sweaters and trees and such and such

Now that Amanda is due ANY MINUTE with our little girl, Callum and I often get up and do stuff in the morning on weekends--in order that Amanda can sleep in a little bit. We like to put on our cool Irish sweaters and go promenading around town, looking at girls.....

Callum is wearing a sweater his Grammy made him. If you blow this up you can see the firetruck "buttons" which Callum loves. My sweater has been around for a while--it is one of the Eddie Bauer sweaters I got the winter I was diagnosed with cancer. I remember that only because that was a REALLY cold winter (the winter of 96) and I used to joke with my doctors that the thing I was looking forward to the most was going home and wearing a big comfy and warm sweater....and NOT a hospital johnny.

Today, by the way, is in fact my 14th year anniversary of being in remission from lymphoma. So I thought it was appropriate that I wear this. So this sweater is 14 years old! Try keeping anything that long from LL Crap!!
Callum is changing and changing and changing every single day. We are having HUGE problems with him lately, as he DOES NOT want to stay in bed. We put him to bed, and he IMMEDIATELY gets up and comes to the foot of the stairs. He is silent because he knows he is doing something "bad." But when you finally see him, he tries to make us believe he has already slept for the night, and can thus watch another Charlie Brown. OR, he stalls unbelievably, and asks questions that have nothing to do with anything: "what is on your shirt daddy?" or "have you seen my white bunny rabbit daddy?" or "so what have you been doing today, mommy?"

On the other hand, however, he is continually creative and hilarious. His new routine, as seen at bottom, involved dragging his chair and my bongos into the kitchen, getting his two conducting "batons" from the kitchen drawer (white stirring spoons) and alternating between conducing the Nutcracker album playing on the iPod, or drumming along to the beat of Vince Guaraldi classics from Charlie Brown Christmas Album.....Also, he brings his dreidel along for good measure. Papa got him a singing dreidel. Oh, thanks Papa!
Yesterday afternoon we went to pick out and cut our Christmas tree. A great tradition and experience, but this is the last year we will do it this way we think. 30 dollars is the starting price for these trees now. We think that is a bit much. Instead, we'll plant some balsams or blue spruce trees over at Springpond (oh, by the way Lynne and George, can we do that?) and in six years we will have a steady supply. Until then, we'll hike out back of BaBa's and Grampy's house (our our new place if we move soon and have some woods) can cut a tree down.
Snoopy came along too! And why not? And I dont know if you can tell, but it was snowing lightly....
And here I am, cutting it down. Tonight we brought it into the house. It is in the stand. Tomorrow, for "Monday Funday," we will decorate it.
We are supposed to get a snowstorm tomorrow. Let's see what happens. All we ever seem to get in central Maine is rain. The fake Maine (york county) always seems to get slammed. That, and Rangeley. I hope we get TONS of snow this year