This is what I want for my family this year:
More of the sweet laughter that comes when we are all gathered together and undistracted.
Eyes wide with the wonder of twinkling Christmas lights.
Thoughtful gift-giving and grateful gift receiving.
Christmas hymns that fill our hearts with awe over the wonderful life of our Savior.
Jingle bells and candles.
Magical belief and tingling excitement.
Faith, hope, and love.
Sincerely,
Katie Lynn
For the beauty of the earth
For the beauty of the skies
For the love,
which from our birth
Over and around us lies
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This, our hymn of grateful praise.
Four to five o’clock on any weekday evening is bad enough. I have addressed that before. Today, that hour was a real doozy.
It began with a baby who has turned very mobile in the last week. Like, crawling, sitting, pulling-herself-up, into everything mobile. I don’t mind that, but it has been accompanied by a sudden realization that she is a separate being from me….a realization that if she isn’t in my arms she doesn’t know where her next warm and milky meal is going to come from. She alternates between blissfully roaming the floor, sweeping every piece of dirt with her pant legs and stuffing every loose piece of trash in the house in her mouth, to crawling frantically to my feet and whining like a drooling little puppy dog. I haven’t quite realized yet right at four o’clock, the whimpering little sleepy puppy dog comes out in full force, making it nearly impossible to make dinner (remember tomorrow Katie – make dinner earlier!)
So, right as we came home, I was dealing with that, along with an I-was-good-at-school-all-day-so-I-am-ball-of-emotions fit from Gabe. I sent Gabe to his room and Colin and Ollie outside to play. I was feeding Carina while looking up a recipe when Ollie came inside and informed me that he pooped. In his underwear. I feel like I talk about kid poop way too much on here, so I will spare you the details. Let’s just say the underwear went in the trash and the kid went in the shower.
No sooner than I got Oliver out of the shower, Colin came in and exclaimed, “Mom, there is green paint all over the garage!” I ran in there to find that a can of paint had somehow been knocked off the shelf and spilled, rolled under my van, and then pooled in a big mess under there. I grabbed two old towels and cleaned it up the best I could while Carina fussed in the house.
Washing my hands off, I swooped up Carina and headed to the kitchen to see how far I could get in the dinner preparation with a baby in one arm. Carina reached her chubby little arm out just enough to swipe at a glass sitting on the counter, and CRASH…one more mess to clean up.
Now, at this point I probably would have just ordered pizza, but I had just ordered pizza (and lots of it) the day before when I was grumpy, in a bite-me-bad-day sort of rebellion, and I had been eating the leftovers all day long.
So pumpkin soup it was, made mostly by Chad when he came home.
Let me tell you something….pumpkin soup is not pizza.
What you didn’t see from yesterday’s pictures:
I had been waiting to take Carina’s pictures until she was strong enough to sit on her behind all by herself. It wasn’t quite happening and I was afraid that the flowers were going to die soon, so we just went for it one evening. I sat her down, set up the shot, and……..
…down she went .
Which is why all the rest of the shots are of her laying on her belly.
Also not shown:
The freeway exit that was right next to the field of flowers.
Three anxious boys who were ready to go buy pumpkins.
A grumpy mom, insisting that they just zip it while she gets her pictures, gosh darnit.
Man, that picture makes me laugh every time I look at it.
Eight year old boys can be a little aggravating, let’s just get that out of the way. I am going to use a lot of sweeping declarations here, but if you meet an eight year old boy who doesn’t fit this description, you go ahead and tell me:
I have an eight year old. He fits the description above to a T. Chad and I find ourselves constantly reminding him of one things or another. It feels awful to do that to your child and I know that there needs to be a better balance somewhere. It is hard to know when to just seal our mouths shut and let some things sliiiiiiiide.
Which brings me to the next part of the Colin story.
We went to parent teacher conference a couple of weeks ago for Colin. Colin’s teacher stumbles a lot when she is speaking English. She had a huge smile on her face, but had kind of a hard time getting started. Then she suddenly blurted out, “Oh, Colin, he is my favorite student.” The rest of the conference followed that tone. Colin is so so so so smart. He has so much potential. He is so excellent in math that she gave him a different book than the rest of the class, because she wanted to challenge him. He is such a deep thinker. He never forgets a Chinese word and he is always the first one done with his work.
I am very proud of Colin’s intelligence, but I know that it is something he was just born with. We do try to foster his mind, but I know that a lot of his ease in learning has nothing to do with his efforts or our efforts. I try to count it as a blessing rather than an accomplishment.
However, so many of his teachers praises were about things that he has strived for. He finishes his math quickly and then helps his classmates with theirs –sometimes translating what she says in Chinese into English. He is always very kind to everyone in his class. He always wants to learn more more more. He likes to be challenged. He is a hard worker.
I left the conference bursting with motherly pride and so happy to that he has a teacher that sees all the good in him that I do (and so thankful to be reminded of that good). Yes, he is impulsive and eight, but he also:
I’m one lucky mom-of-an-eight-year-old.
Well, I can cross that off my “bucket list.” I got to take pictures of my own little girl in a field of flowers.
I think this is going to have to be a yearly tradition. Next year she will actually be able to walk in the field without Daddy’s help.
It is fun every year, and this year was no exception. For the third year in a row, my mom won the pumpkin carving contest. This was her winning creation:
She also wore this great old lady costume and stayed in character the whole time. It was pretty cool. See the little monkey? That is my niece Mayan – my sister Lindsey’s second daughter. She and her husband Seth were visiting with their three adorable girls.
(Not pictured: Colin puking onto the floor of my van on the way home, two blocks from our house)
The next day we went to my parent’s house for dinner. Chad got to stay home again, with Colin this time. After dinner my mom set up a bunch of Halloween games for the kids. They had a great time. I have a lot of pictures from this evening of all the kids – I will try and get around to posting them on facebook.
This picture cracks me up – Ollie and Liam really aren’t trying to squirt each other – they just thought it was a good idea to play the squirt-the-eyeball game across from each other.
This is my brother-in-law Seth, with their adorable baby Leslie. I know Lindsey doesn’t totally approve, but I think Seth pulls a beard off rather nicely.
My Dad got to spend a lot of time with girls. I don’t think he minded.
I wanted to share with you a picture of Audra’s awesome new hair……
and apparently she wanted to share with you a whole ‘nother picture, because I found this on my camera later. Love you Audra!
On Halloween all the cousins on this side of Charlotte got together for trick or treating. It was a lot of fun. Oliver finally got to debut his costume. His nickname is Ollie-burger and we call him that so often that he often itroduces himself that way, so when I saw this costume I knew it was perfect. And Carina’s? For a long time I have looked at dog costumes and that they would be perfect for babies, and this year I got to try it out with her (doggie) banana split costume. It was great because I could just strap it to her front and she was super comfortable just chewing on it. Babies and puppies really have a lot in common, people, we all know it.
The kids had a great time getting candy. Oliver was running from house to house, keeping up with the big kids. After an hour or so he suddenly said, “I’m done getting candy” and sat down in the stroller for the first time. He was indeed done. I took him and Carina (who had been a trouper the whole time) home and Chad took the other kids out for awhile longer. After letting them eat candy for awhile, I found Oliver laying like this on the kitchen floor.
Definitely evidence of a good Halloween!
With all the lovely pictures I have been seeing of kids frolicking among the orange-hued fields of pumpkins and meandering through corn mazes, I thought I would share our family’s trip to the local “pumpkin patch” …….
…..Sprawl-mart.
(complete with a trip down the ice cream aisle, to make the trip a little more worth it for Mom and Dad)
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| Indoor soccer league |
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| Trying to show you her first teeth - came through on Monday! |
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| Carina waiting for Chad to join us to go to Gabe's parent-teacher conference. She got to hear lots of good things about her Gabe. |
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| Dogpile. |
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| I don't care about clothes for myself that much anymore - I just want stuff like this for Carina! |
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| Dinnerplate Dahlias are in full bloom again. They are such shameless show-offs but I forgive them because they take no effort on my part. |
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| Chad thinks teasing Carina is great fun. |
