Christmas Lights Drive and Santa

We have done such fun Christmas things so far. My favorite was driving around to see the neighborhood Christmas lights, followed by hot cocoa at home, for three reasons:

1. The whole family was there.
2. The kids were entertained and delighted for practically free.
3. Erik found us a cul-de-sac that had cooperated (for Brown Santa) to do a huge 'Twas the Night Before Christmas theme. Spectacular.

While Erik was out of town for work, I brought the kids to the Cookies and Cocoa With Santa night at Xander's school. I wouldn't have chosen to do that on my own, but Xander really, really wanted to. For the picture and talk with Santa, we stood in line for 50 minutes, past Nick's bedtime, while he was thirsty and tired and bored and I was holding him in high-heeled boots. It was like a super-charged gym workout. Of course, most of those things were my fault. And it was so worth it to me because it meant a lot to Xander.

Going out to see Christmas lights

He's excited to see the lights, too, plus he loves that extra spoon from his Wendy's treat

Yep, that's Christmas lights

Another treat before Cookies and Cocoa With Santa: Subway sandwiches and Cheetos

They are getting big...I tried to savor this moment, out to eat with small boys

There's the cocoa part at the school...Nick did fantastic with a normal-sized cocoa cup (it only looks ginormous here because of my camera angle)

Xander made friends with the other people at our table, as usual

 The Santa picture will come later, through the school. I gave Nick a few seconds to think about whether he wanted to jump in the photo, too, on Mrs. Claus's lap. As I suspected, his opinion was No Way!

Oh, another thing I wanted to remember about today. Xander stayed home from school today because he said he felt sick with a sore throat. Normally, I wouldn't have let him, but he agreed he would stay in bed looking at books and taking a nap rather than playing, so I thought he really might be sick. And at the moment he is sleeping.

What happened was he had to repeat himself several times (from across the room, with his requested children's music playing loudly) and got very mad at me because of it. He was getting a little hysterical, so I just responded briefly and asked him to go brush his teeth. He cried, said no point-blank (which he never does), and went to my room to talk to himself about how he wasn't going to apologize. When I came in there after a few minutes and gave him a hug, he repeated all of that. I told him okay, he didn't have to "be my friend today" but I was going to give him a consequence for saying no to me. I told him to go to his room. He said no again.

I thought. I thought about how he might be sick. I thought about picking him up and carrying him to his room. I thought about the Love and Logic tactic, which would be to say, "I am very disappointed you are not obeying me," and walk away.

I tried the last option. In about three minutes, he came out to me with a calm voice and said, "I am sorry I acted that way."

I said, "You're forgiven. Thank you," and gave him a hug.

He said, "I am going to be done with that behavior now. I'm sorry."

I repeated the above and said I was glad to hear that.

Woohoo! Mature, self-regulated behavior! That "done with that behavior now" line didn't come from me, I'm sorry to say. It probably came from his great teacher, Mrs. Griffin.

She has twenty years' experience teaching kindergarten, she loves worksheets, she is extremely organized, and she is pretty soft-spoken with the children, so if you lined up her class with the other kindergarten classes, it would probably not look the best-behaved.

But Xander has liked her every day from day one, has learned to write and color quite well (which he couldn't do very well before kindergarten), takes everything she says - academic or not - so seriously, and told me the other day that "Mrs. Griffin is a good teacher."

I bet she listens to him. That is really important to him. He misbehaved for one substitute teacher and really didn't like her and wanted to skip school the next day because she was going to be there (or maybe she put him "in trouble" for something Mrs. Griffin wouldn't have - that's what Xander said). He has liked his other teachers pretty well, but loves Mrs. Griffin and missed her over Thanksgiving holiday. He also really likes his Theater Arts teacher, apparently because she gave him a sticker and asked what his favorite food was and listened to his answer.