Gaa-gaa Saga: Memoirs of a Mother: And the winner is....

We were excited to find out that Maddie won the 6 and under division for the Ashburn Farm Meet Santa drawing competition. When I say "we were excited", I mean Ben and I. When I told Maddie she won, she just gave me this look like, "Duh, what did you expect?" She does spend hours a day drawing and making art projects, and many of them are quite elaborate. She whipped her winning entry out in about three minutes. It is perhaps not one of her finest pieces, but it was good enough to beat out 14 or so competitors. She received a sweatshirt with her winning entry printed on it. She was very proud of her sweatshirt. She knows another kid who entered the contest from her first grade class. It seems she's looking forward to gloating. I'll have to remember to have a talk with her about good sportsmanship....

Today was Andrew's preschool Christmas party. Ben worked from home this afternoon, so I could go without the little kids to Andrew's party. Fortunately, Andrew's preschool coincides with Zack and Mylie's nap schedule so it worked out well.

On the way to school I asked Andrew if he wanted to sing a Christmas song with me. He said he really only wanted to sing the 'ABCs.' It's the only song he ever wants to sing. It drives Maddie crazy, and I admit even I am getting a bit sick of it. After some pleading for ANYTHING other than the 'ABCs', he creates his own song that goes something like this:

'My Mom said I have to sit in this seeeeeeeeeeat and I can't get out of this seeeeeeeeeeat, because my mom says I have to sit in it forrrrrrrrevvvver. Even if I neeeeeeeeeed to go pottyyyy, I can't, because Mom said I have to only sit in this one seeeeeeat. My mom doesn't caaaaare if I have to go pottyyyyy...'

At which point I ask if he needs to go potty. He sings me this answer,

"Noooooooo, I doooooon't, and I caaaaan't, my mom said sit in my chaaaaair....."

I did find this all mildly disturbing. Apparently I tell him to sit in his chair a lot more often than I realized. I think Moms must go into Auto-Mom response mode occasionally. For instance, at his Christmas party, Andrew kept getting out of his chair to crawl between the parents while he was barking and pretending to be a dog. I went into Auto-Mom and asked him to please "sit down and get buckled." It would seem that I do ask him to sit down a lot. I also asked Maddie this evening, when I was in Auto-Mom mode, to put her homework into her dirty clothes bin. I was meaning to say backpack, but usually when I use the words "put this in..." with Maddie, it ends with "the dirty clothes bin."

Here's a shot of Andrew during his carnation as the Christmas Party puppy. He had just circled around three or four times on all fours in that spot, before lying down and telling me it was time for a puppy nap:

Andrew played an Angel in their nativity story play. He stood quite still, watching the boys who were playing the shepards attack each other with their canes/swords. It was quite the production. None of the kids sang at their cues, so we got to listen to the preschool teachers singing quite loudly to make up for the lack of children's voices.

Now, this next shot I can't quite figure out. Andrew looks so angelic, yet those around him look as though they are acting out an ad for Bean-o. What are the odds that one girl would have a shocked look on her face, two people would appear to be covering their noses, and others are looking away. I'm sure it was nothing, but it does come across as quite suspicious...