled to put the Christmas tree up on Black Friday and even more excited to hang ornaments on the tree. Quite a few ornament accidents occurred over the first weekend; mostly random bulbs that somehow walked themselves into their bedroom, became dollhouse ornaments, or managed to become decorations in a variety of less than amenable locations; didn’t cause too much bodily damage. In case you were wondering, stepping on a broken ornament hurts like a Lego, except it slices your foot open. And yes, we had to explain that sleeping in bed with your breakable ornaments is not allowed. That was not the popular opinion in our household, believe me!

We dove right into Christmas season with family photos. The first try was canceled as we were parking downtown, with the girls’ hair fixed and outfits ready. They were less than pleased on the lack of follow through, but it all worked out a couple days later. It is SO much easier to get ready and the need for less game planning is welcomed. In fact, everyone was on board with the idea and it didn’t take much forcing or demands (let’s be realistic- bribes!). After a 20 minute session with lots of smiles and insistence to have a turn in the middle (we had to do extra shots so each kiddo had a turn as the center of the sister sandwich), we walked a block over and explored the Christmas bazaar at the Captain Cook Hotel and everyone had a chocolately treat for cooperative behavior. And can I just say, aren’t these holiday sweater dresses are pretty much the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I can’t even handle the cuteness and they are seasonally appropriate, all warm and cozy for the cold temperatures.

As the midway point to the school year nears, we continue to practice all the sounds the letters make, recognizing numbers in order forward and backwards, and a lot of different shapes. The girls are about to have their school assessments to see progression from the start of the year and it’s quite easy to see the change when you are around it each day. Even since my last blog, they already write words verbally spelled out to them better than a month ago and ask which letter is that less often. I still see some frustration when one sister answers questions faster than the other two and still working out a solution that solves that and ensures all three are learning individually and not relying on a sibling to answer a question when they don’t know it.

Night times with solid darkness seem to create very hyper five year olds. In fact, without sugar or even finishing their dinner plates, we’ve seen a number of wild nights the past few weeks, with screaming, fighting, running up and down all the stairs easily a dozen or more times, and all around chaos to burn off that energy. The garage has seen better days and while the mess isn’t mortar (thank heavens!), we’ve discovered a lot of ground up chalk water, a box of depleted apple cause pouches, and my car getting “washed” by makeup brushes.

At some point the wildness ends with crying and whining, and parents very ready for bedtime. I can’t imagine we are the only household in town dealing with that fun and guess it stems from the extensive darkness, cold temperatures, and excited for Christmas! The other night Emerie came up to me after some form of five-year-old bodily injury by a sister, and noted you told me not to do that and I should of listened. Yep. But when each kiddo finds an activity to do solo, things are far more calm. This happens every few days without any parent push. One decent night Reagan was in her room “playing Christmas” in her dollhouse, Emerie was in the garage building a train track around my car, and Harper was making a baby bed out of a black Friday shipping box in the living room. All things were quiet until one wandered away from their activity to check out what someone else was up to.

In addition to the chaotic and energetic nights- for the kids, not the adults mind you- we are seeing a few more emotional fits than in prior months. Harper is really taking it full throttle, and will stomp off to her room in a huff when she disagrees with a solution, and really milk it, peeking out to see if anyone is paying attention to her woes and then continuing at higher volumes. Craig and I are both ready to see Grandma Sue’s reaction to this new attitude. Emerie has her moments too, as does Reagan occasionally, but Harper really takes the cake on this one. Her strong willed insistence will be great for other things as she gets older; but yes, we need to break this before it gets too out of hand and hoping it’s just the latest phase. The constant bickering really inspires the fits too.

In addition to Christmas focused activities, we have hit up three build days over the past 3 weeks, one making wooden gingerbread houses at Home Depot and two at Lowes, for wooden turkey picture frames and Christmas delivery trucks. Harper really impressed me at Home Depot, free hand painting green garland across her roof and adding sticker ornaments on it. Reagan, being the practical girl she is on art projects, insisted to paint her already wooden house brown, because it’s a gingerbread. Emerie also jumped on that bandwagon. Everyone insisted on writing first, middle and last names on their delivery trucks; and of course using permanent marker…

We entered into the movie season, something rarely done during warmer months. I don’t know if it’s just me or something I learned growing up here, but I feel terrible seeing a movie when it’s warm outside, and definitely won’t step foot in one if it’s warm AND sunny (especially after our last two overly miserable summers!). After seeing Trolls Band Together the first time and downloading the soundtrack, everyone wanted to see it again after constant singing in the car. The girls enjoy almost all the songs and have picked them up pretty well, each having a specific favorite and request for it every time we get in the car. Not going to lie- I quite enjoy most of them too and that’s a bonus! Now that the band *Nsync is now back in “style,” we are jamming out to their new single. About a year or two ago I tried pushing some of the late nineties or early 2000’s pop music at the tiny humans and they insisted imminent death if it continued to play (tad dramatic maybe) and that was that. Now the game has changed and at our second showing of the movie, everyone was singing the song in their seats!

A Peppa Pig obsession also emerged this fall. I’m not sure how we avoided that one for so long, since I’m sure the girls learned what it was from friends at school. One sick day Harper conned me into watching it so I could conduct interviews without interruption (Peppa Pig and an oreo = quietness for about an hour!), and now it’s a constant request. There are about 1000 other shows that I’d prefer to hear in the background, so we try to limit our time; although not incredibly successfully.

Winter brings out more daily crafting and coloring than the summer months, something I enjoyed growing up and am happy to share with the girls. All three recently discovered the magic of our home printer and daily requests to color princess photos now occur. Emerie wakes up each morning and instead of her adorable good morning Momma she starts the day off with I told you I wanted a -insert princess here- photo to color. We are working on getting back to the good mornings and delaying future requests until formalities are said. Everyone will hover in front of the printer waiting for random requests to print; it’s pretty funny and results in a lot of fun pictures to display. Craig purchased a very nice pen set that they are putting to good use, like in the photo below of Reagan. We also receive instructions and requests for tape so specific drawings can be hung up on the correct walls in the house. Very specific!

Custom drawings continue to emerge. I’m really enjoying this phase of creativity, which involves more self and family portraits and freehand drawings. Reagan is into panda families, although that only extends to her, parents and grandparents, even after requests to include her sisters. Eventually I was able to convince her to include Emerie and Harper and she begrudgingly made one and taped it to the door. Harper’s stick figures are adorable and always involve crazy hair. She insists she can’t draw shirts so everyone is wearing a tutu of sorts in most creations, but insistence they are shirts! Emerie free hands the least of the three and really focuses on princess coloring. She is getting more creative on her color choices instead of everything purple and will make multiple colors for a dress or hair. She will yell at you if your eyes happen to go across her in-progress creation, and harshly remind you no looking until she is done and ready to showcase it.

This year’s school Christmas show was with the elementary and upper class grades, meaning we are no longer part of the pre-K adorableness. The two kindergarten classes sang four songs total, three at the beginning and the finale of Jingle Bell Rock with the entire school. All three were split up, which helped with behavior (I think!), and Harper and Emerie couldn’t help but share their goofiness in front of the crowd. Harper made multiple antler hands and kept sticking out her tongue and making direct eye contact with me. Clearly she does not know what stage fright is, as her silly side excels off being in front of a crowd and she never appears nervous when people are looking her direction. Reagan, on the other hand, focused on singing her songs and doing the hand motions, and is all around more shy on stage than her siblings. Emerie….oh Emerie, kept pulling her fancy dress up and purposefully flashing us her red tights, and thinking it was absolutely hilarious as we told her to stop. Two out of three threw their headbands on the ground for the final song, because apparently taking them off and holding them was an unacceptable option while singing. So funny.

Overall this is one of my favorite nights of the year; not sure why but it makes me really feel like a grown up and “real” parent, seeing my offspring singing on a big stage, all dressed up and excited to be there, and getting to enjoy the moment. Being able to sit and enjoy without fussing over misbehaving kids (because they are onstage) is a nice perk for the parents. The girls were all snazzy in their Christmas dresses, black boots and headbands and did great.

The following day was the end of the fall dance session, where the girls did a tap and ballet routine and a quick bar routine to show the parents their new skills. Harper was not having it and stared straight at the floor the entire tap routine, finally cooperating a bit for the ballet part. She had a grumpy day and her love for dance class and her teacher was not emanating today, but overall her teacher noted she has learned a lot in the last year! Emerie quietly watched her teacher and followed the moves from the back, and Reagan was all smiles at the front and happy to smooch the camera videoing. So far this session went well overall with all three together, and far better than previous years according to the teacher. We have decided to keep them together in dance for the winter session and everyone is extremely excited about the spring extravaganza show at the end. We shall see how they do with three hours of performances, since we carried an overly tired, screaming Harper all the way to the car after it last year.

Later in the day after dance we went ice skating at the mall with a bunch of friends from school. The activity reinforced the thought of doing ice skating lessons again, something we did during COVID when they were much younger. Emerie likes it the least of the three, but claimed to have fun, even after multiple demands to go side on the side. Harper and Reagan both ventured out toward the middle without holding any hands after a bit, and have already asked to go again. Craig, being a more articulate skater than me (I need more practice to remember my skills!), took our kids, random Anchor kids, and some of their friends into twirls and speed skating, much to everyone’s delight (to everyone but Craig’s knees haha). We also had the pleasure to watch him chase the Brinkman twins across the ice as they tried to escape him. The girls only took me down once and I relearned that I can maintain balance holding one kid’s hand, but definitely not two. Each jerked a different direction and that was that, and they were less than thrilled that I pulled them down after me. Other than that snafu and a few falls from each, everyone did fantastic.

To sum up our weekend Christmas activities, we did a quick visit to Santa after breakfast at our favorite family spot. The girls have no fear of the jolly red man now and all went right up to ask him questions and explain what they’d like for Christmas. Reagan is still asking for a talking panda- and I reminded Santa that we can’t have a live panda live with us in Alaska. Ha! We also did our annual gingerbread cookies with Auntie Megan, Kaden and Oaki; this was the cleanest year so far and I can finely share the beautiful goodies with other people, without feeling so bad about impending kid germs. I also have to mention that Emerie decorated so much more this year than in the past, and everyone took a turn helping me roll out the dough into their chosen shapes. Reagan excelled at that part and by next year she probably won’t need adult supervision to fill the cookie sheet up. Pretty cool.

I can’t end this festive blog without mentioning the fantastic girls night Craig hosted solo last week. While I attended a Christmas dinner with the bestie, he did school pickup and took them on a fun filled evening, first stopping at Benihana for a fire filled dinner, then hitting up the library and returning books and getting new, AND ended the adventure with an ice cream treat. I clearly need to step up my charcuterie girls nights after all that activity! And I returned home that night and everyone was in pajamas and happily watching Bluey on the couch together. Impressive I tell you, it’s still not easy taking all three out solo and not looking like a crazy person handling a bunch of wild animals, let along three places in a row!

Merry Christmas!

❤