More Christmas?

Last night we took Wiggle to the Bull Run Festival of Lights. He flipped out. It was pretty cool and because it snowed yesterday afternoon, there were no crowds whatsoever. We think we may try to go again when Nonna and Aunt M are in town next week.
I also, finally, got the entire tree lit.

I might put another string along the bottom, and we're going to put ornaments on during Wiggle's nap tomorrow.

We also had our first snowfall yesterday. We went out and played a little bit before music class, and Wiggle went out with his friend to play more today.

By the way, the coat he's wearing was mine from when I was little. Crazy, right?

Christmas Time

We were going to go get our tree on Sunday, but it rained, and rained, and rained, all day. I decided we had better wait until the next day because I wasn't going to be able to string lights on a soaking tree anyway. In lieu of that Christmas-y activity, we decided to go to "Juniper Ave" in Sterling to look at garish Christmas light displays. Wiggle fell asleep on the way, so when we got there, I had C stop in front of a house lit up like an airport runway that also had a bunch of Peanuts characters out front. We woke Wiggle up and took him out of his carseat for a moment so he could orient himself to his surroundings a bit. He looked around bleary-eyed, and then said "more trees!" and pointed down the street to the Vegas-like strip of houses that awaited us. We obliged his request. For the next twenty minutes all we heard from the backseat was a barrage of "Oh-my-gosh!" and "More!" It was an awesome night.

On Monday we picked out our perfect tree, but I have still not finished putting lights on it. I cannot work on it while Wiggle is awake because he is obsessed with touching the tree, and therefore C and I have to keep our distance as well. At night, I have just been too tired to stay up and work on it. Tonight, I will get a good chunk done, if not all of it.

De-light-ful!

Tonight, Wiggle and I went to the grocery store to pick up a few missing ingredients for dinner. We left around 5:30 pm, so it was already thoroughly dark. On the way we passed a few houses decorated for Christmas, which I casually pointed out to Wiggle in the backseat. Boy, oh boy, here was nothing casual about it to him. Squeals of delight at each and every house. After the grocery store, he requested "More trees!"
Next week we will take him to this. Do you think he'll like it?

Also, I'm reading Dracula, which is surprisingly creepy, but enjoyable. I guess classics stand-up to time for a reason.

The Big and Small of It

Recently, I went shopping and discovered a wonderful, yet horrifying fact. I can now fit into regular pants at The Gap and Old Navy. For the last I-don't-know-how-many years, I have been solidly plus-sized in every way and in every brand. So the fact that I can again buy clothes in a regular store after trying them on, instead of sizing them up on the internet, is a personal revelation.
 I was overjoyed. And then I was more than a little upset. The pants I was able to put on at The Gap were jeans and as such were sized in jeans' sizes. This means that instead of the vague 10 or, in this case, 20, they were marked with the 28-30-32 type of size. Now, back in olden days of last year or so, these numbers were supposed to correspond to the circumference of your waist in inches. The jeans I was trying on were a 35; let me just break the suspense and say that I do not have a 35 inch waist. This prompted me to go the size chart online which showed that for those with non-plus-sized waists the numbers still correspond to inches, but as the sizes increase, so do the increments of inches between the sizes.
This seemed ridiculous to me. Again, while I'm happy The Gap has deemed that I no longer have to shop at home from my computer with the lights off and the blinds drawn, I think,"just admit you are selling plus-sized clothes already!"
I should say that Old Navy has a plus-sized section that used to be available in stores, but apparently fat people prefer to shop in the shadowy confines of their living rooms, so now plus sizes are only available online. This is unfortunate for me, because on top I am still definitively plus-sized. This will probably continue to be the case until I reach near waif-like proportions since I have been blessed with shoulders only a coxswain could love.
My point is, I'm not sure who they are trying to fool - me? I'm sorry, but I have a fairly realistic picture of my body and just slapping a 35 inch tag on a pair of jeans ain't gonna convince me otherwise; themselves? I think the stores don't want to admit they sell plus-sized clothing so the down-sized labels help them maintain their "image"; Other customers? They are afraid that the cute sized 4 blonde doesn't want to buy the same style of sweater as the fat girl, or at least, she doesn't want to see the fat girl buying it.

On a similiar thread, a couple of weeks ago I heard about a misguided blogger for marie claire who said she didn't like the new CBS show Mike and Molly because she didn't want to see fat people kissing on TV; she didn't even want to see them walking across the room. Don't get me wrong, I am not one of those fat-rights activists who says ridiculous things about how they are just as beautiful and sexy at 300 pounds as they would be at 120 pounds. I am severely overweight, - nay obese, and while I think I am attractive, I'm not stupid. I need to lose weight because my body just isn't made to carry around all this extra weight, and be sure that I know it will make me more attractive to weigh less. I will be more attractive for a myriad of reasons including having more energy, looking and perhaps being taller, feeling the accomplishment of having lost the weight, having clothes fit better, and indeed, being thinner.
All of that being said, we are a nation of fat people and to say you don't want to see someone even walk across a room, for any reason, seems immature, to say the least. I don't want to see a lot of things on TV, but I just change the channel.
In real life, I am generally, quite frankly,  too absorbed in my own affairs to spend a lot of time noticing if two "ugly" people are kissing or what-not. Also, it would seem that this idiot blogger was also condemning at least someone she was close to, since the majority of Americans are overweight. Again, I am not saying that we should accept it at a societal level, but on a personal level, we need to be civil, polite, and charitable. Actually at a societal level we need to be all of those things too, but we can also afford to give advice and even admonish a little when called for, and believe me it's called for regarding weight in this country.
Now that I've stepped off of my soapbox, perhaps I will use it to do some step aerobics and burn some extra calories.

In Wiggle news - We were at the mall on Friday night trying to wear out the boy indoors. While waiting for an elevator in Macy's, a man was looking at Christmas pj's for his still infant baby. The wife who was pushing the stroller with the little bambino said to the husband "Mikey, no. We're done." As we all got on the elevator a moment later, Wiggle looked pointedly at the husband and said "Mikey! Nooooo!" And the sound of disappointment and censure in his voice was unmistakable. We all nervously laughed and spent the rest of the ride looking interestedly at our shoes. I think it was our first incident of being embarrassed at something he said.

Later that evening, on the way home, we saw a truck on our street delivering our new trash bins. About half on hour later, they had gotten to our end of the street, and we heard a rumbling from outside. Wiggle and I were snuggling on the couch, and I said "Did you hear that? I think there's a monster outside." I was thinking it would peak his interest, and then we would go to the window to see what it was. Nope. Wiggle looked at me like I was daft and said "gar-bage," while nodding vigorously. I nodded back at him, but held out hope. "You don't think it's a monster out there? You think it's the garbage cans?" He thought for a moment and then said "Wheels. Rolling. Make noise." Then I cried a little. How can such a little boy be so jaded?

Back in the Saddle

I was out for the count yesterday again because of a cold/fever. Wiggle was out too, but he seemed to be a lot more energetic than I was. Today we both seem to have recovered well. I managed to get the entryway clean the other night.

There's still some work to do to get it really organized, but at least it's functional now. I also have sorted some of the insurance stuff, and done some other onerous tasks on my to-do list. An unpleasant surprise came in the mail today though. I went to the dentist two weeks ago and had three very small cavities filled. It turns out I went to the wrong dentist (similar practice names on the same street), and this one isn't in our network. The dental work didn't hurt at all, but OUCH! the bill. It will be ok, and I'm going to try to talk to them to see if they can lower the cost at all, but man-oh-man this is a mistake that makes me feel stupid. I just hate stuff like that.
I also managed to go to the gym today for a good run and get some Christmas shopping done. I'm feeling a little better and my thoughts are already turning to decorating the house this weekend.
Oh, and we got wellies for Wiggle last weekend, and he had his first opportunity to wear them this week.

They have sharks on them.

I also got to cook my first post-Thanksgiving dinner tonight. (We were done with Thanksgiving food earlier obviously, but we grazed on random pantry items and got take-out the past couple of nights) I made a new favorite a quinoa Moroccan stew.

I still have a lot to do, but it feels more manageable today than earlier this week. I can't believe tomorrow is Friday.