Christmas Lists 09

Yes, I am well aware that it actually early Friday morning and I promised these lists on Wednesday night. I remembered them Wednesday day, forgot them Wednesday night and then fell asleep all cuddled up with Andrew from 6:45-11:45 tonight. I guess we were tired.

I am only posting this list. If you see something from it you want, post a comment so people know not to get that. Or email me and I'll put a slash through it. That being said, please save gift receipts and include them with the gift (especially if you buy from Target). We are very, very thankful that everyone is so generous when it comes to buying things for the boys, but sometimes we don't realize something isn't age appropriate or won't fit until we get home. The ability to exchange for something the boys will utilize more would be appreciated.

We don't need many toys this year. We've got a pretty good set up downstairs and the things I really want to make the playroom better are things like matching storage boxes for the toys and new carpet. However, those don't make for very fun gifts for two little boys to open up on Christmas so these toys listed are ones that I think the boys would truly enjoy. This is not to say that if you see something awesome you shouldn't get it because many of there favorite toys are things that we didn't ask for, but someone found.

Some sites I ogle over regularly:
http://www.oompa.com/
http://www.moolka.com/pub/main/index.jsp
http://www.craftsburykids.com/ (interesting side note, the woman who runs this site is leading the fight against the CPSIA legislation that is ruining my business and that of so many other hand crafters)
http://www.magiccabin.com/welcome.asp
http://www.mahardrygoods.com/index.php

This is an awesome gift guide. Lots of cool and trendy things for kids and adults. Coupon codes for nearly every site they link to.
http://www.coolmompicks.com/holidaygiftguide09/


So, without further ado, the lists.


Carter-nearly 4

-Wearing a size 4 right now. Well, actually most of his clothes are 4T, but we're needing extra length to get us through the winter. 5T would probably also fit. He has plenty of jeans (seriously, he has 6 pairs) and probably enough other pants, but at the very least, he doesn't need jeans right now. He has plenty of long sleeve t-shirts so other types of shirts would be appreciated. We can't get Badger or Packers gear down here so those always go over well. Carter loves Bucky. He already has a WI football jersey.

-Socks. (He wears a toddler size 10 in shoes)

-Loves dinosaurs. We have a pretty big box and already have all of those horrible Imaginext Dinosaurs . We have one large dinosaur floor puzzle and one 24 piece wooden puzzle. We have some of hard plastic life like dinosaurs, but could use more. Anything with a dinosaur on it will probably be a big hit.

-Not as in love with trains this year.

-Loves to do puzzles. Needs the wooden puzzles (like the Melissa & Doug ones) to be at least 24 pieces. He blows through the 12 piece ones. We do not have a US state puzzle yet or anything with world geography, nor do we have a wooden alphabet puzzle. We do have a alphabet floor puzzle and a dinosaur floor puzzle. Carter likes the floor puzzle, but Oz is not so floor puzzle friendly so it's probably a good idea to skip floor puzzles this year as we rarely pull them out because they always end in screaming.

Woodland Friends Puzzle

Curious George Puzzle- a little young for him, but the concept is pretty cool and he'd probably love it.

Melissa and Doug Puzzles- You can find these all over the place now.

-He still loves cars, monster trucks, trucks, etc. Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars would go over big.

-Books, of course.

-He loves to color and draw now. Washable markers and crayons would be good. Not a huge fan of coloring books. A new Aquadoodle for the car would be nice.

-Still loves Curious George. Other shows/movies he likes (yes, I'm aware Curious George was a book first, we have many of them...I'm just going on the character gifts thing) are anything that's on PBS kids, Scooby Doo (OMG, I HATE Scooby Doo, but he likes it. He also managed to pick up the phrase 'dummy head' from it. Thanks a lot Velma. You suck.), all the Pixar movies (but he hasn't seen The Incredibles, Ratatouille or Up) and Dora and Diego (but so help me god, if you buy him a bunch of horrible Dora and Diego talking crap I will return it or donate it!!!!). He doesn't watch and Disney or Nickelodeon cartoons and hasn't seen any non-Pixar Disney movies.

-Remote control car. There are these awesome ones that you can run into stuff and they flip over and right themselves. I'll have to come back with a link after I ask my friend (who oddly enough is not online at 1am) what kind they are.

-Dress up clothes. This one is sort of hard. I tried to find links, but didn't come across anything great. They like to dress up (for example, Suzanne brought a costume that Jennifer passed down to us because it was too small for her boys and Carter wears his "dinosaur suit" all the time. Just randomly, while he's coloring or playing with cars or whatever). He already has two dinosaur costumes, a cape, a skirt, a penguin suit, an apron and a mail bag. He likes hats (our pirate hat is dying). Pirate accessories, chef costume, mail carrier outfit....I don't know, typical boy things, he'd probably also wear. He and his friend Georgia also play house a lot and so both mens and womens clothing in small sizes from resale shops (it'd be nice if you washed it so I didn't have to) would also go over big.

-Some sort of dollhouse. He loves to play pretend right now and will sit with a doll house for a good hour, moving furniture around and having the people do stuff. I know they're expensive, but it could be a combined Christmas/birthday gift or several people could go in. I know it's not so fun to not buy a lot of little things, but he would really, really like this. And you can always buy the people and furniture to go with and wrap those separately.

-Buy far the best deal!

Tree fort gnome house- there was one similar to this at the Waldorf school we visited and he really liked it. Of course, it'd be much cheaper to make it if you had the time and know how.

Plenty of cool ones here- You could also coordinate and someone could buy the house and someone else could buy a furniture set and someone else the dolls.

Fire station- Not as versatile, but pretty cool. I have a coupon code for this site that gets you 25% off. The coupon works for anything on that site. Code: cmp4gm

Green doll house- coupon code for 12% off plus free shipping. Works for entire site. Code: CMPGG009

Oz-19 months
-Wearing 18-24 months, but is rapidly outgrowing them. He's skinny enough to wear 12 month clothes, but has grown very tall recently (he grew 1 3/8 inches in a month!) and needs at least 24 month pants, but 2T with an adjustable waist would also work. Shirts are okay at 18-24 months or 24 months. 2T is a little big shirt wise. He's also okay on pants, but could use a few shirts. We DON'T like onesies. He could use a pair of jeans or two. Badger and Packer clothing is always good.

-Also likes dinosaurs. He does a very cute dinosaur roar.

-Actually, he basically likes whatever Carter likes.

-He's not a fan of puzzles yet though.

-Loves, loves, loves books. Board books are still appreciated as he's hard on them.

-Likes to color, but we could use those fancy Crayola markers that only color on the special paper. And then we could use the special paper.

-Loves to dress up in hats. Isn't such a fan of the clothes, but will walk around wearing various hats all day.

-Cloth diapers.

Thirsties Fitteds- Size medium, we already have orange.


BumGenius Pockets- One size fits all, we already have both blues, orange, white and the light green.

Inserts- Oz would very much appreciate new inserts for his diapers so he didn't have to have his clothes changed extra times per day because I didn't change him fast enough. He would also appreciate not smelling because our inserts are so old.

-Hmmm, I feel like I have a lot of stuff listed for Carter and not so much for Oz. I guess that's because we have all of Carter's old toys for Oz to play with already.

Late editions:

-A telescope or two (preferably two so they don't fight)
-A new harmonica (a real one), as a certain someone who refuses to be careful when picking up the basement lost it (the someone is Andrew)
-A magnifying glass

Stephanie

-Gift cards to Joann Fabrics!

-Gift Certificates to Fabric.com.

-Gift certificates to Pink Chalk Fabrics.

(I buy more fabric than anything else over the year so it would be very, very appreciated)

-Material Obsessions: Modern Quilts with Traditional Roots

-The Sewing Bible


-Harry Potter Audiobooks, 2-4, as read by Jim Dale (I already have the rest). These don't need to be new, as long as they work, I don't care if they used. I listen to them exclusively when I sew and I spend a lot of time sewing.

-The Wet Nurse's Tale


-Design it Yourself Clothes


-Alice in Wonderland, Illustrated by Mary Blair

Peter Pan, Illustrated by Mary Blair

-Cinderella Skeleton

-This site is awesome. I don't wear necklaces though.

As for Andrew, you'll have to ask him.

What I(Andrew) want

Size large pearl snap shirts. (western style shirts with snaps instead of buttons.) Check Good Will or the Salvation Army for cheap vintage ones, or Kohls and the like have new ones.

A hockey puck bag filled with a bunch of pucks. Kind of like this one.

Some new elbow pads. Size Large. I would be super happy if people went in together on these and got me them.

If you're really feeling generous some new shin guards size 16 in. possibly cheaper on ebay.

hockey tape, white or black or both.

Christmas Lists

I swear they're coming! I'll have them up by Wednesday night. I promise. With links, sizes, etc. :)

Would you rather swim like a fish or roar like a dinosaur?

And back up north we go. We took advantage of the free day at Shedd Aquarium (which ended up being not very free at all, but at least it was a little cheaper than it would have normally been). We met Auntie Heather up there and had a lovely time.







Oz loved the fish in the floor.








Penguins :)








Seahorses, my favorite!


Seadragons, Andrew's favorite.



Carter wasn't so sure about touching that live star fish. It felt like a rock.


Row, row, row your boat...



And after the aquarium, we hit up the Field Museum, since it's right next door and it was free because we have a membership with our local museum (seriously, why doesn't everyone buy museum passes, they're the best thing ever).









There were art students painting and drawing.


This year.


Last year.


This year.


Last year.

Tiiiiiiiimmmmmberrrrrrr!

Back to Wisconsin we go. This time for a visit to two amazing schools in the Milwaukee area (Prairie Hill Waldorf School and Tamarack Waldorf School.

Saturday down came an old oak tree. It had been dead for quite some time...I missed the actual fall as I was inside with a sleeping baby, but I hear it was quite spectacular.













Andrew learned how to use a chainsaw, although I didn't get any pictures of that. He was hungry afterwords.



AWWWWWW!



Sunday was Family Day at P&H. It was pretty cool to see, as I haven't been there in years and only had the fuzziest memory. P&H holds a lot of family history. My paternal grandpa, my maternal grandpa my dad and my uncle have all worked there. My paternal grandpa actually had the heart attack that killed him while at work, and Dad pointed out the spot where he fell to me. I never met my grandpa so it was very surreal and emotional to see the spot where, in essence, he died.

We also visited Dad's work station, where he left a message for Oz and Carter.





25 years ago there was a picture taken of me and Mom next to a crawler. Hey Dad, you should scan the picture so I can post it here!



For reference, a D6 could fit inside this dipper.



The ride home, chocolate faced.

If you want to be a Badger, just come along with me

We headed up to Dad's house (which is in 'the dirty sex' as Heather so recently put it) to visit the Milwaukee Public Museum and engage in all kinds of other fun and hilarity.

We hit up the museum with my Dad. Neither boy had gotten enough sleep so they were both crabby. Carter ended up freaking out about all the things that were being killed (the infamous T-Rex eating the Triceratops, the Native Americans hunting the buffalo, all the dead animals on display) and we didn't even view the last floor of the museum. I was disappointed to see that the Egypt exhibit is gone, but did enjoy running through my favorite part, The Streets of Old Milwaukee/European Village (and I do literally mean run) even if I didn't actually get to see much. I'd live in there if I could.







We hung out at the house.



Picked pumpkins from the garden (placed kindly by Dad as the deer had eaten the ones Jeanne grew). Heather took enough pictures of me picking pumpkins with Carter to make a flip book with us moving, but I'll spare you and only share one.




She did manage to squeeze this lovely shot in though.


I can do it!


Okay, maybe I can't.


Oh look, here's another one. It's like developing a roll of film and finding half of it is self portraits of Andrew.







Carter actually got to drive the other lawn tractor this time. He did pretty good with it, pulling the trailer around the yard and then carrying Dad and Oz up to the top of the hill where Dad was brave enough to run the log splitter with both boys and no other adults (a trip I may not have approved had I known that's what they were going to do).

We hit the woods. It's nice to go back there in the fall when the danger of ticks is over. Have I mentioned my fear of ticks? I'm afraid of ticks. No thank you, I'll skip them.

In a bet for lunch, Heather climbed a tree to sit in the tree stand. It was more hilarious than this video lets on.









Farmers don't like to throw things away. They stick old equipment out in a field and save it as it will probably have a purpose again some day. My dad subscribes to this mentality and you can find all manner of interesting things at his house. On this particular day, some of the things he'd saved proved their use in making me nearly pee my pants.


Hobo Heather sleeping on a bunkbed surround by burrs.


Getting a little exercise in. (I seriously could NOT keep a straight face)


Out on the links.





We ended up finding a family of mice living in an old golf bag. Carter got to touch this one and then when we shook out the bag another four came scampering out. I didn't know mice jumped when they ran, but they do. And one almost jumped right up Heather's pant leg which was FUCKING HILARIOUS. Seriously. Hilarious.





On our way home we hit the Vilas Zoo in Madison with Heather and my BFF Meghan and her three kids.


Sera rock climbing.


Oz going down the big slide by himself.










It would have been extra cute if we could have gotten Carter up there, but he refused, but Noah and Xander look cute.

After the zoo (yes, those were all at the zoo. The children were unimpressed with the animals, but did love the play area) we went out for Thai food, yum! Then I stopped at Meghan's new house in Oregon and headed home.