The flu, Black Friday, hallucinating snow, and the holidays

It's been crazy as ever at the DBTD house, ever since I wrote that Thanksgiving post. It turned out to be fairly difficult to be thankful this year, because Sierra and I were both hit with the flu AND a stomach bug at the same time, Thankgiving morning. She and I spent our Thanksgiving puking and lying in piles on the couches. We pried ourselves up for dinner with my mom, but neither of us could eat. As soon as she left, we went back to bed. She and I both spent the night with fevers, I was up to 102.5 and for some bizarre reason hallucinating large amounts of snow outside.

Needless to say, we did not get to go out at 4am for Black Friday. Jason went alone, trying to get my sewing machine (my gift from my mom this year). It's a family tradition for us, going out at 4am and standing in long lines, freezing cold and sleepy. Even the kids enjoy it. We did go out again at 10am, having missed all the good stuff, and picked up a $2 pyrex casserole dish to replace the one Jason broke.

Jaymes has been doing SO well with his hearing aids. He leaves them in all the time now, even in the car. He does spend a lot of time itching his ears though, which is a pain because it knocks out the ear mold and he gets all upset and wants me to "fixit the ears!!!"

He is clearly hearing better, and his speech is getting easier to understand. On the down side, the whole echolalia thing is picking up quite a bit. In speech, he's been just repeating what the therapist says a lot of the time, rather than answering with his own response.

We're having some issues with biting, too. The other day, driving on I-40 to my friend's house, Jaymes took advantage of the fact that I couldn't do anything to stop things happening in the back seat while driving on the highway. He kept grabbing Sierra's hand, pulling it toward him, and biting her fingers. She was hysterical, because well, it HURT. I was not anywhere I could pull over, so I flailed one arm and bellowed at him, which stopped him briefly. Finally was able to get off the highway, he went to do it again and I slapped his hand and gave him the mommy death voice. He stopped immediately, with a look of horror on his face. He hasn't done it since. Poor Sierra is such a little trooper, when asked if she was ok, she replied with a slightly sad "Yes, I'm alwight."

Got the Christmas tree put up. Originally we were using the same pitiful little three footer from last year, with it's crazy sideways lean. Then my friend Kristi found a bigger, much nicer one for sale on Craigslist. It looks really, really nice! I put it up the other night, and in the morning when Jaymes walked out, he did a double take.

Jaymes is psyched for Christmas. He loves the lights, the candy canes, the snowmen. He loves the wrapping paper and bows, the shiny ornaments, and the music. Both kids adore Santa, though Jaymes is less interested in sitting on Santa's lap and more interested in robbing the fat man of his bowl of candy canes. He's lucky he's cute, any other kid would be on the Naughty list for that offense!

Here is a video of Jaymes and Sierra's responce to having the tree put up. This was before we got the new one, so feel free to giggle at our wimpy sideways tilting tree of pathetic-ness. Make sure you turn on the sound, Jaymes was talking a lot and Sierra was singing. Very cute, happy little spawnlings!