Discovering Playdough

I'm not sure of where to even begin since it has been so long since my last post. December has turned out to be even more hectic than November, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We are, after all, not only preparing for the holiday season but also remodeling our house.

This past Saturday Grayson went to a birthday party for two of his friends (they're twins) and while there he played with playdough for the first time. We actually have plenty of playdough which we have accumulated over time but we have never actually sat down and played with it. It was fun to watch him form it into shapes and then smash them just to start all over again.

As I watched him I discovered I need to be more like playdough right now. Life is crazy. The week prior to the party we were told by our contractor to plan to move to our basement by the weekend. We then spent the entire week packing and moving. At the end of the week I found myself very sick, so sick that had to ask my mother to come help me with Grayson for a little while. The night of the party, Dominic and I went to dinner to celebrate our seven-year anniversary and at one of my favorite restaurants, I couldn't enjoy the meal because I still wasn't feeling quite right. When we got home that night we found that it was raining in our house. I should clarify...it was pouring down rain in our house. There were so many leaks through the roof (or lack thereof) we didn't have enough buckets or trash cans to catch them all. And this continued all night long. After a rough night, I still made it to church and then to cantata practice afterwards. When I got home, our power went out for about 12 hours. So within a week's time, I found myself over and over again feeling good about the progress I was making only to be smashed down once again to face another challenge. I was being remolded, just like playdough.

I guess I can learn a lot from the new discoveries Grayson makes each day. I have learned to be more flexible and roll with the obstacles thrown my way. I'm going to do my best to look at each situation as a valuable experience. Hopefully, with each remolding I'll become a better person.

Whining!!!

Grayson is a pretty tough kid. When he falls down, he usually gets up without even a whimper and if he is crying, I know that means it must have hurt. A lot. But lately I've had to put up with a different type of cry, something I knew was coming, but I guess I wasn't prepared for it - the whining.

Oh. My. Gosh. I don't know if I'm more annoyed by the whining itself or the fact that it's coming from my son who is normally so verbally expressive. I'm reading up on the ways to deal with it and how to hopefully make it stop, but it's taking a lot of patience. Something I've been short on these days.

On a much happier note, Dominic and I decided to start decorating for Christmas yesterday. I really didn't think Grayson would "get into it" that much, but I was very wrong. He loved decorating the tree and his face would light up when we pulled out a new ornament. I just wish I had recorded it because it was so much fun to watch. Oh, well. Hopefully next year he'll enjoy it just as much.