Christmas 2014

I have celebrated 27 Christmas's in my life. This year marks the 13th with my husband (we missed one due to my stubborn life crisis as a teen) and I felt so many many emotions this morning. Yesterday my family hosted "Christmas Dinner" with my siblings, their awesome children, spouses, and even my birth mother was there. It was a special kind of deep pain to feel the emptiness of my Mom not being there. I hadn't really thought about it until all of us were sitting around the table, our plates loaded with food and I asked a really simple question - what's a favorite Christmas memory everyone has? Then grief came deep, swift and leaving me mourning. Food tasted like shit after that. I didn't even know it was possible to ruin cheesecake but let me tell you, it is possible and grieving is the unsettling emotion that can do it. 

But it's not all bad - my favorite Christmas memories surround WRAPPING! My mom would tell the same story every year about her job at a local toy store in Nampa Idaho in the 1950s. She was hired during the Christmas season to wrap gifts for customers. That story was always told when she was surrounded by a million gifts for my siblings, that she always hid in the trunk of her car, and she taught me how to make a package beautiful. This year as I wrapped presents for my babies, that I had hid in the trunk of my car, I felt myself tear up as I wished she could know how grateful I am for her legacy. Though this is the second Christmas without my mom, it is the first one I felt it. Last year I was too close to everything to process. I was on auto-pilot, I had just planned my first funeral. This year, I let the emotion in and experienced it. I feel overwhelming joy for the life I have and while this sadness was present, I did not invite it to stay, I had too much happiness going on! And, I got the stellar perk of cuddling Anaius - our rainbow baby after our lost little, and reminded that I found out I was expecting him on Christmas last year! 

Here's what Christmas morning looked like in our house:

(4 of the 5 looking and smiling? A Christmas miracle indeed!)

Ya know those people that get around and complain about their mother in laws? I cannot do that. My mother in law is fabulous! Our kiddos are loving their new Christmas Jammies compliments of my lovely MIL. It's adorable to watch them open them and mad-dash to put them on as fast as possible. So fun. This is a tradition many families, including my husbands family, does every year. I hadn't heard of it though until I had my own kiddos and my MIL sent jammies <3 

All around, a fabulous morning. In our home, we start with someone opening a gift and then they pick the next to give to someone, and that person opens then picks a next for another... it is fun to watch the kiddos want their siblings to get more gifts. 

One of the perks? Since yesterday was the big dinner, I didn't slave in the kitchen today! Left overs rock. Ham, garlic and cheddar potatoes and pie? Yep, pretty much amazing.

And a crock pot with hot cider, cinnamon and cloves in it? Oh. My house smells like heaven and I've been sipping this fabulousness all day!

Tonight we plan on laying tile in our bathroom to almost wrap up what's left of our remodel (blog to come on that fun!!) but one of the activities we will do that I'm super excited about it make candy nativity scenes. The kids are thrilled and I think it helps them remember the reason our family celebrates Christmas. I am so grateful for today.

I am wishing everyone a beautiful, blessed, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 

December's beginnings.... kicking off the Xmas Season!

We have a tradition in my home that really kicks off the Christmas season for all of us. Thanksgiving weekend our family attends the Boise Festival of Trees! It's really a fun time we all look forward to. This year we decided to make a whole day of it. We had a slow start to our black-Friday morning and then set out to hit the FOT first. We enjoyed several hours of admiring trees, watching performances on stage and doing a scavenger hunt. We all worked up an appetite and decided to grab tacos before surprising our kiddos with taking them to a 7 pm movie in the theater! We saw "The Boxtrolls". It was a cute movie and enjoyed by all. 

We picked up a Christmas tree in town this year. Our 4-wheel drive on our Betty is broken, Anaius is tiny, I'm glued to a pump. I was just too exhausted to commit to hunting for a tree in the mountains this year. I hope to do it again next year! 

Our kids have been enjoying dance classes on Tuesday mornings for the last three months. It's been a fun time for them to do something "just for big kids" because so much of my time is very busy with Anaius. Here's some quick snap shots of their lessons. 

Another fun fact : We have TWO kiddos who can sing "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" this year!

We also ventured out on an awesome "field trip" with a home school group and watched "Nutcracker Jr" ballet. It was an hour long and Daunika is begging to go to the full version next year. She LOVED it. We all had a good time and it was long enough to feel worth it, but not long enough that anyone in our young crew got restless. They also got to check out the costumes before the performance. Perfect :) 

One of the best parts of this December was our family going to the Boise Temple to be sealed for time and all eternity! It was a special day for us. We felt so loved and supported by those of our friends that came to witness our deeply personal ordinance. It was a beautiful day indeed! 

I have no words for how amazing it is to call this family mine.

And it wouldn't be mid-December without Kalani's birthday!!! I cannot believe this little spitfire tot of mine is THREE. She is such a joy. There is always laughter in her eyes as if she's clued into a joke I can't hear.

What a wonderful first half of the month it's been! 

Three months and still mountain climbing.

I absolutely love referring to our adventures in feeding Anaius as mountain climbing. Someone asked me a couple weeks ago why label it with something so hard... and I got to thinking about that. I don't think mountain climbing is that hard? Can I do it today? Heck no. But I think it takes a team effort, you cultivate skills to manage the climb, and then you work diligently toward your goal... You do not sit at the bottom of Mount Everest and decide you're just going to have a casual Sunday stroll up it. I've looked at this journey like mountain climbing because I have had to assemble a team. I've had to learn to skills and facilitate an environment that my son can learn new skills too. Diligently striving forward.

We break up our routine into multiple sections - feeding, pumping, torticollis, and alertness/weight gain. Sounds complex but it's really not. It's just the four categories we seem to measure his progress in right now. Anaius doesn't cry. If he's hungry, he will just give up and go back to sleep. A baby who doesn't cry? Sounds amazing right? Well, kind of. Yes, we love his peaceful nature but watching his cues is very different from our other four kiddos.

So, for feeding - we have to provoke him, often, to remind him that food is a good thing. Silly little man would be content to be worn on me all day and sleep to death. OYE! He is such a peaceful spirit.

But there are so many funny things about him. He has all this gorgeous hair right? Well, instead of losing hair in the back of his head, he's got BABY DREADS!! 

Anaius has decided to take his physical therapy into his own hands. He has right sided torticollis and that means his head almost always looks toward the right. We consistently work with him to encourage him to look left..... Well, our little man has found a love for his LEFT thumb!!! WOOT! He has made huge improvement in the last month simply because of this one fact. It's amazing. I'm so happy for him! 

If you've ever had a baby struggle to gain weight, I'm sure you can understand how very awesome it is that Anaius has grown so much that he's far outgrown his 3 month clothing (and maintains a really cute double chin!)

I'm just so incredibly blessed to have this little man as my child. This experience has taught me more patience, advocacy, compassion for others, and more love for all my children than I knew I had in me.

This little soul is such a wonderful one. 

Our goals this month are to continue physical therapy, begin-again speech/feeding therapy. Continue with cranial sacral therapy and enjoy just being a family. As Anaius has begun to giggle with the kids, they are enjoying connecting with him and all look forward to playing! I expect to continue the every-two-hour-with-out-fail pumping schedule until he can master nursing on both sides. Until then, he won't want for milk at all in this home.

I am committed, one day at a time, to stay in tune with what we all need. It's a really fabulous mountain we're climbing! 

Onward, upward.