December

December circumstances were such that Mike got to be home with us almost . . . not at all.

It was exhausting for him (though he’s shockingly good at accepting things as they present themselves and generally refraining from grumbling and complaint in situations that call for plenty).

And it was incredibly difficult for me. Several times I felt I could not possibly continue on! The older kids are amazingly responsible and helpful – and I’m able to manage this full and busy home (things I gratefully acknowledge); but . . . there is just such a difference in the dynamics when there are two parents in the house – even if it’s only for a few small hours each night. I can’t even explain it fully. There are so many little things that are slightly shifted when both of us are here. And Mike is much better than I am at both discipline and making life fun. I depend on those skills of his a great deal and having nights and weekends without him interacting with us made this December feel rather heavy.

And with it being the holidays? Did that make it better or worse? I’m not certain actually. It seemed more of an injustice not having him with us during a time of year so full of celebrations and departures from our predictable routines, but . . . I suppose the happiness associated with delivering Christmas treats, having our house strewn with twinkly lights, opening our advent boxes to see what small Christmassy activity we’d do that day, and watching Christmas movies . . . also helped offset some of the disappointment.

And, although I’m sure I will always remember the December with very little of Mike, I am also sure that my memories will still be primarily happy ones! And that’s what I meant to write about. The wonderful things that were a part of this month!

It was still Christmas after all. The kids still excitedly took turns choosing little ornaments to fill the 24 spots on our wooden advent tree. Everyone still oohed and ahhed as they pulled out our traditional decorations from their boxes. There were still Christmas concerts. And Christmas baking. The older kids and I stayed up late many nights playing games. And there were fun things like Daisy determining that the girls all needed new pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve (something I quit trying to make happen after about three kids), and so, of her own accord (and at her own expense), taking all four of her younger sisters to choose pajamas (I need a picture of them all together in their pajamas!). And there was my mom showing up unexpectedly one night with a giant pile of her favorite Christmas books – which the kids talked her into staying to read out loud to them. And, even though it meant longer days later, Mike did manage to get here for birthday evenings and a few other important events (and he still managed to read some of The Hobbit to the kids – which has become Jesse’s favorite thing [I think he even got Jesse out of bed on one or two occasions to come read even though it was late]).

And there were also all these tiny, touching things that kind of shocked me. They were small – a niece sending me an unexpected message that felt like Heavenly Father telling me he loved me and was aware of me. A sister-in-law (who had no idea I was having a difficult month) texting me that she kept thinking about me and wasn’t sure why, but was putting my name on the temple prayer roll. A sister calling out of the blue one afternoon to say she was heading this way and wondered if I could use her watching the younger kids for a few hours while I ran Christmas errands. It wasn’t that any of the acts themselves were huge, but they affected me tremendously because these constant and clear evidences of Heavenly Father’s awareness were so unexpected. If someone were to ask me, certainly I would respond that He is always aware; . . . but it isn’t always something that feels like a reality. But seeing that He would go to the trouble to actually be aware of which people in my sphere’s minds were open to be inspired to think of me – knowing that He would bother to nudge someone to do some small thing just for me when there are a million people with a million heavier burdens. Well, I was amazed and comforted and surprised all at once.

And, to end, some Christmas Eve pictures with Mike! (He had the kids act out the nativity, listen to Christmas songs on the violin, and read Luke 2 with no light but candle light – which made them much quieter somehow than usual [except for when they were fighting over who got to blow the candles out].)

Christmas 2018

Somehow, Christmas ended with Anders having acquired a large bowl of . . . slime. Goldie tried (unsuccessfully and for some time) to convince me it was soothing to play with (if I’d only try calling it a different name or thinking of it as a different color). But from the moment it entered my home I began mentally calculating how long it would have to remain before I could dispose of the revolting substance.

Also, . . . we gave Jesse a rock tumbler. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that tumbling rocks might possibly be loud. But never mind that. It only takes ONE MONTH of constant tumbling to polish those rocks to shiny, gem-like perfection!

(Mike did actually move it to the garage after a day. And I no longer hear it at all.)

However favorably or unfavorably you might view the above two situations, Christmas was a success. In fact, it was miraculous to me how smoothly it all fell into place. Gifts all purchased. Everything wrapped. Everyone tucked in bed (the girls — all cozied up together in the big, open room downstairs). And the house magically set up and somehow glowing with something more than gift wrap and filled stockings and lights. (What is it? Nostalgia? Anticipation? Coziness? I don’t know. But it’s real. And it always feels a bit hard to turn off the Christmas music playing hushed in the background, unplug the lights, and tear myself away from the low-level celestial vibrations that seem to emanate from that quiet, late-night scene.)

A few gift highlights?

Some type of fancy bike pump for Abe that can do something . . . that I don’t quite understand.

Magic Tracks for Jesse and Anders. (Who knew they’d like them so much?)

A calligraphy set for Daisy.

(Not actually pictured. I believe it’s Abe’s gyroscope being viewed here.)

A telescope for Goldie (plus a glowing owl lamp and FOUR dresses!).

A set of eight small baby dolls each with their own little swing or crib or high chair, etc. for Summer. (This was meant to be a joint present for the two little girls; but Summer clung to all the tiny babies so possessively, and Mette showed such indifference, that we ended up letting Summer have all the babies [and giving Mette the Little People princess set that was also originally intended for both girls].)

A Bluetooth microphone (and some small strobe lights) for Penny. (She’s forever having “dance parties” with the kids. And what kid doesn’t love using a microphone? Dancing or not! It’s been in more constant use since Christmas morning than any of the other day’s gifts except maybe for Daisy’s 1000 piece puzzle [which she sets herself to working on whenever there is a dull moment].)

Shoes and a little train set for Hans. (Oh alright. Those were no highlight. They seemed right up his alley as he is forever bringing me shoes to put on him and is fond of driving things about. But he seemed to lose his love of shoes at precisely the same moment as he got his new Christmas-morning pair. And the train set tracks seemed to be just tricky enough to set up as well as just easy enough to mess up once they were set up as to cause him primarily grief. His favorite gift was probably the four matchbox cars Daisy gave him on Christmas Eve (even though we already have matchbox cars and to spare!).

Some Sorel boots for me. (My feet haven’t been warm in snow for years and years!)

A snowmobile for Mike! (And the rest of us.) I always feel a bit silly mentioning these crazy big TOYS we get. But Mike really does adore them and, particularly with our regular cabin visits, we use them all a great deal. They have provided an incredible amount of memories and fun for our little family! (We will probably stick Mike and Abe getting it stuck in incredibly deep, wet snow on Christmas afternoon in the “memories” category as opposed to the “fun” category.)

Here and There (Or Neither)

It will give you a small glimpse into my mental state, perhaps, to know that somewhere around 4:30 am Friday night/Saturday morning it occurred to me that I would rename my blog. It would now be: They only throw up at night. And other stories.

I was quite confident about it. Several hours in to what would prove a miserable night for Mette (and an at least equally miserable night for me) it struck me as dreadfully clever, quite catchy, and a wonderfully literal and metaphorical summing up of the entire motherhood experience.

(Likely it seemed less wholly true to Daisy [who was tending when another incident occurred in the middle of the following day]. But it certainly seemed true enough again for me Saturday night and into Sunday morning. Sigh.)

After a decent night of sleep last night however . . . I can see that perhaps the title was not quite so inspired as it felt in those moments.

In other news, I have just sent Summer to put Mette for her nap. (???)

Although she is doing her very best to be both gentle and stern all at once, and to properly assert all the authority her extra nearly-13 months on Mette might allow her, the endeavor is mostly, from what I can hear, failing miserably (as I suppose I knew it would); but putting Mette to bed is nearly always an ordeal, and I thought, at the very least, sending Summer to try her hand at the job would buy me a few minutes to try and clean some of the waxy “window crayons” off of several windows in our house (a job that takes roughly one billion paper towels, an entire bottle of Windex, and . . . most of your will to live). (See windows in the background of the picture later in this post where Goldie is lighting Jesse’s birthday candles.)

Those window crayons are very much like the child-sized toy bus and scooter on the floor of our kitchen closet. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them. But I also . . . have never once had any of my kids get them out without my shouting, within seconds, for them to put the awful things back at once!

Jesse Frank had a birthday yesterday. He is now ten years old. And, if you do your math, you will be shocked to discover that living that long again will put him at age 20. (But its probably best not to do your math in these instances. It doesn’t matter how clearly you put it down on paper, or how many calculators you have handy, figures that add to such ridiculous sums will never make proper sense.)

He was living in a state of equal parts excitement and dread for days leading up to his tenth. And no reassurance from me could shift the balance solely to “excited” for long. A birthday is a glorious thing after all, but, there is the chance it won’t be a good day. And who can face that after all the build up? 

“Why wouldn’t it be good?” I questioned.

Well. Ignorance.

He and Anders might fight. Someone might be mean to him. The little girls might break his presents; why, they might simply crowd around too much – infringing on his present-playing enjoyment! 

But, it turned out to be a very happy day with very little that went amiss. True he still had to go to church (which struck him as a slight loss), but the bishop, who generally gives birthday kids one treat, gave him TWO (it was the bishop’s birthday as well it turned out – a situation that called for such extravagance); we had caramel topping for his ice cream; Mike read the Hobbit to him (which he loves far more than I would have guessed – sometimes I just look over and see him smiling delightedly to himself as Mike reads); and, he managed to trick us into letting him stay up until 10:30 to work on his new Star Wars Lego ship.

And now, in just two more days, Abe will up and have a birthday as well! 18 years for him. I added the figures once about this happening too. They never did add up, so I’m not sure how we’ve gotten here. There must have been some odd equation that I didn’t consider in my calculations (the quadratic formula? V=lwh?).

In any case. Off I go. (But not before telling you that Mette is, at this point, not in bed at all. She has come upstairs, thrown several rolls -- that were meant for dinner – out to the chickens, received a giant pile of dry-roasted peanuts from Summer, and is now sitting on the floor across from me – drinking out of a water bottle and asking me to cut an apple for her. But that’s the glass-is-half-empty way of looking at things. The half-full way of seeing this? Well, at least she isn’t throwing up.)

Wait. Don’t go yet! Here is my dearest, little Hansie boy. Oh I adore this person. (And how he closes his eyes at you if you try to sing to him because he doesn’t know how else to respond to such a thing as being sung to.) We all were in love with his hair that stuck ten feet up into the air. We never made any attempts to tame it. But, alas, it eventually got a bit too out of control and had to be cut. He screamed as if death himself were upon him. And so Mike buzzed it as fast as he possibly could – while I lost all feeling in my arms restraining the little fellow from flight. (Also, never buy your kids Lucky Charms . . . because no matter how many promises they make, they will only eat the marshmallows. And also, never buy them Fruity Pebbles because. Well. Just don’t. Unless you like sweeping. Then, by all means.)