You must be lost

I'm finally chipping away at the stuff I wanted to get done over the weekend. Jonah and I got through his toy box downstairs and quite a bit of his room yesterday. Jonah was somewhat resistant and was onto me as soon as I pulled out two boxes and started throwing stuff in them. He walks up and says, "are those toys to take to Goodwill?" Then starts saying, "no! I want to keep that one." He protested even after I presented the prospect of having new toys by the end of the weekend to replace them or if I said something was broken (and broken might mean has dead batteries). I never should have let him watch Toy Story. Eventually he got sidetracked enough with playing fireman that he left the fate of his toys in my hands.

I still need to go through his closet and all of the non-clothing drawers. We're about to get him a new bed and the changing table where we stored toys isn't going to be there anymore. I'm trying to prepare for not only the new toys he's about to get, but also the rearranging of his room once we get the bed.

I'd love to set up stations in his room like they do at school (i.e. all his Lego in one spot, all his Hot Wheels in one spot, all his dress up/pretend stuff in one spot, etc.). The idea is you play with and store the stuff in one area so theoretically things don't get strewn everywhere. Theoretically. He seemed interested yesterday in wanting a place to hang up his fireman hat and jacket "just like a real fire station" and I know he helps put things away at school. So as long as I have labels and he knows where things go, he might participate in cleaning up with a little prodding.

Anyway, It felt good to get a huge chunk of that done, even if I didn't get some of the other cleaning and errands done I wanted to yesterday. Now I want to do it to the rest of the house! This might just be the beginning of me getting pulled out of my funk. Organizing usually helps. I love to organize! I'm a freak like that. I've designated a journal sized spiral notebook to decluttering/organizing. Jonah and I sat down and made a list of containers and storage he would require for his various categories of toys. His Hot Wheels and Lego have outgrown their containers and his Star Wars figures appear to require their own small box now as well.

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Of the happy, apart from feeling really accomplished in Jonah's part of the house:

Jonah and I made dark chocolate peppermint bark yesterday morning. That was a lot of fun and very tasty! Jonah loved smashing the candy canes the best, I think.

I found Giraffie! Jonah's cuddle toy that he sleeps with every night has been missing for a couple of weeks, but I discovered him stuffed under a chair cushion in the living room. He's handled it pretty well, except for one day on the way to school he had a little bit of a breakdown. There weren't big tears, but I could tell he wasn't just whining and was really missing his little friend. I diverted him with the notion that he was only going for a half day and wouldn't have rest time and therefore wouldn't have been taking Giraffie to school anyway. If you could have seen the way this little boy was literally bouncing around when I pulled that little blanket/stuffed animal hybrid out of the chair. He was the very picture of giddiness. I think he hugged him as tightly as he possibly could. It was very sweet.

I installed Swype on my phone and it is FREAKIN' AWESOME! If you have an Android phone and don't already have it, I highly, HIGHLY recommend installing the beta that's available right now! I'm sure it will be even better as I get more comfortable with the keyboard layout (it's slightly different than the one I was used to, in terms of where numbers and punctuation keys are).

In the past two nights, we've seen Robot Chicken Star Wars III and It's A Trap! (Family Guy Return of the Jedi). Both are fantastic! But I think Robot Chicken was a better effort, no matter how much Seth MacFarlane likes to dog on Seth Green in his episodes (which is a funny gag, don't get me wrong, and even better was when all the other voice actors turned it around on him). I could have done without about 2 minutes worth of the nodding scene. I totally realize that going beyond the time limit of the joke was part of the gag. I just find those sort of annoying and lazy, like the 5 minutes of Conway Twitty in the middle of a 20 minute episode or Peter skinning his knee. Thankfully, after sitting through 5 minutes of nodding, the Darth Twitty gag was blessedly short.

And of ultimate happy, I read the new Hyperbole and a Half.

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"There's got to be a morning aaaf-ter. . . "

Usually a combination of the two. I have a lull where it's hard to get the decorations packed up and put away and hard to get all the normal stuff back out. It's also hard to get back into regular routines and I don't know if it's kind of a mini depression or just that I've been in a weird sporadic routine for a week or two (or a month or two, whatever) when it's all over. Then, the seasonal depression usually hits after the holidays and gardening planning are over in about mid-January because I still have at least 6-8 more weeks of cold, grey, yucky days to get through before spring. I hate winter and Christmas gives me a good distraction, even though I don't really get excited about it.

But then, there's the relief that everyone is out of my house and I can sort of curl up on my own time and do the things I love instead of perpetually preparing for some gathering. I mean, I absolutely love to see everyone and in many cases it's the only time of year we get to see many of the people at the many gatherings we host or attend. But after about 6 weeks of that (pretty much non-stop from Thanksgiving to New Year's), I'm ready for some "on my terms" time and a little routine.

Jonah and I had our first theological discussion last night. It came a lot earlier than I thought it would. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised how it came about since he goes to preschool at a Baptist church.

We were driving to the post office when we passed a yard that had a nearly life sized nativity in it. He was chowing down on a piece of granola bar that I had shared with him and I thought he was saying "that's good". As it turns out, he was saying, "God, that's God." When I asked him to clarify, he said, "in the manger, that's God." I asked him if he learned that in school and he said, "yes."

Most of you know I don't identify myself as Christian, but I wouldn't be upset if Jonah winds up doing so for himself. I really don't care what religion or belief system he adopts and I'll be happy to objectively help him in his search for something that makes sense to him. So, I took the most objective and informative stance as possible and it was probably more than a three-year-old needed to hear.

I told him, "yes, Jonah, Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God and they celebrate his birth on Christmas Eve. But there are lots of religions and each one has their own god or sets of gods." Then I poorly attempted to explain pagan Yule to him since yesterday was indeed the solstice. I don't think he understood it all, but my main point was to make sure he knew there were other beliefs out there and not to limit his scope to what they teach in school. It's not so much that I want to drive him into the same search I've been in since I decided to turn away from Christianity. More so, I want to teach him that other religions are just as valid and I want him to respect all beliefs, no matter what one(s) he chooses for himself.

I kind of hope this is the first of many open discussions he and I can have on the subject.

Today, you're supposed to answer the phone, "Buddy the Elf speaking, What's your favorite color?"