Christmas

This Christmas was filled with lots of family, food, gifts, blessings, and some sadness. I had two weeks off from work which allowed me to be fully present for the holidays. My house was festive and my meals were planned. I love Christmas time so I had been decorating, baking and listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving (yes, I'm one of those). My parents came up the Tuesday before Christmas and the plan was they would go home the Friday after then we'd head out to Mike's mom and dad's for the weekend and come back Monday. We'd have the reaming of the week to relax and have fun. Well, God had other plans. On Christmas Eve, my lovely Grandma Ruby went to heaven. She was 97 years old, lived a very full life and went peacefully. She went to sleep and didn't wake up for several days and then she was taken home. 

When my mom and dad arrived, we knew it was only a matter of days before Grandma would be gone but we decided to go on with our plans because that's what she would have wanted. We enjoyed a lovely Christmas Eve service at our church and came home and opened presents that night. Mom and I were stayed up late watching Christmas with the Kranks (a favorite). We finally decided to go to bed and as I was getting ready for bed, Cora woke up. I rocked her and was having a hard time getting her back to sleep. I heard my Mom's phone ring, it was shortly past midnight now, Christmas Day, and I knew Grandma was gone. I believe Cora knew too, that's why she wasn't sleeping.

Mom, Cora and I snuggled on the couch and talked about Grandma and how much fun she was, how much we would miss her but how happy we were together during this time. I'm so glad my last memory of my grandma is from this past fall when we visited her. E was playing basketball in the community area of Grandma's nursing home and whenever the ball would roll by Grandma, she would try to jump out of her chair and get it for him. I kept telling her not to do that! I'm grateful I was with my mom when she got the call about Grandma. This will be one of my most cherished Christmas memories, although sad, it was a special night of four generations being together. 

Mom and Dad left Christmas Day to take care of arrangements but we still had a wonderful Christmas. We had to cut Christmas short with Mike's family, we went out just for Saturday then headed to Iowa on Sunday for the funeral on Monday.  

Despite the sadness this Christmas came with, I still feel it was one of my best Christmases. E was totally into Christmas, enjoying Christmas movies and books and the decorations. He loved driving at night seeing all the houses lit up. "Do you see any Christmas lights Mommy?" he would ask. Then when he saw some he would shout, "Christmas lights!" It was also special because it was Cora's first Christmas. She wasn't into it much but she did enjoy eating the pine needles from the tree and pulling off the ornaments.

I think the reason I enjoyed this Christmas so much was because I was with family the majority of the time. We were able to carry on the Christmas spirit during a sad time because we were together. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas with ones they loved.

The Reality of Sharing

Cora is crawling now. Well it's more of a scoot than a true crawl. Needless to say, she is mobile. And that has turned E's world upside down. I would even venture to say that this new development has been a harder transition for E than when we first brought Cora home from the hospital. She wasn't touching his stuff then. Now it's "Oh no! Cora has my (insert whatever toy here)." Then E will take it away and Cora will cry. On the positive side, E will replace whatever he has taken away from Cora with one her "baby toys" as E likes to call them. But of course those aren't near as fun for Cora as what her big brother has. So there's been a lot of talk about sharing and modeling what taking turns looks like which can be exhausting. And honestly, it's kind of comical watching the two struggle over toys as long as I can step in before a complete meltdown from either one happens.

Mike and I agree that we don't think our kids need to share everything. That's just not a reasonable expectation to set for our kids. As adults, we don't share everything and me being an only child, I really don't share everything. Some things are mine and only mine and that's ok.

A while ago I read a story about a mother criticizing another mother at a park for not teaching her child to share. I can't remember what publication this story was in but the gist of it was that a child brought a truck to the park to play with and another child wanted to play with the truck too and the child was not sharing. The mother of the child with the truck did not intervene and make her child share. That's when the mother of the child without the truck made the criticizing comment about how that little boy must not have been taught to share. The mother defended her choice not to intervene because she felt her child had made a conscience choice to bring his truck to the park to play with and that's what the child was doing. Why should he have to give that up just because another child was upset he didn't have a truck to play with?

I find myself agreeing with this mom's logic. As adults we aren't required to share just to make someone happy. Why should we teach our children this when it's not reality? For instance, if I'm reading a book and someone sits down next to me and wants to read a book too but doesn't have one, I'm not going to automatically share my book just because sharing is the nice thing to do. There will be disappointments in life and not always getting what you want will be part of that. And yes, as an only child, I have on the rare occasion experienced the disappointment of not getting what I wanted.

Mike and I are trying to teach our children that some things we do share but it's ok to have special things that we don't always have to share. For example, E's blanket that he sleeps with every night, he doesn't need to share that with Cora. That's something that is very important to him. But when it comes to blocks, those we share. Mike and I use the phrase "that's a sharing toy" a lot. As we navigate through this lesson of sharing, I'm sure it will create some confusion for our kids on what to share and what doesn't have to be shared. It certainly is easier to teach them to share everything. But I'm hoping our approach in the long run will teach E and Cora to stand up for what is important to them but also know the importance of sharing what we have.

Basement Space

Our basement is done, well almost done if we're being completely honest. Done enough that we have been practically living down there. All we have left is a few trim boards to put up and finish up the closet that is behind the couch. We love it! It may have taken us Mike along with his dad and my dad a while, but it was well worth the wait. The amount of extra space it provides our family is priceless. Instead of having all the toys crammed into our tiny livingroom, we are able to spread out downstairs. I don't think my family could survive another long Minnesota winter without this additional space. We now have a place to play basketball and race cars. I also love that I don't have to constantly pick up toys. I can simply shut the door to the basement on those days when there just isn't enough time to get organized.

Not only do we have an amazing play space, but we've created a cozy area to watch movies and relax. During this season, we've been watching more TV than normal with all the Christmas specials. It's so fun to be cuddled up in our new basement watching Christmas shows and eating popcorn. Mike and I find ourselves spending time down here as well after the kids have gone to bed.

We've also created an office area in one corner which helped Mike and I get somewhat organized with all the paperwork one seems to accumulate. And now we finally have a space where we both can comfortably write, Mike with his books and me with my blog.

After growing up in a big four bedroom farm house with lots of space inside and out, I never dreamed that I would be able to raise my family of four in a small two bedroom house, but I'm doing it. We love our location. There's quick and easy access to the city and all it has to offer and I'm reasonably close to my work. Our experience with the school district has been great and we've found a church that feels like home. We know eventually we will outgrow our home but having this basement space will help us stay in our house longer until we are truly bursting at the seams and need to make a move.

As you can see from the pictures, we get lots of use from our basement, everything from farming, jumping, and folding clothes.

Sledding

Last week, we had a great day for sledding. The sun was shining and the temperature was warm enough you didn't need a hundred layers to stay warm. Mike and I wanted to take E sledding. He loves the snow and big slides so we thought sledding would be right up his ally, WRONG! We were gone for about 10 minutes and E only went down the hill once.

Let me back up. When we told E we were going outside to sled he kept saying, "I want to shovel." The kid loves to shovel snow. He talks a lot about shoveling snow and gets excited when it snows. "It's really coming down." he'll say. "We'll have a lot of snow to shovel." So when E told us he wanted to shovel instead of sled, we should have known that this sledding thing was going to fail.

However, Mike and I persisted and got both kids bundled up in snow suits. Anyone who has ever done this knows what an event this can be. By the time everyone is ready to go, I'm carrying my coat, hat, and gloves because I'm sweating.  Despite the crying from both kids, Cora was tired and E wanted his shovel, we were finally loaded in the car, ready to make the two minute drive to the soccer field where there were perfect sledding hills. I even packed some snacks because I envisioned us sitting on top of the hill taking a break from all the sledding we'd be doing.

When we got there, I plopped Cora in the baby sled and pulled her to the hill so she could camp out and watch. Mike was pulling E's sled and he was slowly following behind still talking about his shovel. Mike was talking to him about sledding, really pumping it up about how cool it was going to be. There were other kids sledding and we said, "Look at those kids, doesn't that look fun?" E wanted nothing to do with it. Mike decided to take a turn to show E how fun it would be. Still nothing. I took a turn and he still just wanted to shovel. Time to bribe, we thought if E just tried it, he'd like it. We told him to go down with Dad and then he could shovel. He quickly jumped on the sled with Mike and they went down the hill. When he walked back up he said, "Ok, now can I shovel?" How can we argue with that? We brought his shovel but decided it was pointless for the whole family to just stand at the top of the hill and watch him shovel. So we loaded everyone back in the car and made the two minute drive back home and E shoveled the yard, happy as can be.

My Social Media Cleanse

I went off of social media for the month of November. It really was only Facebook and Instagram since I don't Twitter or use Snap-Whatever. I did continue to read blogs because who has time to read a book these days so that's my "reading" time. I still was on Pinterest because I do actually make a lot of the recipes I pin. I don't do much with the other thousands of things I pin but I can dream.

What prompted my cleanse was a new low I hit, I was scrolling through my newsfeed while brushing my teeth. That's low. I also would check my newsfeed and nothing would have updated, Facebook wasn't broken, I was just on it that much. Not to mention the countless minutes I was wasting. Minutes I could use wisely by being productive or heaven forbid spend time with my children. Yes, it was time for a cleanse.

I also found myself getting annoyed and even competitive by some posts from people. People I barely knew anymore. My gosh, just typing that sounds pathetic. This should not be effecting me the way it was. Again, time for a cleanse.

So today is the day I jump back on Facebook and Instagram. Did I miss it? Not really. What I missed was the connection I felt with my close friends who live far away. I miss seeing pictures of their kids and random updates about their lives. Yes, there are other ways to stay connected to those we love; email, texts, or dare I say even a phone call. During my social media cleanse, I did try calling my best friend who lives out of state. I had no idea what she or her family was up to, I missed feeling connected to her. It took us two weeks and four phone calls before we actually spoke. Who has time for that?  Facebook is easy and quick. And when my closest people live far away, that's what I want.

After my cleanse, I will be using social media differently. I like Instagram for pictures, it's a great record of daily moments and I don't follow many people on there. Honestly, I mostly follow celebrities on Instagram, it's my celebrity gossip fix. I'm going to clean up my Facebook "friends" so I'm truly connected with people who are friends. I don't care what that girl I had one class with freshman year of college is up to. I don't need to be updated on that guy who graduated from high school two years after me. I care about my friends, the real ones. The ones that it doesn't matter how much time has passed since the last time we saw each other because we pick right back up where we left off. Besides, I don't want to risk pissing them off by defriending them...they know to much about me.

Thankful at Thanksgiving (in pictures)

Here's what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving...and all year long.

These two!

E loves Grandpa Claude's Allis Chalmers.

He likes the green ones too.

My world!

Such a good helper.

Halloween...
"Home of the Wicked Witch and Her Little Monsters."

Minnie Mouse
(E would not wear his Mickey Mouse costume.
He told me he was going to be Evan for Halloween.)

Punch Pizza after E's first professional haircut.
It was time, Mom kept messing it up.

Playing camping.

This lady thinks she can walk.

My Rut

It's the last night of my Thanksgiving vacation. I'm sitting at my computer, with my hot chocolate and a delicious chocolate chip shortbread cookie that I made. They're almost as good as the ones at Rustica. I'm sure I can make them just as good if I keep trying but that means I need to keep making them which means I will continue to eat them. Not good. Anyway, I'm here. I'm blogging for the first time in weeks. I felt like I was in a writing rut, but then I realized, I can't be in a rut. I'm just telling my stories, there's no rut when you're telling the stories of your life. Then I thought, maybe life was in a little bit of a rut. And it kind of was. 

I felt like things were moving so fast but nothing was getting done. Life was so busy, but busy doing what? There were a few weeks when I felt like I was just floating through life in a haze. Work was stressing me out and I took it home with me. I felt angry, I felt sad, I felt helpless, and I was anxious. And then there was a moment that lifted me out of my rut. I was vulnerable with my husband. I gathered the courage to let walls down that I didn't even realize I had up. After being together for nine years, I still had insecurities I hadn't shared with him mostly because I didn't realize I had them. 

I've always considered myself a strong confident woman, but somewhere, somehow, my confidence has been shaken. I have all these insecurities of being good enough. A good enough Mom, wife, friend. Being good enough at my job so I can be promoted and make more money for my family. I shared this all with Mike and it felt good. I no longer needed to pretend that I was strong and confident and had it all together when I did not feel that way at all. That conversation helped me end my rut. 

You would think I would have no problem being vulnerable with Mike, especially after the condition I was in after E's birth. Mike was fortunate enough to have the experience of helping me put on those wonderful mesh underwear you get after having a baby. The ones that are as big as a tent so they can hold that giant pad. I really have no dignity left with him. But this was different. I didn't want to let him down. I liked having him think of me as strong confident woman. But the stress of pretending to have it all together made manageable things in life less manageable. I was overwhelmed and couldn't deal with it. That's the great thing about my marriage, Mike is a true partner, we're a team in life. When one is down, the other steps up.