Solstice Fairies: Week 3

Linden tries on some dress-up glasses at our wonderful Sunday night dinner at the Leveques'

My goodness!  The solstice countdown is drawing to a close - today is, after all, solstice eve. Big things are afoot. There will be much to report next week, I am sure.  This week, however, on top of documenting the solstice fairy shenanigans (with, unfortunately, some not-so-great-quality photos), I have some other very special treats.  Enjoy!

December 13 (Friday): Today was a double header - it began with a morning playdate at Helen's house, and ended with a movie night.  Much fun was had at Helen's, complete with a good old-fashioned romp in the snow before we left.  I got loads of great pictures. Upon returning home, however, I found that I had neglected to put the sd card back in the camera, and therefore had actually recorded nothing. Domage! I do however, have an action-packed shot of movie night, taken mid-movie.  We opted for "Muppets Christmas", and I can honestly say I think all four of us enjoyed it immensely!

Nothing says "movie night" like popcorn, pjs and some knitting. I think that's Kermit in the reflection...

December 14 (Saturday): Today the fairies suggested we take a day-trip to Hyannis to take a ride on the carousel. This also meant braving the mall, and attempting quick pop-ins at places you can't go here, such as Trader Joe's, Joanne's, and the Cape Cod Beer Company. It was ambitious, and involved *some* frustration.  But at least there were, as promised, a number of much ballyhooed rides on the carousel. 

Mrs. style maven

Mr. Dapper.  Can't go wrong with a sweater vest.

December 15 (Sunday): Anticipating that we might all be a little worn out from our day trip, the fairies kindly left a book today, rather than planning an ambitious activity. It is a classic, and seemed very appropriate for the solstice season:

December 16 (Monday): This morning started off straggly, as Juniper woke up at 4am, and threw up twice.  I assumed it was going to be a rough day, and that the solstice activity would just have to be skipped or postponed. When she woke up again at 8am, however, she was right as rain, ate a huge breakfast, and was completely fine for the rest of the day. This was particularly great, as today's solstice activity turned out to be a huge hit.  The fairies suggest that Juniper create a book (perhaps holiday-themed), and include both story and illustrations.  This was a spin-off on oral story-creating that Juniper and I do all the time - I was reminded of it when Lauren showed me a book that her son Noah had made when we were there for dinner the night before.  Anyway, Juniper LOVED it.  She did all the illustrations first, and then decided which order to put them in, and then dictated the story to me as we went through it page by page:

The very first pages

Due to Juniper's chosen medium (watercolour), everything had to dry before it was assembled.  It turned into a full-day project.

Anyway, the result was so awesome that I decided that I should really include it in full here!  This is "special treat" #1.  Without further ado, I bring you Solstice Calendar in the House, written and illustrated by Juniper Richards, transcribed verbatim by me. All rights reserved.

(as best as I can tell, this is some abstract art for the title page)

Once upon a time, there was a lady chasing a gingerbread man

So, they saw a lot of smiles, and they wondered what they were. Then, they saw some balls.  Spooky balls.

Then they saw a forest. The forest was dark, and they saw spooky snowballs.  They saw big trees that had spooky eyes. They screamed and ran right home.

Then they saw logs.  Then they ran right home, because they were actually dinosaurs, not logs.  They knew this because suddenly they heard a ROAR. The dinosaurs ran after them.

They found an igloo, and they hid inside. The dinosaurs didn't see them. So the dinosaurs went home sad, because they had wanted to eat them, but now they couldn't. They threw up a lot because they were sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, sweaty, and then they got cold and sick.

Then the lady and the gingerbread man saw a whale. They noticed they were in the middle of the ocean. And then a shark came and attacked them.  And then they ran straight home.

Then, they saw a fairy in the solstice calendar.  She was beautiful - all different colours. She said, "why, I've been looking for you!"  Then she flew away into the woods with them, and they lived together forever and for always.

There was a pond near where they lived, and one day they saw an alligator. It was scary, and ran after them fiercely. But then the alligator said, "why did you run away from me? I'm a friendly alligator!" "Ohhhhhhh!", they all said.  They became friends.

They were happy and they lived with the alligator.  Actually, it was a blue crocodile. THE END.

So, wasn't that amazing?  I hope she maintains the enthusiasm she currently has for it (and the great pride that she clearly felt in the finished product). It reminds me of how much I loved doing the same thing as a kid. 

Now, you may think that was already a lot to cram into a quasi-sick-day (I decided to not leave the house all day just to play it safe), but that was not all that transpired.  You see, I had just received a pair of hair cutting shears in the mail that I had ordered from Amazon, and was keen to try my hand at Linden's crazy mop.

The happy test subject.  Little did he know what was coming.

I semi-successfully gave Juniper a trim.  It was easy enough, really, and though I am now seeing lots of little uneven bits, on the whole you would never notice.  Linden, however, was a different story.  I mostly wanted to get rid of the crazy mess at the back of his head, and I thought I'd try shaping it.  Bad idea.  Oh well, if his hair grows as fast as mine (which it really seems to), then hopefully this ragged weirdly-sheared semi-bowl cut will be a thing of the past soon enough.  I may let Clark try his hand at it next time.

Clark tried to "fix" it afterwards, but not much could be done at this point.

 December 17 (Tuesday): Every year, we make a gingerbread house, but it has to be done in stages. The first stage is both simple and fun - picking out the candy to decorate it!  Linden and I picked Juniper up from preschool at noon, and headed to the local candy shop (it is one of the only times of year we actually go in, so it is a pretty big treat). As I was doing this alone, however, I decided that for everyone's sanity, I would strap Linden to my back and keep him there. He was incredibly displeased with this turn of events ("Take mittens off!" "See candy!" "Touch candy!" "I NEED GET DOWN!"), but the loud protestations were better than the alternative.

Like a kid in a candy shop...

December 18 (Wednesday): The fairies suggested it was high time that Juniper started making some Christmas/Solstice gifts. This was very good timing, as we needed to whip up a gift to bring in to Juniper's teachers the next day. Luckily, I had thought ahead, and had all the supplies ready for a huge batch of my current favourite granola (including some lovely glass jars to put it in). Juniper certainly helped, but as you might notice from the picture, she was also very busy dancing that evening. (The day previously, a "ballerina" came to Juniper's preschool, and taught the kids some moves from the nutcracker.  Juniper has been donning this dance suit and tutu every day since then).

Granola! 

December 19 (Thursday): Today we went out for dinner.  We actually hadn't been out to eat in quite awhile, so the fairies were correct in assuming that this would be a popular solstice treat. They had also assumed, perhaps, that the kids would be happy to go wherever we suggested.  Oh, those silly, naïve fairies. Juniper's eyes lit up as soon as she read the note, and exclaimed, "I want to go to Friendly's!!!" Oh, Friendly's.  For those who have not been, it is a very popular restaurant chain in the States, which serves food that can only be touted as *slightly* better than MacDonalds.  The draw, however, is their ice-cream. They have many, many flavours of ice-cream, and it is included as a central component of all kids meals. Also, the kid's menu (including food, beverages and desserts) has pictures on it, so the kids can peruse it and make choices for themselves.  Really, Friendly's is a kids's dream, and my idea of food hell. Anyway, we hadn't been to Friendly's in a VERY long time (over half a year, at least), due in large part to the many months that we had Juniper on a dairy-free diet following her awful stomach troubles in the summer. I had hoped that she had forgotten about it, but she had clearly just been waiting, oh so patiently, for the first chance she could as soon as dairy was re-introduced.  How could we say no?

About to embark on a culinary adventure

Perusing the menu

Linden was pleased with the choice of establishment.

And today?  Why, it is solstice eve! A very important day to be sure.  It will include, among other things, the choosing and procuring of a tree.  Details on that (and all the other wonderful things that will undoubtedly occur in this most magical of weeks), to come next Friday.  Until then, I leave you with treat #2: a few little videos.

Video #1: Linden has a rough morning.

So, yesterday morning was rough.  For whatever reason, Linden (usually a champion sleeper), had been up multiple times during the night, and then was up for good at like 5:30am.  He was exhausted.  I was exhausted. I was, I'm sure, more than a little cranky.  Linden, however, was completely out of his gourd. For some unknown reason, Clark thought it would be a good idea to let Linden watch a video while I was getting dressed, and he was trying to get Juniper out the door. This was all fine and good, until I (who had nothing, may I remind you, to do with giving him this video in the first place), told him it was time to turn the video off.  What resulted was the most epic, crazy tantrum I have ever witnessed in my entire life.  It went on for so long, and in so many different rooms and poses and manifestations that I eventually stopped trying to comfort or divert or distract or make him him laugh, or reason with him (all of which were making him angrier).  Instead, I opted to develop a sense of humour about it until the fuse burned out. The fairy wings he was sporting helped in this regard :) I also decided to snap a couple of video clips from it, and strung them together.  You'll be happy to know that he eventually snapped out of it when I suggested we play "boats"(the first suggestion that he accepted), and that after a long, long nap, he was back to himself that evening (I think all that ice-cream at Friendly's helped).

Video #2: Juniper the "ballerina":

As I mentioned earlier in the post, the kids had a ballet dancer visit their pre-school earlier in the week.  Juniper was clearly quite taken with her, as she has been donning her dance leotard and tutu every chance she gets since then. Her choice of music and moves might be slightly atypical in the world of ballet, but I can assure you that she fancies herself a ballerina in the making! Clearly we need to get her into a class of some sort to help fuel her enthusiasm...

Video #3: Some miscellaneous musical moments from the last month or so: