First of all, Mom and Angie, see I haven’t forgotten how to update my blog LOL.

Wow, what a day! Today was the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional shopping day!

Christian and I got up at 4:30 (yes, AM, LOL) and went with Crystal and Joy to join the rest of the crazy shoppers for the 5am opening of JC Penney. We each got our free Disney snowglobe and started on our shopping mission. I must say, opening an hour ahead of any other store in the mall was genious of Penney’s. We were stuck there for an hour before we could move on to any other store. It helped that they had great deals, but I completed most of my Christmas shopping (that I hadn’t already done online) within that hour. At 6, we moved on to Macy’s, where they brilliiantly gave us each (including the kids) $5 gift cards. Well, we HAD to find something to spend them on! $50 and an hour later, we finally left Macy’s and the mall behind.

As we were done with the mall, we moved on to IHOP for breakfast. Great timing, too, because when we left, there was a line of people waiting for tables. Christian and Joy entered a coloring contest. The winner will get a HUGE stocking, bigger than the kids. We went to Office Depot, and I’ll spare you the saga of my frustration with their advertising. Let’s just say that when I got home, I went to Staples.com and placed a large order. We also picked up diapers and stocking stuffers at Rite Aid.

We had a fairly quiet afternoon at home. Fast forward to 6pm. We dropped off Alyson (who is adorable, by the way, and is SO close to walking, and who loves to say ‘Done!’ and Mama, Dada, and ‘isin’) at Grandma’s house and headed down to Seattle to hear Reidar play live. This is the band that Bill spent all of August September and October recording and producing their CD. This is also the band that did a day’s worth of yard work for us They put on a really great show. The kids were EXHAUSTED by the time the show ended at nearly 11, but they did enjoy the music and seeinig a bunch of people we know.

Well, it’s nearly midnight now and though I had a latte at the concert, I’m tired too. The kids are to bed, the house is quiet, and it’s bed time

Oh, one more thing… if you want to know more about Reidar, click the link to Bill Abella Productions! The new CD is out and it’s wonderful!

What a day. What an understatement. It was one of those lightbulb days. When you know something is really wrong in your home and haven’t been able to quite figure it out.

Christian has been having trouble… nothing that has made it into this blog, I don’t think. It’s been little things at home. He’s been doing great at school and has been fairly happy. But at home, he’s been getting into trouble left and right. There were little holes in the wall in the kids’ room, which they got into trouble for months ago. Suddenly they were much bigger. We think he knows better than to put holes in walls.

Today, he was supposed to be doing his Kindermusik homework, which was to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the dulcimer. The teacher gave them the first part, and they were supposed to figure out the second part. Christian played the first part no problem, but threw a fit instead of finishing. Nothing I could say would help. I suggested singing the song as he plays it. I suggested playing the first part again. He huffed, rolled around on the floor, said he was going to do it his way (yet did nothing). I sent him outside to sit and get some fresh air.

Did it work? Absolutely not. He drew on the house with chalk. We think he knows better than to write on the house with chalk.

Bill was furious. Christian was in tears.

After Bill went back in, I went out to try to talk to Christian. I tried to get him to talk to me. I got a lot of ‘I don’t think you love me!’ and ‘Maybe I’ll just run away!’ and ‘I hate having to do jobs!’. We talked about jobs for a little while, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. I explained that we all have jobs to do around the house. I don’t like cooking every day or doing the laundry every week, but I do it because I love my family. That didn’t work. His response? ‘How about I just won’t eat for TWO YEARS!’. LOL, in hindsight.

I asked him specifically which jobs he doesn’t like to do? All of them. No, Christian, WHICH jobs? I was trying to get him to name something, to tell me what exactly he was upset about. He refused to nail it down. I kept trying. I went off on another tangent, explaining that if there’s something specific he is upset about doing, all he has to do is talk to us about it. Tell us he feels like he’s got too much to do and could he please have a week off from garbage duty. Or ask to trade one job for another. I felt like I’d been talking til I was blue in the face (as my nose was running like crazy and my head felt like it was going to explode). But it was yet another tactic that didn’t work.

But he did say something very interesting. He wants to have a kid life. Wow, what a lightbulb moment.

I finally figured out he feels we expect too much of him. We do expect a lot. He’s the oldest, and the other two look up to him. We expect him to remember to do things without being asked, and we do get mad if he forgets. We’ve decided to try to lighten up a bit, and he’s going to try to remember the things that bug us the most (it really bugs me that every single day I have to ask him to put his backpack away).

Some afternoon. With a sigh and a prayer, I’m off to bed, to start hopefully a more peaceful new week. I hope everyone else’s weekend wasn’t quite so interesting.