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Some more Christmas thoughts in the same sort of stream-of-consciousness mode.

It’s been said often that Christmas is much more special with children around. I remember as a child that there was nothing in a year that caused me more excitement and anticipation than Christmas. I loved Christmas Eve most of all. That last anticipation, and the sense of mystery are powerful memories for me. Even later (and still today) I loved to be out on Christmas Eve when everything is still and quiet, especially with the deep quiet of snow falling.

As we get older, I think the joy grows a little deeper, if we let it, and the anticipation looks to promises farther out. I think Paul’s words in Hebrews show something of what Christmas comes to mean:

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

The days leading up to Christmas are something like a pilgrimage. I think this is something that we do less formally as Latter-day Saints (and Christians in general). I’ve gone to some of the holy sites of my faith; Martin’s Cove; Palmyra, NY; Nauvoo, IL; Kirtland, OH, and so forth. Even the shorter pilgrimages to the temple serve the same purpose: we look for a promise afar off, hoping for enlightenment and clarity, with a renewal of our commitment and spirituality at the end.

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Charlotte turned 6 on the 14th.  I had so many things to do to get ready for her birthday and other things, that I had to post pone the post about her until now in favor of getting some sleep.

Charlotte likes to draw.  Her artwork makes a sharp contrast with what Isaac produces.  He always creates some kind of ship or machine that usually needs some explanation to understand.  Charlotte’s drawings are more typical and resemble things like cats and people and bananas.  The other day she was doing her homework and the assignment asked her to draw 10 animals and she drew them all with bananas on their heads and talked about how it would make her teachers laugh.  When she had to draw 10 things she drew her cat with a disproportionately large body and 10 spots.  She was so proud of her drawings, she imagined her teachers laughing all day at them. As she was drawing a picture of a friend with short dark hair, she announced that if you do a good job drawing her, she will look like an Astronaut.

I love this self portrait that she made at the beginning of the school year.  The teacher gave each student a mirror and Charlotte noticed things like the freckles on her nose.Charlotte loves having something to anticipate.  She has been eagerly anticipating her birthday since October when she announced that it’s getting close to her birthday.  She regularly tells me that she’s so excited for Monday because it’s family night.  She also gets very excited about fun things they get to do in kindergarten.
Charlotte is very clever.  I was worried about her having a hard time spelling her name since it’s both long and phonetically irregular, so I posted her name on her wall.  I think she was about 3 when I found that she could spell her name both forwards and backwards. She learns things easily without being taught.  I’ve often discovered that she has learned concepts that I was teaching Isaac.  She figured out basic addition all on her own and started teaching herself multiplication the other day (she told me she had X sets of Y and that equaled Z –I wish I could remember the numbers that she used).

Charlotte is very confident in her opinion and personality.  She’s proud of who she is and happily declares her favorite things to anyone who wants to know.  Today she was talking about the differences between girls and boys.  She said that boys like things like fighting and stupid stuff, while girls like beautiful and lovely things like cats, bananas, and princesses.

Charlotte likes to talk about marriage.  I remember when the subject first came up that she wanted to marry Isaac.  When I told her she couldn’t marry her brother, she said she’d marry his friend Sam.  She said if Sam didn’t want to marry her, then she’d just marry someone in Isaac’s class that is nice to him.  Now that she’s in Kindergarten she is finding her own marriage prospects.  She told me about a week ago that she was going to marry a boy from another kindergarten class.  Recently she has changed her mind and told me that she would marry Ander who is in her class because he is her friend.  She even told her grandmother on the phone the other day that Ander is her boyfriend.  I’m not a fan of kids pairing off so young, but after asking her several questions, I found that her understanding of the term boyfriend is nothing more than a friend who is a boy and that they spend their time pretending adventures involving prates and spaceships at recess.

Charlotte seems to do well socially.  She considers anyone who knows her name to be a friend.  Shortly after school started, she said that Catherine said she stinks.  She didn’t seem embarrassed at all about it–her grandma asked her about kindergarten over Skype and Charlotte proudly proclaimed “Catherine says I stink.”  Charlotte said that she was friends with everyone in her class except Catherine, even though they still know each other’s names.  She eventually overcame that issue and now considers everyone in her class a friend.  When we go to the park, she approaches other kids and introduces herself and then considers them friends as soon as she knows their name.

Whenever there is a birthday in Charlotte’s kindergarten class, all the students draw a picture about what they like about the birthday kid.  The birthday kid draws a picture about themselves.  This is what Charlotte drew:She interpreted her writing as “I am OK when I fall down.”  It’s funny to me that of all the things she could write/draw about herself, that is what she came up with.

With all the pictures and videos I took on Ila’s birthday, this post should be the next best thing to actually being able to celebrate Ila’s birthday with her!

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It’s wacky hair day at school today:One of the neighbor boys had some party poppers this morning, so Isaac added some color to his crazy hair on the way to the bus:

Here are some fun recent videos of Ila:

One of her favorite activities is having me write her name:

She was making our little nativity figures play ring-around-the-roses, but when I got out my camera, she decided to play the game herself:

My little Ila turns 2 tomorrow.  She was named after my beloved grandmother, Ila O’Bryant.  My grandma always seemed to just radiate love.  My little Ila is the same way to me.  Her siblings genuinely love her and enjoy being around her and she loves them too. There is some indescribable quality about her that draws us to her.  After I pick her up from nursery, she’s always eager to go find the rest of her siblings.  She’ll start calling down the hall “Charlotte, I’m coming.” 

I love her laugh.  She finds joy in simple things and just seems to be genuinely happy most of the time.

I think she is our best talker.  She regularly uses 5 word sentences and even attempts to say ridiculously hard words like Zarahemla.  It’s funny to hear her talk so clearly because she’s still so small that 12 month jeans are loose on her. 

She loves to read and count and sing.  Whenever she sees letters somewhere, like on a sign, she starts singing the ABC song.  She sings along with several of the songs on the CD in our van and has picked up many of the songs they sing in nursery.  She knows all the words to the first verse of “You are my sunshine” and has even started to memorize parts of books that we read to her regularly.

When  she wants to tell me something, she points her little pointer finger at my mouth, looks directly in my eyes and tells me what she wants.  She’ll often say something like “I want lunch.”  I respond by saying “you want lunch?” and she’ll say “ok” in a cheery little voice.  It’s funny because sometimes she turns my confirming that I understood her request into what sounds like I’ve just offered her exactly what she wants and she has agreed to accept it.

We color code things for our kids based on their favorite colors (Isaac = green, Charlotte = pink, Nicole = purple, and Ila = orange).  [There is still some debate in our house over whether Ila’s color should be orange, but she was born in Knoxville and if you’ve ever been to Knoxville on a Friday during football season, you’d know exactly why her color is orange]  Today, when we were at a preschool, Ila picked out a green bead and then said Isaac.  Then she picked out a purple one and said Nicole.  There were no pink or orange beads in the box, but after picking out several “Isaac” and “Nicole” beads, she picked out a red and named it “Charlotte.”  The point of this story is that she makes connections easily and seems to have a high natural intelligence.

She is still the pickiest eater I have ever known.  I could write several paragraphs about how illogical and odd her eating choices are, but for this particular post, I won’t describe them in detail.

What more can I say.  I love my little Ila with all my heart.  She brings such joy to my life and I am so incredibly blessed to be her mother. 

I just noticed the other day that the pictures from my phone were mysteriously on my computer.  This is good, because I have never taken the time to figure out how to get them from my phone to my computer (I know, I should be ashamed of myself).  Anyway, here are two that I took at the grocery store one day (9/6/2011) that are amusing to me:Charlotte loved to tell people that they had a banana on their head.  It was a running joke in our house that was used daily for a long time.  I think one of Ila’s first sentences was about bananas on someone’s head.  On this trip to the store, I had put the bananas next to Ila and she immediately put them on her head and started saying something about having bananas on her head and, of course, Nicole reached over for her own bunch and joined in the fun.I just love the surly look on Ila’s face in this picture.  I think she wasn’t pleased when I placed a watermelon next to her in the cat.

This is Eustace:This is a Eustace colored bunny that we saw at the pet store:Here is a Eustace cow:The kids love finding animals that look like Eustace.  I can’t remember a long drive that we have taken where we haven’t found a whole pasture full of Eustace Cows.  We call him our cow-colored cat and his coloring is so common, that we regularly find pictures of cats that look like him in adds or on bags of things such as cat food or cat treats.  We sometimes jest that he has a secret life where he sneaks out to be in commercials or photo shoots.

Instead of an all inclusive detailed retelling of our day/weekend, I decided to just post a few pictures and comments on our Thanksgiving this year.

This is the Thanksgiving pie we made.  We covered the top with cut outs of things we were thankful for that I also had cookie cutters in the shape of.  The letters symbolize each member of our family (Dad, Mom, Isaac, Charlotte, Nicole, and Ila).  We are also thankful for cars to drive, Christmas, cats, football, delivery trucks, a house to live in, stars in the sky and all the people we love.I bribed the kids on Thanksgiving morning to do chores for me in exchange for a special snack.  The snack consisted of min-egg rolls, pizza rolls, and  sparkling juice.We had a nice Thanksgiving meal at Zach’s Aunt and Uncle’s house.  While the rest of us enjoyed a nice traditional Thanksgiving dinner, Ila refused to even taste any of it and only ate a bowl of peanut butter with some water to drink.  She wouldn’t even taste the pie and ice cream we had for dessert!On Friday we bought our first real Christmas tree and then decorated it.  It looks rather small on top of the van, but it almost touches the ceiling and fills out it’s space in our living room well.

It’s never a bad time to count your blessings, but today is a great day to do it. Things may change tomorrow, but even if they do, I’ll be glad for all I’ve been blessed with today.

And I do mean blessed. I know some people think it’s just luck or genius that determines our place in the world. My experience tells me that’s not quite right. While our own effort matters, we rely on the Creator of this world to provide for us. So that’s who I’m thanking primarily, along with my friends and family (and even some of my enemies!) who helped bring me where I am today.

I’m grateful to be in Seattle. I’ve always kind of wanted to live here, and now I’ve got my money where my mouth was. I’m glad to be so close to my family. I love that it’s cool and gray, and that when it’s not, it’s beautiful. I love taking the bus into that gloomy fog-shrouded city on winter mornings. I love spending time with my grandma and all number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. I’m grateful for our new ward here, and for the fine young men I work with in the Priest Quorum.

I’m glad I had the chance to live in Tennessee. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t miss it at least a little. I made more friends in the short time we lived there than in any other time except my mission. My neighbors in the Knoxville 1st Ward are so close to my thoughts and my heart. I am glad I had the chance to be there.

I’m thankful for my job. I am painfully aware how many people who are brighter than me and harder workers than me and more deserving than me are out of work. I am thankful for the string of events that led me into my career and that gives us the means to keep the children home with their mom.

I’m thankful for the church. Every day I see buses and billboards saying “I’m a Mormon”. It puts right in my face the things that set us apart along with the similarities we share with everyone else. I know that all men are my brothers and all women are my sisters. I know that the hard things in this world can be turned to our benefit through the grace of Jesus Christ. There’s more hope than any despair or discouragement can swallow.

I’m thankful for my family. I’m glad to have a new brother-in-law this year, and I’m so grateful he takes such good care of my sister. I’m thankful for the technology that lets me talk with my sisters and parents every day, so it’s almost like they’re here with me. I’m thankful for my mom and dad, who take care of so many things for me still and who helped us make the move last year. I know they pray for my little family, and I’m glad for it.

I’m especially thankful for my wife and children. I remember the birth of each child distinctly, and the flood of love that came over me when I held each one for the first time. I love their crazy play and their goofy ideas. There’s nothing better than to take time and play with them or read to them. And Kathleen, who does so much each day to hold things together. The long-standing joke is that her love for me is expressed through laundry. Well, it takes a lot of love to manage the laundry for this house. But she also keeps the family united together and makes us all happy. It’s not home without Kathleen.

There’s lots more I could write, but I’ve got to watch football, play with the kids, eat turkey and pie, and talk to my grandma. So happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

My mom came to visit last week.  I can’t tell you how eagerly I anticipated our visit since the last time I saw her was at the airport when we moved to Seattle.  Unfortunately, all 4 of my kids developed colds just before she arrived and I was just starting to get a cold.  Within a few hours of arriving, she started experiencing cold symptoms as well.  So we spent the whole week sick together.  I did not envision my week consisting of comparing cold medicines with throats too sore to stay up late talking or read piles of stories to the children.  Hot chocolate became our evening tradition and we both agreed that we had consumed more of it during that week than we had in a very long time, it just felt so good on our sore throats.

It was hard to muster enough energy to go out and enjoy much of Seattle together, which was sad.  We forced ourselves out of the house a few times and were able to enjoy a great view of the Seattle skyline from Alki park on her last night with just our family. My sister Sarah drove up from Portland with her boys on Friday and spent the night with us before taking my mom back with her on Saturday.  The kids had a movie night with their cousins and we visited the worst McDonald’s play place on a cold rainy night (it was outdoors and it actually started hailing as we were leaving).  The next morning, Isaac tried to bargain with Sarah and offered to trade some of his toys for Grandma, but his bartering was unsuccessful and we had to say good-bye to Grandma Bunny.

The kids got 3 chances to try out their costumes this year.  The first one was an impromptu trip to the Kent library with some of our friends for Halloween stories and a few pieces of candy.The second time they wore their costumes was for the ward Trunk-or-Treat on Friday night. Great-Grandma Cochran, Great-Uncle Gayle, and Great-Aunt Margaret met us at the church and then joined us for a movie afterwards.  I didn’t get to take many of pictures of the kids walking around because I was busy with Ila, but I managed to take one picture of Nicole retrieving candy from a decorated trunk:The third and final costume event was trick-or-treating.  Zach and I took the whole group out for a quick trip around our neighborhood.  Ila enjoyed her first time trick-or-treating.  Her sweet little voice was barely audible as she said “trick or treat” and “thank you.”  We promised our big kids that if they were patient and stayed together with the family instead of racing ahead, that I’d take them out for some trick-or-treating in another neighborhood where they could go their own pace.

This was our first time trick-or-treating in Seattle and it was surprising how few kids we saw out.  Almost every house we visited had a large bowl of candy and gave each kid multiple pieces.  It didn’t take long for the kids to have a big stash to bring home.  Charlotte loved all the Halloween decorations, especially the spiders on webs and the variety of carved pumpkins.  A few times as were were walking away from a house she said “they gave me candy before I even said Trick-or-Treat!”  She seemed to find that amusing.  She was also very amused when someone accidently let their cat out and the cat looked like a fluffy version of Eustace:

When we got home, they sorted their candy and I thought their comments were so funny while they were sorting that I got out the video camera and made a few videos.  Charlotte sorted her candy into what she referred to as her “delicious pile.”

Isaac’s sort was more organized, but the way he mispronounced candy names was amusing.  One of my favorite was “sneakers.”

I got lucky this year and didn’t have to buy any costumes, although I am planning to shop for some after-holiday costumes to fill out our dress-ups. 

Charlotte really wanted to be Rapunzel and luckily a friend of ours wasn’t using her Rapunzel dress this year and lent it to us.  I made Charlotte some yarn hair to go with the dress.  She absolutely loved the yarn hair so it was well worth the effort it took to make (which wasn’t much).Isaac really wanted to be Flynn Ryder (from Tangled), but I couldn’t find any costumes online and I didn’t feel up to the challenge of making him one so he had to settle for a knight costume that we borrowed from a friend. (He is trying to look ferocious in the picture below).Nicole seems to really like butterflies and she loves wearing her ballet leotard so she borrowed some wings and a tutu and was a “rina butterfly.”  She had some trouble with the wings and ended up just being a ballerina which she seemed perfectly happy with.  In fact, she loved the tutu so much that I found her sound asleep in bed the other night wearing nothing but the tutu (and a diaper).  Also, I seem to have failed to get a solo shot of her::Ila didn’t seem to want to try on a puffy baby costume, so she wore a nurse costume that I purchased for Charlotte a few years ago.Here’s the whole group:

On Friday, the little girls and I were able to go to Charlotte’s Kindergarten class for their annual Apple Party.  (I suspect this is their way to have a party without celebrating Halloween, Isaac’s class is having a no costume Fall party, I’ll have to leave the Halloween Store visit for next year. And if you need contact lenses for your next cosplay event, then make sure to check out what Cosplay Contacts Store has to offer!

They had been talking about apples and doing art projects featuring apples the entire week proceeding the party.  They even made their own apple costumes and made apple sauce in class on Thursday. Additionally, the organizers scheduled an appointment with indoor air quality service for the safety of the children and their parents. If you also need heat pump repair and maintenance services, make sure to hire professionals. And if your furnace breaker keeps tripping, make sure to contact a professional to service your unit. However, if you notice an ac noise is not normal, you need to contact the technician to check and fix it.

Here’s a pic of Charlotte in her apple costume participating in a bean bag toss:First they sang several fall or apple related songs.  I took a video of all the songs they sang but Charlotte was hard to see in the other songs’ I got a much better spot for this song.  She must be shy in front of an audience because she has sung this song to me on her own multiple times before this performance.

After they sang, they divided into groups and rotated through several games and activities.  Charlotte’s group started with the apple toss which consisted of throwing an apple shaped bean bag into a basket.  I have a video of her tossing the bean bags (admittedly, the video is not very interesting, but it’s short):You’ll be pleased to know that I didn’t take videos of any of the other activities which included an art project, cookie decorating and eating, and an apple themed matching game.  But I did take pictures:Just for fun, here’s a picture of Nicole wearing Charlotte’s apple costume.  I thought the combination of the headpiece and her short hair reminded me of a flapper.

Here are some videos that I took of Ila today:

Ila’s current favorite book is “A Sick Day for Amos McGee.”  She calls it “Elephant.”  She likes the page of the story where Amos is having breakfast and wearing socks and she likes thet page where he’s walking down the street.  She likes to find the bus and the Elephant and the balloon on many of the other pages.  One of her current favorite parts of the book is at the end where the “elephant is sleeping.” 

Her current favorite movie is “Ponyo.”  She has been asking for it every day and when I turn it on she claps and cheers and yells “honyo!”  It’s a basically about a fish who turns into a little girl and a 5 year old boy who loves her.

She also really likes “Despicable Me” which is perhaps an odd choice for a one-year-old.

Nicole loves to make lines of people, animals and vehicles and then move them along the floor or carpet.  It can be a slow process when the line is long and has lots of individual figures to move:Also, she often changes into her PJs in the middle of the day, sometimes she wears multiple pairs of PJs in the course of a day and often the PJs are Charlotte’s.  Here is another scene I saw her  setting up:The toys in these pictures are part of the Playmobil 123 series which are probably my favorite little kid’s toys ever.

I feel like I never update my blog these days.  At the end of the day I just want to go to bed and pre-bedtime blogging seems impossible right now.  The last several nights I’ve told myself that I’d sit down and write something–obviously that hasn’t been happening.  So for the next several months, I suppose my blog will be much more intermittent than regular and I should just be happy that I haven’t ignored it completely.  I want to write about Ila and how much she’s been growing and changing the last several months, but instead I think I’ll just free-write some random life updates and work on a more complete Ila update later.  Hopefully this isn’t too dull to read, but it might be.Isaac has jumped into chapter books.  He’s reading two series right now.  “The Magic Treehouse” and “A-Z Mysteries.”  He reads for about an hour a night and typically finishes a book in two nights.

Charlotte loves kindergarten and has gained confidence in her reading ability.  Since starting kindergarten, she has been attempting to read more books (even though I don’t think they’ve worked on any reading skills she doesn’t already have).  I think she’d already be reading more books on her own if I had kept up with her reading lessons, but I had a hard time finding the time between taking care of all her siblings and cleaning.  I’m not overly concerned about not keeping up with her lessons though, I think she has all the building blocks to do great in school and be a fantastic reader.

Nicole doesn’t seem to have made any progress in potty training even though I’ve been putting her in underwear since about the middle of August.  Also, she still changes her clothes often and her favorite thing to wear is Charlotte’s pajamas.

We’ve had some concerns about Nicole for a little while.  I took her in for testing through the school district last week and she has been referred to a child psychologist for more testing. Ila has started adding the word “anymore” to her sentences. This word is very popular in Nicole’s vocabulary, so I’m sure that’s where it comes from.  Here are some examples of how Ila uses it “yeah, toast anymore” = I want toast.  “Yeah, mom anymore.” = I want mom to hold me/play with me.  Nicole says things like “I don’t wear pants anymore!”  or “I don’t hug anymore!”

Zach seems to be doing well at work.  He presented a stellar web strategy for a big name potential client this week, but I don’t think I’m allowed to name drop here right now.  Let’s just say if I did name the company, you’d all be impressed.

Lately I feel like I’m not keeping up with my cleaning goals and I’m struggling to find the motivation to go those extra steps that take me from maintaining a fairly orderly house to making my house impressively clean.  I’d much rather cuddle and play with my adorable girls all day while the older kids are at school.

It has started to rain a lot more here lately.  I think we’re entering the rainy season.