Charlie and The Fat Man

Charlie is a fan of Santa. A BIG fan of Santa.

We go to see him a few weeks ago. The three kids are supposed to be posing on his lap for a picture, but Charlie can't be bothered with that nostalgic nonsense. He gets right down to work.

"I like gween," he tells him.

Santa says, "Oh, I like green, too. I also like red."

"I WEALLY like gween. I like gween a LOT."

Santa, not getting the hint, replies with, "Green is a Christmas color and Christmas is my favorite time of year."

Charlie goes for the direct hit. "I like gween Hot Wheels."

"Oh! Do you want some Hot Wheels for Christmas?"

"I want ALL de Hot Wheels. All de gween Hot Wheels and all de udder Hot Wheels. You bwing me all de Hot Wheels?" Charlie searches the bearded face for signs that the deal was struck.

"What else would you like for Christmas?"

"Da Hot Wheels."

Santa moves on to Melody with his questions, who answers, "A horse." Dixie concurs.

I somehow don't think they prepare them for that in Santa School.

After they move along, we go outside to where they have phone booths set up. See, the indoor Santa was really just there for the photo op. At $5 a photo, time is too valuable to spend in chit chat.

Melody picks up the phone and repeats to the person, "A horse." There's a minute or so of silence, then she says, "I already have one of those. I'm ready for a real one now."

No plying rocking horses on my kid. Too smart for that.

Well, Santa came through for the boy. Between Santa, Aunt Jackee, Aunt Bethie and Melody, he is now richer by at least forty Hot Wheels that he carries territorially in a baseball backpack given by Aunt Joanne. You've never seen such a happy boy.

I do not know what this means

Charlie and Aunt Joanne are flying around the downstairs of Oma's house with their LarryBoys and LarryMobiles. Only they are not flying around Oma's house. They are flying around Buttland.

I don't know much about Buttland, only that you do crash often in Buttland. And, according to Charlie, "It is not a gooey place."

Also, "You do not get lost in Buttland."

Be prepared for cuteness!

See, I've had three kids for nearly four years now. The last good pic of all three of them is, well, three and a half years old. Some of them are still odd



but there's a lot of cuteness here. I think of this one as 'Charlie's in Charge'



The individual girl shots were sassy, sweet and splendid.





And, frankly, we were happy to get Charlie facing in the right direction.



If this hand were anywhere else, this pic would be great



Or, if he were wearing socks.



But then there are the sisters . . .





Those perfect, perfect sisters!

Melody blogged.

I swear it's her idea and I barely help her. She knows when she sees a squiggle under a word that something is wrong and can figure out how to fix it herself 90% of the time. I only help with spelling here and there.



http://melodyanneland.blogspot.com/2010/12/school.html

Charlie and the ladies

Today Charlie narrowly avoided a second expulsion of the year.

One of my recent concerns has been that Charlie does not identify male and female correctly. He uses gender pronouns interchangably and does not seem to correctly identify the difference between boy and girl.

Well, I wish I still had that problem.

Charlie has discovered the ladies. More specifically, he has discovered a startling anatomical difference and spent a few days wanting 'to check for penis.'

Oh, boy. Boy, oh, boy.

Fortunately, by the time we made it back to school after the weekend, he had figured out that this was explicitly not allowable and had modified his approach and became rather curious about little girls' bottoms. This became particularly problematic in his classroom, where the little girls' pants stick out in the back as they sit in their chairs.

Yesterday, he put his hand down the back of one girl's pants at least twice. The mother and grandmother are not particularly happy about this, as one might imagine.

Although we got the point across that his hands absolutely do not go down their pants, he found a loophole and today was poking his finger on their butts through their pants. To him, that is completely different from what he was told not to do and he is indignant that he is being punished.

In the principal's office, we asked him several questions, including if he's touched any boy butts.  He replied, "I did not touch boy butts. I have a boy butt. I only touched little girl's on dere bottom.'

His teacher is none too happy, and I completely understand. Those girls need to feel safe in their classroom environment. However, since he is only there for eight more half-days, the principal did not feel that he was quite ready to be shown the door just yet.

Whew.

Now, can we please find some other criterion on which to base our gender determination? Pretty please?

Holiday at Home

When I called my family to say, "Hey, I know we were having Thanksgiving here and all, but I have mono," they decided that the groceries and motel rooms and yardwork they'd planned to do were all here, so they were coming anyways.

I love my family.

From the Wednesday the week before til Thanksgiving Day, I basically slept all day, every day. I worked some half days and halfway worked some full days and ate a few meals here and there, but I basically just slept. I even slept through most of my doctor's appointment. I gotta say, if I had to have this stupid mono, I picked a good time. I managed to have eight sick days with only missing two days of school.

Thursday morning, I woke up as people arrived, grunted at them and went back to sleep. I woke up long enough to eat and watch football, then went back to sleep. Friday, I was actually feeling well enough to stand up and tell people where to move my furniture. They swapped out what was supposed to be the dining room with what was supposed to be the living room. It's a lot cozier and roomier in here now, especially once we got the decorating for Christmas done. I got out of the house to do a bit of shopping and inspected the yardwork. Saturday I actually stayed awake all day, but I spent Sunday recovering.

I did manage to work a full week, but I kept my plans light and came home to go straight to bed most days.

This weekend, my in-laws came down for a few days and Dixie's grandma and uncle came to watch the girls perform with their cheerleading group yesterday. I overdid it again and spent most of today asleep, and I'm getting the idea that I might be this way for a few weeks to come as my body kicks this virus.

Now that all three groups of family have been through, it really feels like home.