Thursday, December 31, 2015

December photos






Alma got some tattooing pens from Aunt Kate, which have been fun.







We got rid of all of our living room furniture for some spiffy new IKEA pieces.  The "free" pile in front of our house somehow yielded $40.  The kids got to keep the funds for "their couches" which only seemed fair.









Alma and I attended a birthday party at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.  So great to spend the day with my sweetie.  The best reaction of the day: All the kids were watching a 3D movie about dinosaurs which began with a vicious killing of a baby dinosaur.  Alma and I promptly left the theater and she proclaimed "How can they watch that?!" with such awe (and a bit of disgust) in her friends.








Christmas Day: Alma hard at work at the dinning room table, James napping on the couch, Simon hiding out amidst the trucks














Brian and Bridgette were so wonderfully kind to throw James a birthday party in the middle of Christmas day.  Brian got him a HUGE Lightning McQueen balloon, which James adored.  Here is Alma and James enjoying a Paw Patrol episode while James holds the string of the balloon.












Joshua made a mountain of Christmas goodies, including his wonderful anise cookies and Zane's famous egg nog cookies.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

James as a 4 Year Old



The best thing about James is his laugh.  It is, hands down, the best laugh and giggle in the world.  At night, when I turn out the lights and am putting him to bed, he laughs through the entire process -- laughing, sucking his patented fingers and snuggling into me.  He often laughs to the point where he gets the hiccups.  He laughs at jokes of others but especially at his own silly jokes.

An example of his wonderful absurdity: The other day, Alma asked him an elephant joke* of "How do you get an elephant in a tree?" to which he responded something about babies eating cake and then taking a shower with a mole, all the while laughing his head off.  She asked the question again and he gave the exact same answer with even more giggling.  I had to explain to her, my literalist, that he was answering her question but that his answer was just especially creative.  [You will have to ask her for the "correct" answer to that riddle.]


There are very few things that James doesn't like.  He is getting into marketed toys these days.  The other day he told me that he loves Paw Patrol (which he cutely called Helpful Pups for a few months), Lightning McQueen from Cars, Thomas the Train, princesses, playing soccer, football and basketball, running, riding his bike, and balloons.  For Christmas, he wanted Santa to give him a video of Paw Patrol episodes as he had only ever watched the show when in someones car on the way to a school field trip.

He exudes love and affection, always giving us hugs and kisses throughout the day.  At the end of the school day, he gives hugs to all the teachers and any student willing to take one.  This isn't common practice so it is cute to see the teachers react with a bit of surprise that the practice continues so religiously.  On his pretend birthday (December 24th this year) which we set aside for him to open presents, he would break out into a funny stutter step/backup dance whenever presented with a gift.  He was just too excited to simply receive it.

James loves to wrestle, especially with his cousins Andrew and Tristan who are older.  Parties often have an out of breathe James, with wild hair, spurring them on to continue wrestling him gently.  Any time he can get Alma and me to wrestle (which we do far less often now that we do not have a dedicated futon for the practice), he can go for hours and whines relentlessly when we try to stop.


He loves to play games, including board games, and is a great sport about losing and very sweet when he wins.  We play a lot of UNO. I'm excited for him to play more chess, as he always does well when we play.

He has also spent a majority of his life pretending to be a dog.  Earlier this year, he was a pretend dog for a solid two months, sometimes named "1-E" and sometimes "Knucklehead" but always pronounced to be a very fast girl dog. This afternoon, while napping, I heard him say "woof" in his sleep.  (I'm serious.)

James gets a good deal of attention for his very blond hair, which is rather long.  He does not want me to cut it as he wants to grow it until it can go into a pony tail, which Joshua's did while he was in high school.  Occasionally, James will let me trim the back so that it does not become a mullet.

James is a love.

An elephant joke is a joke, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Alma as a 6 Year Old


Alma is a sweet, dedicated and sensitive soul.  While strangers may find her to be prickly at times, she is a kid who knows herself and trusts herself well enough to ask for what she needs.  We find her to be a thoughtful joy whose world revolves around our family.

No one can follow instructions and build something like Alma can.  It is phenomenal.  Recently I replaced some run down living room furniture (okay, all of the furniture) and Alma easily assembled a somewhat complicated little side table from Ikea.  She loves Lego building kits, Playmobile fairy sets (which require some thoughtful assembly) and received a K'Nex roller coaster set which is very challenging to assemble.  She simply plugs away at these projects over a number of days, carefully matching the item to the images provided in the instructions.  Her dedication to the task is absolute.  While she may get distracted -- and have five projects in progress in the living room at once (much to my chagrin) -- she is dedicated and persistent.  I'm so proud of these elements in her.

Alma's teachers have noted her strength and interest in mathematics.  She has made huge progress with math this school year and she spends a lot of time thinking about math outside of the classroom.  She is also very talented with artwork and isn't shy to try new techniques.

Alma loves to dress up, pretend to do the hair, nail and makeup of all her Barbie dolls and would love to wear high heel shoes daily.  For Christmas, she received a life-sized Barbie head for styling.  She couldn't be happier.


Alma is also sensitive.  Sensitive to temperatures (food, water for hand washing), sounds (hand dryers in bathrooms, toilets flushing, James's chewing at the table), clothes (too loose, too tight, tags, images) and so many other things.  She is learning to work through these sensitivities and we are continuously learning to help her while also not driving ourselves crazy with trying to take away all possible negative elements.  It's a tough balance at times, but I'm proud of the fact that she attempts to get what she needs to feel comfortable.

Along this same line, Alma is not a snuggler.  She rarely gives hugs to those outside of our immediate family and even for us they come at prescribed times and in set ways.  Her language of love is certainly time and attention.  Any misbehavior is usually remedied with some time playing with paper dolls together or having an attentive snack conversation.  If our mood is off, she is the first to notice and provides fierce hugs when she feels they may be needed.

I can relate to her sensitivity so much.  I used to see it as a weakness in myself; but having Alma demonstrate the balance and strength of feeling comfortable and confident with emoting and how she does not seem to feel boatloads of shame at emoting has been a great lesson to me.  I'm hopeful that we can both keep learning the strength of our sensitivities.

Alma is a terrific older sister to James, enjoying his silliness and doting on him when warranted.  Just yesterday, I heard them in his room, giggling and chatting when Alma suddenly stopped and enthusiastically told James that he is even more fun as a four year old. Alma is also a great friend to those in her school.  Joshua's classroom is intrigued by her and the girls of the class often prod Joshua to "get" Alma to interact with them.

Alma is so wonderfully different from the child I imagined she would be when I was pregnant with her over six years ago.  I couldn't be happier that she is.  She is exactly what our family needs and I'm so proud of the young woman she is becoming.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

December Update

This month has been a blur of awesome.

Joie De Vie
James and Alma are wonderful.  They are funny, sweet, thoughtful, persistent and really enjoy everything that life has to offer.  They laugh hard, love deeply and are always seeking new things to learn and experience.  These are such vague descriptions but their joie de vie is difficult to capture in words.  Joshua and I are also having a lot of fun enjoying our own hobbies and enjoying the fun ages of the children.


Parties
It has been a month of parties.  We kicked the month off with a 2-4-6 party in Lancaster celebrating Timothy's 2nd, James's 4th and Alma's 6th with the Yoder and Klitsch families.  Then, in order to avoid December birthday jealousy, the next weekend we hosted a joint party for Alma, James and Nana at our house in Malvern with Thompsons and Lachmans.  The kids loved the joint party as they got to decorate together (Frozen and Thomas merchandising ruled the house) and neither felt left out ... or, very importantly to them, neither felt they were excluding the other.

We celebrated Andrew's last basketball game at Brian's house, which always feels like a party with how much wonderful food they serve us.  Christmas Eve we were able to join Christine's annual feast which includes decorating a gingerbread house and the best turkey I've ever tasted (Doug is amazing!).  Christmas Day we went back to my brother's to spend time with my family and in their kitchen eating more amazing food.

All of these parties also included all the parties in between to celebrate real birthdays (Dec 7th for Alma), pretend birthdays (Dec 24th for James to open birthday gifts) and school holiday parties (luncheons at James's school, evening concert performance at Alma's school).

Joshua and I snuck away for a day to go out for Thai food, watch the new Star Wars movie and leisurely shop for some last minute gifts.  Thanks Nana and Grandpa for watching the children all day and then serving us all dinner!


Work
In an interesting turn of events, I left my position at Harcum College and will begin working at Immaculata University in the new year.  I am very excited about this new opportunity. My new boss seems wonderful and the campus is quiet, beautiful and less than 3 miles away (we can see the dome from the end of our street).  My title will be Director of Corporations, Foundations and Government Relations.  Should be interesting!

Joshua's work continues to go well. Everyone at the school loves him, he spends his days thinking creatively with a wonderful co-teacher and sees Alma throughout the day.  What could be better?  While life still includes stress and he is never one to back away from over working, he is so much happier these days than any day we spent in Bethlehem when he was running a struggling non-profit.  I believe that he misses the work of organizing and the positive impact it had but does not miss the worry that he suffered through in the name of that progress.  I keep telling people that it is nice to have our Joshua back.

Everything else
Simon and Shanti are still plugging along.  Eating, sleeping and entertaining us with their antics.


Our rental is still working out well.  It's tight quarters for parties but otherwise perfectly snug for our little family. We are hoping to host some West Coast family in the coming year, which will be so wonderful.

2015 as a year was pretty darn rough.  I can easily say that the beginning of 2015 was one of the roughest patches of my life.  We do not need to get into the reasons -- March 2015 is missing from the blog for that reason.  Gratefully, the end of 2015 has been great and we are looking forward to a positive 2016.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Saturday, December 12, 2015