Moral-Flexibility.Net

’tis the season yet again, and while Christmas for me has come to represent a time for the entire family to gather, consume distilled grain alcohol and to ratchet the conversational volume up to something more in keeping with a busy runway, it is undeniably a time of year for children.

Jilly literally squeals with excitement whenever Santa Claus is observed, and loves the daily dispenser of chocolate (advent calender). We’re looking forward to this year as one where she has a better understanding of what Christmas is all about. In the meantime we’ve expanded her wardrobe to include a few new Christmas outfits.

This picture is of her just before she left for a Christmas party thrown by a friend of Lisas.

Cute, no?

At the crack of noon we set of for a drive across the dreaded 401 to Fantasy Fair in Toronto for the second installment of Jillys Birthday party with Lisas parents. Jilly (naturally) enjoyed herself quite a bit, immediately fixating on the carousel and wanting to ride the horsies.

The choo-choo and ferris wheel were next, and each adult got a turn acting as escort.

At the top of the ferris wheel (my turn as escort) I asked Jilly if she was scared, the response I got was summed up well in the picture above, she was pretty far from scared and gave me the sort of look I KNOW I’ve given people more than once.

At least she comes by it honestly.

After the rides we parted ways with the in-laws and dashed off to my Cousin Theodores place for a small family gathering unofficially celebrating both the birth of Patrick Arnold and Jillys B-day (and of course spending a little while catching up in the usual din that accompanies any gathering of my family). Pictures of that are somewhat confusing, and I’ll save them for another time.

We’re home now, and more than a little beat. Night night.

Jilly’s birthday is not until tommorow, but familial obligations and geography require two small parties as opposed to the one party I’d prefer. Today was part one of two, and featured a small family gathering in our home. Jilly, Carolina and Ros eating cake and chips and watching Shrek 2.

We’re not entirely sure if Jillys figured out the significance of the day, but the receiving presents and eating copious quanities of junkfood certainly registered, and smiles, laughter and the odd scuffle over toys dominated the event.

As of tommorow at 9:00am my little girl is three years old. Three years that seemed to have both flown by, and crawled by. Go figure.

Happy birthday sweetheart.

So every day or so I load up Operation Flashpoint for a little zombie mayhem. More reading on the editor is required as the missions I’ve created are more than a little basic (also the Farmland Game logic provides only for the zombies attacking the player and/or players group, and not arbitrary NPCs scattered over the map - this means massive groups of zombies currently migrate across the map inexorably drawn only to my character).

Jilly leaps into action whenever she hears the moans of the zombies approaching by yelling “I hear zombies!”, and then demanding it is her turn to play the game. With this development I’ve modified most of the missions so that NPCs protect the player character to Jilly doesn’t immediately get overwhelmed (although by the time it becomes “my turn” again all my ammunition has been expended).

Here’s a snapshot of Jilly playing the game this morning, she can now differentiate between the zombies and the “good guys” or “my guys”, and friendly fire incidents are decreasing (important safety tip, don’t arm a 3 year old with grenades, even if the zombies are coming).

Had it been up to me Jilly would have been dressed as a zombie hunter, but she picked the costume and this is about her, not me, so a unicorn (or a “Donkey” according to Jilly) it was.

[Better pictures later, as both grandpas got the good photos when my camera died one picture into the night]

Last night we hosted a sleepover for our daughter and my two sisters. Pizza, popcorn, chemical break lights, sleeping bags and movies abounded. Much noise was generated, the bulk of it laughter.

As a parent it was tiring, spending an equal amount of time as entertainment director and peacekeeper, but watching my daughter run around giggling like a maniac made every second worthwhile.

The fact that zombies featured prominently into the evening didn’t hurt either (The movie of choice for the girls was, again, “Scooby Doo on Zombie Island”), reinforced by me trying to sneak in a quick game of Operation Flashpoint with the Farmland Mod Horror Pack finally installed (Uh, that means zombies instead of Russians as the enemy) which ended up being a team effort as the girls gleefully pointed out zombies threatening to over run my position.

How much does counselling cost again? Just trying to budget for the future.

Sometimes after a chocolate ice cream treat it’s important to just sit down, put on your shades, grab a book and jabber into your cell phone.

We’ve only recently given Jilly free reign to play unsupervised in her room on the second floor. Naturally while she’s upstairs and we’re downstairs we’re listening for thumps, footsteps leading into our room, screams and the worst noise of all for a parent…nothing.

Today the sound of nothing registered with Lisa before it did with me, and I was interupted at my desk by Lisa calling for me to bring the camera upstairs, to find this;

Both Lisa and I were laughing about this. We really have been quite lucky with Jilly, who now just about to turn three has really not gotten into much trouble around the house (we’re also pretty good about keeping things locked down). So we took this as our due, convinced Jilly that she had done well shampooing her hair, and it was now time to rinse.

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Today, after a few weeks of prodding by Lisa, we took a trip to African Lion Safari (located a mere 45 minute drive from us). We skipped the option to have the baboons attack our car and instead took the “safari bus” through the animal areas, followed up with some wandering around, some bad nachos and a train ride before we called it quits and headed home.

Jillian is finally old enough to enjoy herself through these sorts of activities, and it was entertaining to watch her flash through fear, fascination, love and right back to fear of the animals in the petting zoo in the course of a few seconds. Naturally I had to drag her kicking and screaming away from the animals, but as the train ride immediately followed the petting zoo Jilly got distracted from her disappointment almost immediately.

All in all a good trip, activities in the park seemed a little sparse but I’ll chalk that up to the fact that we arrived as soon as the park opened for the day, and we’ve just entered their off-season. Fun had by all, and no bataan death march like our last visit to the Toronto Zoo.