Braids!

The entire photo shoot below was trying to showcase the braids the girls have been asking for. They look so much like little girls when they have braids in, I love it.


Eliana is changing so much, it's so fun. She uses big words now, most of the time correctly, and is very frank. She'll say: "Please go away, I don't want you to see that I am wiping the furniture with baby wipes." or, "Please go away, I don't want you to see that I'm picking my nose." She is very joyful and seems uncomplicated (after Adessa?) She does get fussy, but it all feels more benign than the fussiness did with Adessa. Eliana wants to do whatever Adessa does, loves to make us laugh, and is snugly and affectionate. She does not like to clean up after herself, no sir, and it takes a lot of cajoling to get her not to drop whatever she's done with wherever she happens to be. Her stuttering is almost completely gone, and has been for months but I forgot to record it in here. What a relief, it was just a stage. She has cute voices she does to make us laugh, though, like her mommy voice: "I'll be the mommy, and you be the sweetie, okay?" which is high and whispy, and her make believe voice, which is... also high and whispy. All punctuated by her ever-present lisp.

I just had to fill in Adessa's Kindergarten paperwork. Very exciting. She's convinced it will be just like her preschool, which worries me a bit, but we have all summer to prepare her for the change. Part of the application was a series of questions about the student for the teacher to get to know a little bit about them, some background. "Is there anything we should know about your child?" Ha! I left that one blank. Another one asked for a description of the child's personality. There were so many things I was tempted to write. I settled on "Bright, Curious, Selective, Creative, Strong, Earnest." There are many other things she often is, too, charming, delightful, humorous, pleasant, joyful, excited, silly, etc. But she isn't those things consistently for me at home. I know her behavior is much better at school, which is fine with me. I refrained from writing down: moody, competitive, feisty, angry/easily frustrated, persnickety to distraction, stubborn.

As baby number three approaches (I'm 32 weeks right now), I worry about the permanent damage I may have done to Adessa the first year of Eliana's life. I'm picturing myself bathing in patience in anticipation of a new little one. I'm going to drench myself in patience and understanding, so I don't take my frustrations out on the girls like I fear I did with Adessa. Adessa is getting a handle on herself and her outbursts much better these days, and we've really cracked down on whining, freak outs, and bad-attitude behaviors. But, I watch her and feel such deep regret. She has serious rage, as I seriously raged at her when she wouldn't let me put Eliana down to sleep, or didn't otherwise cooperate when I needed her to. I'm sure she had tendencies toward persnicketiness as part of her personality, but I guess I'll never know how I exacerbated her inner angers. It makes me feel like just weeping. And how do I undo it for her, or help her undo it? Ach.

Aquarium, at age 4.5 and 2.5 (and 35.5)

How fun to take the girls to the Aquarium this year! If I keep organizing field trips there, I can keep getting us in for free. It was so fascinating and fun to watch the girls experience the Aquarium one year older than last time, and compare. They loved it! Things they were scared to try last year (like the tidal wave you can experience by standing under glass) they were excited by this year. Adessa was interested in everything, and so eager to point things out to Eliana and I. Eliana had a mental list of creatures she wanted to see, and while what we were seeing was great and she put up with Adessa showing her things, she was much more relaxed after we had seen: penguins, sea stars, turtles, an octopus, and a hermit crab. In that order, she was obsessed.

Posin' with Penguins! We saw them swim and preen. (They couldn't have had a more appreciative audience.)

Posin' in a Penguin Egg.

Trying to get a good picture in the clam shell. Adessa is finally posing for the camera, we'll have to wait another year for Eliana, perhaps.

An exhibit I could really stand by, the Potbellied Sea horse. I felt an instant kinship. That's seven months of baby in there! 8)

Playing in the kids area. It was so fun to see them have so much fun, eager and excited for each new display.* Fun!


*I was reminded that it won't always be this way- part of the school group that went were junior highers and high schoolers. The junior highers made a point to look bored and irritated with their parents, only livening up in the gift-shop, and the high schoolers were found in corners and stairwells where there were no fish or sea life to look at at all. I'm thankful for the age my girls are at right now, even if it comes with occasional stressful tantrums and frustrations (theirs and mine!)

Ohhhhh.... A new post.

So... life moves on. We got through Christmas and had a great time with family (which ironically, Grandma would have loved the most of anybody) for the funeral preparations and for the funeral. I wish we were a society which encouraged loud wailing and lamenting, clothes rending and ashes in our funerals. I felt I could throw myself down and be held up by friends and family, I could just wail. But I didn't. I feel a big cry brewing, now, instead of the ache that Edna's being gone has left, but am a little bit scared to give over to it. What a bizzare process, who knew? We've figured out childcare, thanks to my mom and Grandpa and our neighbor and friends filling in. We feed Grandpa a lot. We miss Grandma. There are lots of things we've been up to that she would have loved to hear the girls recount. It was better with her here. There's nothing better about her being gone.

We included the girls in every part of Grandma's memorializing, with hopes that it would help them understand a bit more, have closure(?), be included. And so that we could talk about each part of living and dying, and how they were there for all of Grandma's events, like: "Look, see girls? Pictures! You were there."

At the viewing:


I understand loss a little more. How people show up, and how meaningful that is. I haven't shown up for funerals very much in my life, but I will in the future. It's comforting and reassuring and life-affirming when people show up for you. People came to the viewing just to be supportive, people came to the graveside just to be supportive, people came to the funeral and mourned with us and were supportive. People who barely new Edna wanted to come, tried to come, even thinking about coming was comforting. People wrote cards and made food and volunteered their houses for family, which was so very wonderful, and I had no idea. I'd never sent a sympathy card before. What a nice invention.

Here's what we would have told Grandma alllllll about:
Christmas!! Calvin's oldest brother, Ralph and Auntie Kim and their six kids came up Christmas Eve from Riverside after hearing about Edna's passing. It was hard to be sad with them around, the girls were so excited to be with their cousins, and for Christmas, of course. They opened their first present, soft, brushable horses, and were content. They had to be coaxed to open their other presents. (Note to self- they don't need a lot!)


Cousins!!




Horse-riding lesson! A most-perfect Christmas present, the girls got a horseback ride. They were SOOOOO excited. Eliana was super serious as she rode, and then would burst into beautific smiles when asked if she was having fun.

Memory Eternal, Grandma Edna

Today, Christmas Eve Day 2011, Grandma Edna passed away. I think I'm realizing the larger implications of this loss more and more each moment. Because she was a part of our daily life. Because she was a wonderful mother-in-law to me, and mom, and grandma, and wife. She was a lover of Jesus to her very core. She was a servant even at her own expense, putting others always before herself. She loved my girls so much-- all her grandchildren-- and hoped the best for them, that they know Jesus and serve Him, and learn and grow as much as possible. She would notice that another child in Adessa's preschool class could write all their numbers, and ask if I had been working with Adessa on numbers? She was gracious and compassionate with people of all kinds and life situations, never speaking ill of anyone she encountered. She delighted in her family. She was never one to brag, except when talking about her family. She LOVED to tell people she has 16 grandchildren. She fed us healthy food and encouraged us to exercise and take walks and go to the park. She fed the homeless. She babysat our kids so we could go out on dates. She did childcare weekly for my girls so I could work. She checked up on widows and did errands for them. She gave good neck rubs, with surprisingly strong hands. We will miss her. We will miss her so much.
One of the big ways we feel her loss is thinking forward, that our girls won't get to know her as well as we wished. We wish that she would be around as they grow up, to be another loving voice pointing the way. That she would share her legacy of servanthood and love with our girls. We will, of course, share it for her, but it would have been easier if she were around to teach them herself. I hope we can impart to Adessa and Eliana how very much she loved them. They're so little, they might not believe us. Neither Calvin or I have lost someone who was so much a part of our daily existence, and we keep looking at each other and saying: "Wow. This is going to be harder than I thought." Yep. We love you, Edna.

At our wedding, 2005.


Holding newborn Adessa.


At a Mt. Hermon Christmas dinner, 2007.


Holding Eliana for the first time.


Reading with Eliana.


At the Mt. Hermon Community Dinner a few weeks ago.


A portrait of Grandma by Eliana.

November, 2011

Here is the rest of November, folks, quick before more fun things start happening worthy of record.

November Ballet class:
Attempting to do turns.

The Ballerinas after their class. They were a little tuckered out, but posed for a picture to send to Daddy at work.

Playing ballerina at home.

Dress up time!

Adessa and I had a mother-daughter date at The Nutcracker. She was riveted, and as each new scene opened, she would ask: "Can you please buy me a dress like that?"


Baby, it's cold outside. (Already!)
Eliana making mama proud and wearing her scarf during a chilly morning walk in the woods.

New clothes! I finally hid all summery clothes and dresses and the girls have a new wardrobe of warm clothes. We have done so well with hand-me-downs that I've rarely shopped for the girls, but it was time. The four or five things each would consent to wear became few and ridiculous as the weather got cold.



Thanksgiving:
Uncle Ben is always a hit!

Thanksgiving fun with cousins, uncles and aunts and Grandpa.


A most successful fall-tree family photo, hooray!

October Fun

This time of year is the beginning of so much fun and so many noteworthy events, that I'm going to try to pick up on the posting. So that I don't have to put all the fun stuff in one post. Which is what I'm about to do here. For all of October. You are warned.

Eliana has developed a pretty severe stutter. At first I was convinced that it was because I am impatient and frustrated with the girls a lot of the time--more on that later--but I have since been reassured that it's a relatively normal thing for kids under five. If it continues for more than six-months or her facial muscles get involved, I am to worry and seek professional help. Meanwhile, it's cute and endearing and heartbreaking all at the same time, she tries and tries to get out a sentence, but only the first word or syllable comes out of her, over and over again up to 20 times. Yikes. She's sweet and cute, loves to be silly and make us laugh with funny faces or voices, and is definitely doing the two to three year old crying and testing.

As far as me being a mean mom, which is quite probably what I have become, I blame pregnancy (and a lifetime of unpleasant personality traits that have lately surfaced.) Impatience, anger, frustration, exasperation, lack of sympathy, blah blah blah the list goes on, I'm a mess. Part of it I feel has come with the realization that it takes so much energy to get Adessa and Eliana to DO anything. All is well, everything is fine, as long as I don't need them to: wake up, get dressed, eat, go to the bathroom, get their shoes on, get out the door, get into the car, take a bath, brush their teeth, go to sleep. In between all of those, they're lovely and fabulous. Trying to accomplish daily tasks, even the ones we do alllllll the tiiiiime, is just so difficult. It takes overwhelming amounts of energy. I think (and Calvin keeps telling me) that it's just parenting, this is parenting: this is what we signed up for. But I don't know. My frustration with getting them dressed, which seemed to be the go-ahead to jump around on the bed, dance in front of the mirror, dump out a box of toys, etc. lead to... the Dress Yourself Fairy.

Yes, the Dress Yourself Fairy visited our house. She left a (second hand--thank goodness the girls don't care if things come in their original packaging) Rapunzel doll for each girl, and now, they get themselves dressed. Eliana still gets a lot of help, but Adessa does pretty much all of it now, and cheerfully. (We were doing it all, shockingly, because she's a funny one and did not at all want to be independent like I thought kids were supposed to want to be.) I keep trying to figure out what bad parenting strategy it is to have Fairies come to your house and tackle child-rearing issues I'm just not up for, but it works! The Binky Fairy worked like a charm, as has the Dress Yourself Fairy minus one terrible hour of crying which involved socks. It's also funny to me that I'm not at all into the idea of Santa Claus as an invisible entity who brings things to kids, but Fairies? They're fine.

And now... the pictures. Lots of fun in October.

October 1st was my friend Renee's beautiful wedding at Camp Kenolyn. Gorgeous!




Out rain-walking-puddle-stomping with Gracie.


New fine motor skills.


Eliana is drawing "smiley faces"! She draws them sideways or upside down, though, then turns them right side up to look at them, and will only draw them on the Magna-Doodle. Hmmm.


Braids! Eliana condescended to allow me to braid her hair, and it was cute! And I got it on camera!


A blissful evening at the beach, Daddy and his girls.


Eliana believes in baby wearing!


This is why kids shouldn't stand up in their strollers. 8(



The Pumpkin Patch!
Adessa and Eliana stalking around the pumpkin patch, determined to find a good one.


Eliana holding Carson's leash, one of life's great excitements.


Pumpkin Patch family picture. I look forward to a time when we have no 2-3year olds who don't pose for pictures. Eliana was finally coaxed.


Pumpkin Patch family picture, with Grandma and Grandpa and Carson.


Posing with Julie and Gwennie, at our 4th annual pumpkin patch with the Stewarts.


Adessa's pumpkin face, 4th consecutive I do believe!


Pumpkin carving. (To state the obvious).


A princess pumpkin with a crown/unibrow, and a princess pumpkin without eyebrows or crown.


Adessa as Snow White, trying out Halloween costumes.

A three minute view of what could have been two Minnie Mice dressed up for Halloween. Eliana was having none of it, however, sensory issues and size 4 dresses only on that girl.



Cousins! (And uncles, really) for some early trick or treating.

The gang! So far it is not any easier to photograph these kids, the little siblings ran amok but remained unphotographed.

Trick or Treating later on, sisters holding hands. Awwwww.