Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving today was enjoyed at my parents. Just Mom, Dad, Mike, Matt and Gabby. It was pretty quiet and mellow this year. It was nice. Dinner was amazing. Mom made everything from scratch. Way to go, Mom!

While she was cooking. I attempted to make a turkey hat with Gavin.

Once again, I did the cutting. I had leftover feathers from the office turkey.

He is into tracing his hand lately.And using a glue stick.

There wasn't much to it.

It kept Gavin occupied for almost 3 minutes.

You know the saying, "measure twice, cut once?" It also applies to gluing things. Measure twice, glue once.

His hat was a tid bit small.

Believe it or not, these were the only 5 pictures that I took today.

But for your viewing pleasure, here is our Thanksgiving from a three year old perspective.

In no particular order...

 Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone had an enjoyable day.

Thankful

What does it mean to be thankful though? If it were as easy as asking Gavin to tell me some words to write on a thank-you card, I'd stock up on stationery and tuck "grateful child" under my belt of parenting successes. Except it's not that easy. There isn't a flashcard for that. There isn't that ONE picture that symbolizes "thanks." How do we teach appreciation?

It's important to teach though, perhaps one of the most valuable attributes we can show our kids.

I know I am happiest when I am most grateful--when I am aware of my surroundings and what exactly it is about this very moment that makes me feel content. Sending a thank-you card might encourage me to express gratitude to someone else, but really? Gratitude is a way of life rather than a lesson on a check-off list. And the best way to teach it to your children is to live it. I'm trying really hard lately to do this. I have bad days. Days I want to cry (and do) and feel that nothing is going right. Some days, I downright FAIL at living with gratitude. But then I'll be lying in bed with Gavin making shadow puppets on the wall before kissing him goodnight. And I realize I have that moment to appreciate after a bad day. These moments can be so small, yet they are everything. Sometimes it's a smile, a hug, coloring a picture, hearing a favorite song, seeing a rainbow, or singing and dancing the potty dance song after a successful pee-pee. I know that last one has made ME very thankful this past month. There is always, always, always something to be thankful for.

But if I asked Gavin to explain gratitude, he'd be stumped. He would probably look at me with the same tilted head, cock-eyed stare that I get when I ask my chocolate Labrador if he was the one that made the mess in the kitchen. But if I ask Gavin to tell me what his favorite thing about today was, he'll pause and smile while he thinks, his eyes look up (It's just what he does while he is thinking and about to say something), and then he might tell me how awesome it was to launch himself off his bed into a heaping pile of stuffed animals. Or watch him light up as he recalls the "super big" tower we made out of bricks that was taller than him before he charged it sending blocks flying across the living room!

I want these kind of moments to fill our lives. I know I sure had them growing up.

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So every night, after reading our favorite stories and singing our favorite song of the day, I ask him "What was your favorite part of today?"

It's not teaching thankfulness exactly, but I hope that thinking about the fun stuff will lead him to appreciate the good times we have and eventually learn to be thankful that we have them. The little things.

But for now, back to my evening question. I ask this question for two reasons. The first, I am curious what runs through his mind. The second I think it gives him a good image to think about before going to sleep. Maybe that way he will have happy dreams.

Thanksgiving seems like an opportune time to share a months worth.

Gavin's favorite thing of today is....

• Nov 1: "Painting in the bath."
• Nov 2: "Building with my legos."
• Nov 3: "Making monsters". (we are still making monsters to hang up on his closet--he likes them)
• Nov 4: "Daddy is home!"
• Nov 5: "Riding my bike."
• Nov 6: "Getting Mater juice at the store." (Juicy Juice boxes currently have Mater on them)
• Nov 7: "Nuffing" {pouting}. (Bad answer. Bad day. We just laid in bed quietly tonight)
• Nov 8: "Eating chocolate and pretzels."
• Nov 9: "Squirrels eating my pumpkin." (??? Some days I don't question his answers.)
• Nov 10: "Getting cookie after going in the potty!"
• Nov 11: "Daddy came home!"
• Nov 12: "Eating pizza with Daddy and Ron."
• Nov 13: "I had fun with Matt."
• Nov 14: "Story time at school in a circle."
• Nov 15: "I got a sticker and went pee-pee SIX TIMES!"
• Nov 16: "Painting!"
• Nov 17: "Ummmm, I like hotdogs."
• Nov 18: "Daddy!"
• Nov 19: "I like parades. The clowns and candy were my favorite."
• Nov 20: "McDonalds. There was no pickle this time."
• Nov 21: "Going to the food store with Grandpa and getting Grandma card."
• Nov 22: "Singing Happy Birthday to Grandma."
• Nov 23: "Going to the hair cut store, my Lightning McQueen shoes and playing in leaves. Oh, and riding my bike and french fries. And cheeseburgers." (Today was a busy day)

I then say good night to him and turn off the light. It is at this point that is my favorite part of the day.  I can relax knowing that he is safe and tucked into his bed and that he and I are lucky enough to have favorite parts of the day.

Then other times....I fall asleep with him :)
(Tim sent me this taken with his cell phone one night when he got home)

Yep, I'm thankful.

Now to explain that turkey up there- Everyone in my office was given a template. Basically you needed to take two circles, a rectangle, an oval, and ten "feathers" and create a turkey. Gavin helped me with mine. He sorted colored beads and matched colors. All I did was cut and glue. I think my turkey is headed to Vegas.
Oh, and we "disguised" our turkeys by putting a number on them rather than our names to see if coworkers could guess who made which one.  Again, Gavin picked the 3. I assumed it was because he is 3. But no, he said, " Because I like this number." For the record, we were guessed immediately. Apparently I'm the only one that has stock in feathers, beads, paper, and googly eyes....amongst many other things.

It's almost time for turkey

It wouldn't be a holiday if we didn't concoct some sort of crafty thing. Remember our turkeys from last year? Anyway, after a late nap, we went outside to gather some leaves this evening.

 Collecting leaves turned into playing with sticks and going for a bike ride well after dark. Which is pretty early anymore.

 But we finally came inside and dumped out our bag of goods to see what we could create.

 I cut a big circle out of cardboard left in the garage from his trampoline. It does pay to forget to take things out to the trash for months.

 We started with rubber cement and then realized quickly we needed glue. Lots and lots of glue!

 Just like putting toppings on a pizza, no?

 Setting in the window to dry while we ate dinner and took a bath.

 Now to add the turkey's dressings.

A couple legs...

 A beak...

 And some googly eyes! 

We don't make anything without googly eyes.

 Here it is!

Our Thanksgiving turkey!

A promise IS a promise...

I had this idea that it would be cool to tell Gavin this morning that if he went poop (said in a whisper) in the potty at school today then he could have the GIANT smartie that the neighbor gave him for Halloween. He's been drooling over it for couple weeks now. I haven't been able to bear to let him have that much sugar. 

He hasn't gone #2 in the potty yet, so I thought this would be good incentive.

Today he went number two FIVE times at school. Three of which were in the potty.

(There were no stipulations on having accidents)

This was right after dinner...

Smarties this big are ridiculous!

Undoubtedly, he hadn't forgotten this mornings deal.

Coincidentally, this is the shirt he wore today.

This shirt doesn't even come close to explaining the high-strung, uncontrollable pistol that I have zooming around my house this evening.

Lesson learned.

**side note** I did manage to take half the smartie and wrap it up for tomorrow....with no accidents as part of the deal.

Potty training

It's not for the impatient. If you think you can read a book about "How to potty train your child." Think again. Every child is different. My favorite are the ones that were blessed with kids that started going early....they have the best advice on how you should do it. Please! Don't talk to me. We started attempting the potty training at about 2.5 years. We bought the favorite underwear, we had rewards, big smiles....stayed on him like WHITE ON RICE during the day. You know what happened? We went through 5-6 pairs of underwear, a bottle of Resolve, a bunch of crying and it wasn't even lunch time yet. He wasn't ready. We let it go.

Fast forward 2-3 months. I went on Ebay and bought a bag of used die cast Cars (from the movie) to be used as incentive to go potty. Whenever he successfully went, he could pick out a car. The lot came with around 50. I also made a sticker chart in the bathroom. He loves stickers so I thought if he at least tries, with a timer of two minutes (since he is two)...then he can pick out a sticker.

Next thing I know, he had to TRY and go potty every five minutes. He didn't have to go. He just wanted stickers. It was a bust. I don't have stock in stickers either. So stickers became only when we went potty. And yes, he could also could pick out a car.

That was all around the 30-32 month old range. He didn't get but a few cars. The sticker chart was pretty bare. He still wasn't quite ready....or interested, to be more specific.

We are now at 3 and almost two months. This week has been an unbelievable transformation. He wants to go potty. He goes and then doesn't even want a car. He just wants to go. I tribute this to a few things. One, is that I told him that we were getting rid of diapers and big kids wear underwear. Two, is that he wants to be like Daddy. And three, and probably the best, He can't move up into the next room at daycare until he is potty trained. His two best buddies moved up. He can see them across the hall through the windowed doors. He knows what he needs to do :)

We just had our first *almost* successful week wearing UNDERWEAR to school!!
He had accidents on the last day :(

Here's to week two!

To celebrate, I picked up a little something FABULOUS from Home Depot.
This might be the most amazing invention ever.
 A built-in toddler seat!

Go, Gavin, Go!!

Holiday Parade - Downtown Toledo

It's Saturday morning. It's getting pretty cold outside. So what better to do than to bundle up and head downtown Toledo. We've never been to Toledo's Holiday Parade and this seemed like a good day to check it out. We didn't head down too early. We left the house about 9:30 for the 10:00 parade. We drove up Erie street and picked a lot at random to turn in to park. It cost us five dollars. Sure we could have driven around and found somewhere cheaper, but that sounded like a headache in the making. If you drive downtown Toledo, you understand. Now add several road closings due to parade and TONS of traffic. I would have paid ten to avoid the anxiety. Ha!

We weren't sure where the best place to stand was, so we just started walking with the crowd of people that were obviously headed to the same destination. We hit a street corner and practically slammed into one of my former co-workers and her daughter. She joined us on the sidelines. We also were joined by Miss Pressly, and her mom, of course :)

Waiting for the parade to get to us, the kids enjoyed the glass store fronts and just running around. We were towards the end of the parade, so we figured we had a bit of time. Amazingly, this parade was booking it, and it reached us before 10:30!

Happy to have Daddy at the parade with us.

Gavin and Pressly have missed each other. We've been slacking on the visits :(
We need to pick those back up soon!

1 happy kid, 2 happy kids...

Three!
They were happy. I promise. But why I try and get three 2-3 year old children to look and smile together is beyond me. I took several shots and this one is the best. I've got mad photography skills in the making.

First down the line were these guys.
I was like "Hey, Gavin..Look! Here comes Snoopy!"
Then was corrected that is was Sparky.
I don't know Sparky. He's apparently a firehouse dog.
Makes sense he would be riding a firetruck.

Whoops.

The next dog is from Imagination Station.

I pretended I was at Macy's. 

I've don't recall ever being at a parade with the super-size balloon floats.

 Ooooooohhhh, Aaaaahhhhhhhh

Santa believes in recycling. 

Good luck getting around the world in one night on that piece of lighted awesomeness.

No shortage of bands.

Or clowns. There were tons and tons and TONS of clowns.

And they all passed out Now and Laters. I meant to find out if Now and Later's were the official sponsor of the Toledo Holiday Parade. Seriously, there were that many.

Lots of Clydesdale's and horses.

The Zenobia guys had two sets of vehicles racing around.

Dancers dressed weather appropriate...

And some not.
(She isn't smiling. Her teeth are chattering rapidly)

Another dressed not so appropriate was this fella.
No idea who this Dracula/pirate man is, but he seemed very out of place.

More vehicles. More clowns.

More bands.

This train had Gavin's attention immediately. It may have been the first time he waved the entire parade.

 Of course I missed the shot of him waving. Mad skills.

It's not Christmas without the Grinch.

Or Rudolph!

I had to back up several feet to try and get a shot of Gavin looking up him. He turned around looking for me. I need a wider lens.

My superior shot of the Grand Marshals of the parade. Dora and Diego!

I almost completely missed them due to camera malfunction. Mad skills.

Finally, welcoming the holiday officially, Santa and his 8 reindeer. 

Escorted by the amazing U.S. Marine Corps.

Christmas is coming, y'all.

36 more days.