Gingerbread Houses, Step Stools and a Tree Corral

Another in the series of Pug Portraits. This is (im)Patient Pug. Because Bentley is a voracious little food thief, he is trained to sit and wait for his bowl until Oscar and Molly are finished. This is generally his pose, which I find both pathetic and hilarious.



Turtle has been having some issues with trying to climb me in an attempt to get up on the counters. Unfortunately for him, he has his mommy's elementary school upper arm strength (Yes. I was the one dangling at the bottom of that blasted rope during those Presidential physical fitness challenges), so I mentioned to DH about getting him a step stool.

I was met with resistance. DH is of the opinion that children don't need stools until the age of 3 or 4. I'm not really sure where he pulled that number from. Perhaps it was Rex Ryan's Guide to Childrearing. Who knows? What I do know is that his mind changed after the third time Turtle demanded to wash his hands at the kitchen sink and he was hoisting approximately 33 pounds of wriggling weight to do it.

So off to TRU we went. It took quite a while to locate the step stool (note to readers: they are with potty chairs), and I had to choose between White, Elmo, or Hippo. I got Hippo.

Here he is, embarking on step aerobics. Up and down.



Up and down.



Up and down.



It's fantastic. The only snag was after we put him to bed, and DH finally took a good luck at it.

DH: It's PURPLE!
Me: It's a hippo.
DH: Purple is for girls.
Me: Hippos are for everyone.
DH: But...
Me: ::eyebrow::

The end.

Saturday morning, DH wanted to build the gingerbread house he got us with Turtle.

Please note: this was a huge accomplishment for me. I am a control freak. I always do the "crafty" stuff in the house. However somehow, I was able to keep my big mouth shut and let DH and Turtle do it themselves.

Reading the directions. There are also, apparently, video instructions.



Laying in wait for any scraps to fall.



Turtle is not too sure about what's going on here.



Lining up the pieces.



Holding the tray steady while Daddy pipes frosting.



DH was great at piping.



Turtle kept repeating "cookie! cookie!" until we had to break down and give him a graham cracker. He thought it was close enough.



Turtle carefully places candy on the icing. We had to watch him like a hawk to make sure he didn't try to eat any.



Check out Bentley in the background. You can tell he's totally stalking his prey.



Mmmm. Licking icing off his fingers.



So far, so good.



DH improvising - he felt they didn't give enough candy so he snipped the gumdrops into little pieces to use for his gingerbread tree. Well done.



In the meantime, we got the tree up.

I have to take the opportunity to share a little story. We had a tree stand - one of the metals ones with the legs that screw into the tree trunk and the shallow bowl for water. Every year, it caused the biggest fights between me and DH. Tree-installation day was typically our worst argument of the year. He would be frustrated because the tree was heavy. I would be frustrated because he would move it while I was screwing the supports into the trunk. It would be hours of back and forth snipping and snapping.

Last year, the stand broke as we were trying to erect the tree. DH went back to the lot where we got the tree and shelled out a good amount of money on something called a spider stand. Basically, it's four widely spaced legs, with a big spike in the middle. The whole center part sits in a deep plastic bowl. All you have to do is have a hole drilled in the tree trunk, place it down on the spike, and BAM. You have a sturdy, stable, guaranteed-to-be-straight tree.

It was worth every penny. The tree was up in the living room in less than 5 minutes, with nary a nasty word passed between us. The spider stand saved Christmas.

Anywho, we managed this all while Turtle was napping and he was delighted when he came downstairs and saw... the stepladder.

But once that was out of the way, he was enamored with TREE!




He was NOT enamored with our Tree Corral.



Checking out Daddy's handiwork.



Loving the lights.



Stay tuned for way more!