2011 Becomes Past Tense

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December



Adios, 2011 - Come on in, 2012!!!!  We are SO ready for you!

Hello Christmas....I mean Thursday, the 22nd

So Mister and I decided at 9:00 last night to open up all of our presents.  Not Little's, of course, he was in bed - but we're out of packages with our names on them.  Heehee.  Little can open his on Christmas Eve since we have church Christmas morning.  I've never been one who could wait patiently for Christmas morning.  It's not in my nature to wait til Christmas  AND I BLAME MY PARENTS.  Yep, Mom and Dad - my absolute inability to leave the gifts wrapped under the tree all the way to December 25th is all your fault.  See, in my house growing up, the traditional Christmas morning didn't exist.

Ours was a house of torture every Dec. 25th.  We were not allowed to wake up our parents.  We were not allowed to touch anything under the tree. We were not allowed to dump our stockings.  We were not allowed to spend all morning in our pj's basking in the after glow of shredded wrapping paper and new toy euphoria.  Nope, we had to practically sit on our hands until Mom and Dad decided they were ready to head to the tree - always after showers, always after breakfast, always after noon (ok, that part might be a stretch - it was usually more like 10:00 a.m). There were literally  HOURS of anticipation after we woke up.  And if Christmas fell on a Sunday?  Psssssssh - we practically had to wait til Monday to start.

Then finally - FINALLY - when Mom and Dad decided it was tree time we ran into it's needles and the blury and fury of present opening began!   Wait, no - that's not how it happened, of course.  Somebody, usually my brother, put on the santa hat and began handing out presents...one.......by.......one.  1 present to 1 person and everybody had to sit and watch and wait for that 1 person to get finished unwrapping their gift before the next person got a turn.  And there were 5 of us, at a minimum, so present opening took fOrEvEr.  And when it was my dad's turn?  FORGET ABOUT IT.  You better hope one of the presents you already opened was a book so you'd have a way to pass the 24 minutes it took him to pocket knife open every single piece of tape on his gift and slowly, neatly unfold the paper.  Thanks a lot for teaching him that particularly agonizing trait, Grandpa.  I have become an expert at wrapping his presents with just 3 small pieces of tape.  So it was usually about 9 p.m. when we finished unwrapping gifts (ok, that might be a stretch, too).

So is it any wonder that I don't make it to Christmas now?  Heck, we did better than last year.  Last year we opened presents up as soon as they arrived in the mail!  I just can't STAND IT to not open presents.  I don't even care what's in them, I just need to set them free from their binding of tape and paper.  It could be a box of cereal wrapped in newspaper and I would be ecstatic to open it up (yup, that's actually happened before - my dad again).  Now don't get me wrong, my parents are not scrooges.  They just discovered a way to gleefully and giddily torture and exasperate their children 1 day a year while at the same time creating hilarious (sarcasm font) holiday traditions and memories. My husband has picked up on this and finds it quite amusing to set my birthday presents out on the kitchen table for an hour or two a day before my birthday just to drive me crazy.  He always puts them back away, though, because he knows if he forgets and leaves the house, then that wrapping paper will mysteriously vanish.  He won't do it on Christmas, though, because he's almost as impatient about it as I am.

So here I am on Friday morning, December 23rd with no presents left to open.  AND I LOVE IT.  I will never ever ever ever ever been a show like veggie tales....oh sorry - got my sentence mixed up with the theme song playing in the living room.  What I meant to say was that I will never ever do that to Little.  The Jones Family Christmas tradition of gift agony is dead to me.  The Palmer family tradition is to open your presents as soon as you can't take it anymore while understanding and accepting that you may end up with nothing left to open on the actual morning of Christmas.  Booyah.

I must say that there were some rather hilarious gifts this year, which I always appreciate.  There was a t-shirt professing the wearer's love for crossword puzzles

and a gift card that proclaims HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

 But the one that takes the cake (err tree?):   CAT BLANKET.

Cat Blanket Christmas Tree!

Oh Cat Blanket tree, oh Cat Blanket treeeeeeeeee, how lovely are your whiiiiiiskerrrrs!





I couldn't wait to show Little this morning.

All hail Cat Blanket!

 "nnungoh Keetee!  Amooow!"  Translation - Snuggle kitty! meow!

So have a merry Christmas, everyone!  Any way (and any day) you choose to celebrate!  

Opinions, please!

I need your help!  Little and I have a few events coming up in the next year, so I've been working on his logo.  This will be the one constant design on all of his t-shirts, signs, buttons, etc that we use for Duchenne related appearances.  We'll be outfitting a whole team of folks in March for the PPMD's Run for our Sons event during the Little Rock marathon and we've been asked to appear on local broadcasting spot during the MDA Labor Day telethon in Little Rock for 2012, just to name a few (don't we sound famous?  Ha!).

I want a design that can go on many colors of tee shirts, that's why they are mainly just in black.    The motto for MDA is "make a muscle, make a difference" and that is why I've gone with a flexed bicep.  The DMD support ribbon is a lovely shade of lime green, as all the good colors have been taken by the more well known diseases (darn you, Lance Armstrong).  So there's the explanation for why I used the elements that I did.

What I would like from you, is to know which one you like best.  I'll add the photos here and I'd like you all to use the embedded poll to vote for your favorite.  Yes, they are a bit rough - I am not an artist, I did my best.  The final product will be given to a graphic artist who will make a presentable (and screen printable) version of it that I will have up for sale on products on my cafe press site.

So scroll on down and vote!  Feel free to leave me a comment explaining why you chose whichever design you did.

I've been working on designs for about 3 months and I've come up with quite a few that I thought were fantastic and Mister thought were garbage.  Pbbbbbbbbt.  So here are 5 that Mister didn't turn his nose up at.  Why yes, I did end that sentence with a preposition.  You can click on each picture to see a larger version.

A.  

B. 

C. 

D. 

E. 

Thank you all for your input!  I'll post the winning design once it's received some touch-ups from a professional. :)

We need a new goal

because we've met our "walking by his 2nd birthday" goal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




December 12, 2011, my baby boy took his first real steps.  ANDREW IS WALKING!






Mister was sitting there on the floor, trying to get Little to balance in a standing position and he just headed over to the couch!  All by himself - no prompting from us.  Little Boy just gathered up his courage and walked by himself!  He did it several times, then we let him walk back and forth between us for a while.  His longest walk was 12 steps.

After a few passes between his parents, he went for what was really important:



He's been walking short distances (mostly from me to the couch) for 2 days now and his balance is getting better and better.  He had PT this morning and when she walked in the door, I set Tot behind his walker.  PtHeather gasped before he even did anything,  When he pushed his walker across the floor to her, she screamed and clapped her hands.  It was so great to see how excited she is for Little.  I told her to get ready because we weren't done with the show, and I sat on the floor where Mister is in the videos.  PtHeather started tearing up before I even let go of him.  Tot walked to the couch and I think I actually heard fireworks going off in PtHeather's heart!  Andrew is usually pretty cranky during PT, but not today.  He was so happy to show her he could walk and passed back and forth between us dozens of times.  He even tried to stand up from the floor by himself (that'll be the new goal). BEST PT DAY EVER!



Now I can't wait to have him greet OtJennifer on Monday morning by walking across the floor to her!


Here's one from his second day was walking with an aide.



Now he tries to walk with everything that isn't nailed down.

So goal met with 5 weeks to spare!

All Aboard!

The train is leaving the station.



Ignore the laundromat that is my living room floor.  I was in the middle of folding the laundry when we noticed he was eyeballing his train and getting gutsy so I jumped up and grabbed the camera, leaving behind a mountain of yoga pants and socks.



He's an old pro already.



I can't believe it!  I seriously cannot believe that my little, muscle diseased, motor delayed, beautiful baby boy is this close to walking.  I've been in tears for 15 minutes now because I've always had a seed of doubt in the back of my mind that maybe he wouldn't ever walk unaided.  But now - watching him take his first steps with his train and seeing how quickly he became comfortable enough to push it one handed (and steer!)and how balanced and coordinated he was....it's real.  It's real now.  I believe and I can say with all certainty that HE IS GOING TO WALK.  And it's going to happen soon.  Our original goal with his PT was to have him walking by his 2nd birthday.  That's only 6 weeks away...........we just might make it.



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!