Stockings Hung with Care...

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. Ask my mom or dad...I listen to Christmas songs in July. :) I love the joy that people have and the "feeling of Christmas". It's funny because people KNOW there's so much more than just Santa and buying gifts. Its like this internal awknoledgement that it's the most important day of the year - it's Jesus' birthday!

I love Christmas traditions too, and this year we've really been working on instilling these traditions in our kids - something that they can then take and begin to make with their families when they grow up. So on this Christmas eve eve, I thought I'd let you in on a few of our traditions we've started with our little ones.

We start setting up things the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. Jason usually has to work on Black Friday, so that's why we wait until the next day. It begins with the tree. While the kids are napping, Jason sets it up and I spread open the branches. Jason srings the lights and we set it into place. Then when the kids wake up, they help decorate the tree. Of course, since we have three toddlers in the house, we have a baby gate around our tree :)

The gate works well for curious pets too. And it keeps a certain curious little four-year-old out of the presents.... This year he's been sneaky and been looking in the ones that were just put in bags. I think he takes after his momma....

We hang the stockings and we put on KSBJ because they play a variety of Christmas music all day every day from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Nothing else really gets done until the week of Christmas...then the anticipation and preparation begins. I'll write about that when the week is over so that I'll have LOTS of pictures to share. :) So be anxiously awaiting!

Bye Bye Paci!

Jason and I watch a lot of Supernanny. We watched it before we had kids and got a lot of great, practical parenting tips from the show. I vowed that my kids would never behave like some of the kids we've seen on there. One of my own personal "pet peeves" is seeing kindergarteners walking around with pacis still in their mouths.

All of my kids have liked the paci. I wanted them to like it because I was a thumb sucker when I was little and I remember sucking my thumb for a long time after I probably shouldn't have been. I also remember how hard my mom tried to break me of the habit. So to avoid cutting off my kids' thumbs (totally joking!) I made sure they got real aquainted with the paci right away. This way when they get close to 18 months we could take it away.

I know many people that have tried many different things to accomplish this task, and I'm passing on the best advice I was ever told. When Josh was little, a friend of mine told me to simply snip off the end of the paci so that it loses its suction. Then the child will think its broken and won't want it anymore. I snipped the end off this paci and you can barely see it - that's how little you have to cut off.

So it was now Julianna's turn to give up the "beloved paci". Granted she only used this at nap and bed times, it was still something that I thought would be difficult for her to give up. I did wait a little longer than 18 months with her, simply because I wanted her to know that the paci was for the baby and to see that. So, I snipped the ends off all her pacis and it took just the one day for her not to want them anymore..... At first she cried....

But now she hands them to me and tells me "baby Jayden paci". And she no longer even desires to have one. Way to go Julianna! You're a big girl now!