Santa, I can explain

You see, Santa, when I first got my glasses, I was fine with them. I did not really attempt to take them off other than when I was tired.

A few months ago that changed. For some reason unknown to me I did not want those things on my nose anymore. I kept feeling this urge to grab a hold of them and yank them off my face the instant they came on. Next thing mama and daddy knew my glasses were under my bouncy seat. I would also throw them as far as I could, or hide them by sitting on them...
Mama and daddy thought my eyes had gotten miraculously better and believed my glasses must be too strong for me now. An appointment with the opthalmologist was made, and they usually are WAY in the future. For a while they kind of gave up on putting the glasses on my nose because they certainly did not want me to get a headache or otherwise suffer!

Finally the appointment came. Surprise: my eyes had not improved at all! The opthalmologist told mama and daddy that sometimes kids will do that for no apparent reason. I had just decided that I wanted to take my glasses off because I could. I made mama laugh out loud when daddy and I showed her my trick: daddy would put my glasses on and I would do nothing, just watch him. He would walk away and disappear from sight, and I would promptly grab my glasses and throw them away! That was fun for a while, but daddy was on to me. He became the glasses nazi! He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head and knew instantly when I just THOUGHT about reaching for them...Mama and Ama were pretty close seconds and my own sister Kaitlyn (we call her Sissy) ratted me out all the time!

I knew I had to do something. My time had come when daddy and I went downtown to meet Ama, mama, and Sissy. They had been to see the Nutcracker and were meeting us at the Melting Pot restaurant, where mama and daddy were going for dinner. Ama would take Sissy and me to her house. Daddy was in a hurry and after parking the car, putting me in the stroller and making sure my glasses were on, we rushed over to meet the others. It was very cold that day and I looked like a little snowman, all bundled up. Quite cute actually, even though I say so myself!
Daddy went really fast and was not paying attention to me. There was my chance! I yanked off my glasses, held them over the side of the stroller, and opened my hand...
When we arrived at the restaurant, mama and daddy had to rush inside and Ama whisked us off to her house. Mama did notice that I was not wearing my glasses, but she thought daddy had stuck them inside the diaper bag.
Honestly, Santa, I did not mean any harm to anyone. Even though those glasses look really cute on me, they annoy the heck out of me and I just had to do it!

All this happened just a few days before Christmas and I think you might not have gotten the message about this incident in time to stop my presents from being delivered...thank you very much for all the cool stuff; I love each and every one of my presents and promise to play with them a lot!
I thought I should write you a little explanation just in case this would count against me next year... Another pair of glasses have already been ordered and I bought myself only a tiny bit of glasses-free time, so I think I have been punished enough.
Please remember that I was not thinking clearly before I did it, something very common with babies and little kids as you know. I promise to do a better job of keeping them on my nose! (Did you also know, that babies have something called infantile amnesia? Just keep it in mind in case I forget my promise...)
Thank you for listening to me, Santa.
I love you very much and we will have cookies and milk out for you again next Christmas Eve,

Alexander

p.s. Say Hi to all the reindeer for me - I will make sure mama leaves out a treat for them next year, too!

It's Christmas!

We have the most beautiful mailbox in our neighborhood!

Apart from Hootie, everyone is enjoying Christmas.

Zander showing off his chocolate letter; KK and Zander visit Santa; KK and Aaron show their Christmas Eve present!

Twas the morn after Christmas

't Was the morn after Christmas and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring but the teeth chattering in Hootie's mouth.
The birds keep teasing him and I smile, sipping my coffee,
they know the cat is safely inside; they twitter with glee.

The stockings that were hung by the chimney with care,
are now draped on the couch, discarded and bare.
Presents plentiful, adorned with ribbons and bows, were all unwrapped.
Scores of pictures taken to help remember Christmas 2008, now past.

Christmas dinner with goose, ham, wine and family,
oh and of course apple pie...sigh...is now a delicious memory.
Aunt Betsy's antlers stayed on KK's head as a permanent adornment today,
that's all right, since after all, at Oma's in Holland it's second Christmas Day!

A well-deserved vacation is awaiting Ama and Poppi with umbrella drinks, sea and sun.
Hopefully "grandkids withdrawal" will not spoil their St. Maarten fun...
I am filled with gratitude, God, for everything You have blessed me with this year:
my family, our new home, and especially our baby home with us is filling me with cheer!

Now, the task of preparing dinner awaits and for the future as well as tonight,
along with joy, peace and blessings I wish I may, I wish I might

wish you all a Merry Christmas and to all a good night!

and a Happy New Year too...

Fa la la la

What a wonderful time of the year! The Christmas music has been playing for a couple of weeks now and the move is behind us. Jim and I are still both alive (we have not killed eachother during the move) and we are still married. Yay! We have survived what is going to be the last move in a long, long, long time.
The kids' rooms and the kitchen are pretty much all done. The rest of the house can wait until after the holidays. The Christmas tree is all decorated and so is the deck. Even though many of the boxes are still packed in the garage, it feels great to be home. I love waking up in the morning and watching the sky turn red as the sun gets ready to rise.

After reading "The littlest Christmas Tree", Kaitlyn decided she wanted her own little tree in her room. So, when we went to pick out our tree for the living room, we found a cute little tree for KK. I found mini lights which flashed, to my horror and Kaitlyn's delight, and yesterday I discovered a whole section of mini ornaments at Michael's. Her little tree is beautiful, complete with a star on top!

Last night I tried to take pictures for our Christmas card. Jim bathed the kids, so when I came home all I had to do was set up the place for them to sit and pose. I took a whole bunch of pictures with my regular camera, so I hope we can find at least one that will work for our card.

While we were decorating the tree, Jim found one of the santa hats from the ferrets and put it on Hootie's ear. Poor thing started to get so upset! I took it off him and he did not leave my side all evening. He just knew I would protect him from Evil Daddy!

Did I mention that I love our house? I love our house!
This Christmas will be the best ever...especially since all our babies will be here. The biggest one, Aaron, will arrive on December 21st. The littlest one, Zander, will spend his first Christmas home, with us. Just thinking about that makes me tear up.
It is a simple reminder that we should not take anything for granted, but appreciate all we have and enjoy every second of being together.
That's what I will be doing this Christmas!

The countdown has begun

On Monday we will sign the contract and then we will be the official owners of a house.
No really, we will own a house (well, the bank does for a few years, but let's not burst our bubble, all right?), our very own house. A first for both of us...
Hopefully the fleas have been killed thoroughly and we will not be bringing them along with us. I wouldn't mind bringing Freddy, but I haven't seen him in a long time. I wonder what he is up to these days. It's definitely not an ideal time to be outside right now.

Two days ago Jim dropped the kitten off at the rental office in our cage. He put a note with it, kindly asking them to return the cage. Dream on, baby! We are not going to see that cage again!

Tomorrow and Sunday I will actually try to pack stuff. I already have some boxes packed. Four to be exact. 396 more to go...
Oh well, I can't worry about such an insignificant detail right now. When I get home tonight, I will hug my babies and kiss my husband, pet the cat, and thank God for all my blessings. Then I will sit down with a glass of wine and relax.
Tomorrow is another day

Thy cup (of emotions) overfloweth

Since last week I have been on a rollercoaster of emotions. I cannot describe the feelings that are racing through me in a matter of seconds. I am mad as hell one minute, all teary-eyed the next. Two minutes after that I am totally indifferent. We are moving into our new home next week and I have three boxes packed. Strangely enough, I am not panicking. At this point I don't seem to feel too much and yet I feel too much all at once.
I am sure that a lack of sleep for the past what seems (and probably is) weeks is not helping matters any.
I pray it will pass sooner rather than later.

Happy Birthday, manneke!

Today I decided not to worry about therapy or feeding issues. I will not think about what challenges we will need to face in the future, near and further away. For me, today is a day to reflect on what happened exactly one year ago.
Today is my baby's birthday and I will celebrate the miracle God gave me, entrusted me with his care.
God, I solemnly promise to love him unconditionally and to speak for him where he cannot, to give him the best possible life on this earth until You come for us.
Today I will rejoice!
Now I need to go and hug him tight, wiping away the tears that are flooding my eyes.

Happy Birthday, lieve schat!

Ready, Set, Pack

It is official! We will be closing on our new house on November 24th, spend a few days cleaning and moving small stuff, and the big moving day will be on Saturday.
I still cannot believe it; it all went so incredibly fast. When we made the offer on the house, we prayed about it and gave it to God. It seems to me that He wants us to move, since it took about a week for the deal to be made.
The house is beautiful, with hardwood floors throughout the dining area and living room. Tons of windows in the kitchen and living room, a beautiful deck, an almost completely fenced-in backyard and a park across the street (with local traffic only, by the way). It's perfect! So far I have not been able to muster any energy to start packing, though, which might cause a slight problem in the very near future. Namely when it is time to move and only half the house is packed...Betsy suggested to just throw stuff in boxes and don't even worry about labeling. My mom suggested to just write on the box what room it goes into, which so far seems to be the best option.
I foresee a severe panic attack in the very near future...


Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a little break from cleaning, cooking, and straightening up the house. I grabbed my library book, my reading glasses, and Alexander, and sat down. The book is written by Rita Rudner and it is titled: "I still have it; I just can't remember where I put it". It consists of little two-page (mostly hilariously) funny stories and it's the perfect little pick-me-up, exactly what I needed. I gave Alexander a toy to play with and tuned out Noggin, the tv channel Kaitlyn was watching. Since Alexander is practicing to wave, the toy ended up in my face about 4 times, at which point I decided to hold his hand away from my face. Feeling restricted in his arm movements, Zander started kicking his little foot, continuously knocking my book out of my hand. Since I only have two hands and one was holding the book, while the other one held his arm, I gave up on reading.
I did go on the computer a little later to extend the book's lending period on the library's website. Three weeks is not enough time for me to finish reading a book - I figure I will have to accept the fact, that for the next 6 years or so it will take me at least a month to finish a book (provided it does not have more than 200 pages).
Hopefully I will still remember where I left off by then!

Halloween

Election Day

I went to Sylvan Park to have lunch with Kaitlyn today, which was a lot of fun. The kids reminded me of my brief career as a preschool teacher and I miss it a little. Not a lot, just a little.
I was not exactly thrilled with the menu choices, though: hamburger, cheeseburger, or bean burrito and then you could have either peas or french fries with that. How come "either, or"? Why not have a choice of broccoli or peas, or carrots or peas? Ketchup as much as they want? You must be kidding! I will definitely have to mention this at the next PTO meeting.

It is an important day for the Kindergarten classes today: they will vote for their candidate of choice. Kaitlyn gave me her sticker. It says: Vote Sheep, with a big red circle with a red line through it, and the word "Duck" next to it. They are not voting Sheep. They are voting for Duck. Not Pig, or Horse or Cow either. Duck it is. Kaitlyn did tell me that she really wanted to vote for Horse (it's her favorite animal!). I will have to ask her if she actually voted for Duck and if yes, why. She should be able to decide for herself if she wants to vote for Horse, right? Is it peer (or "teacher") pressure? Maybe so.
Last week she told me that it was "voting day", that we had to vote for a president. We talked about Barack Obama and John McCain as I explained a little bit about the election.
She said: "Mommy, why can't they both be president?" I told her that would be a very good solution and that she was smart to think of it, but that they did not want to share the presidency.
"Okay", she said, "then maybe one can be the real president and the other one the pretend president." Yes, that is another good idea, but I think neither one wants to be the "pretend" one!
Then she wanted to know who I liked and I tried to explain that it isn't about who you like, but about whose plans and ideas you most agree with. When she asked me who I wanted to choose for president, I told her that I had not made up my mind yet, but that I liked some ideas of Obama better than McCain's, and that daddy would vote for McCain. When Jim picked her up from school she said:"Daddy, you should vote for Obama, just like mommy!" Thank you, baby.
Now, if she really wants to vote for Duck, then so be it. Duck for president!

Bathtime fun? Not exactly...

I LOVE taking pictures. I like to think I am halfway decent at it and I take pictures of everything, but really like taking pictures of nature and...my children! I love to scrapbook as well, but since that hobby takes a lot more time which I have none of, I end up with many pictures that will have to be cropped and put in albums at some point in the future. Even though I think I am an optimist, I have to concede that these albums may have to wait until the farther away future to be created, considering the oceans of time at my disposal.
There is one occasion that I do not have many pictures of. Actually, I think there are a total of 4 pictures in existence. That would be bathtime for my son. For some inexplicable reason this child has resisted bathtime since we have had him home, which would be since he was 6 weeks old.
Kaitlyn has always loved bathtime. In fact, it was a special bonding time for KK with daddy since I had the chance to breastfeed. Jim did not want me to bathe her; that was his job!
Alexander is the exact opposite. Every bath would end up in a screaming Alexander and both his parents with badly frayed nerves, ready to join in out of pure frustration. The minute he touched the water, his cute, smily face would turn into something worthy of the lead role in a scary horror movie. We tried everything: swaddling in a towel, special bath tubs, soothing music, low lights, candles yet nothing worked. For that reason he does not get baths anymore.
At least not the ones where he is in the bath tub. He has been getting sponge baths for many months now and we have gotten extremely adept at speed-bathing. He does not cry very much anymore, but talks instead.
He starts out slowly, a few dada's here and there, and we have some great conversations early on. Then, as I get closer to washing his face and hair, he gets a little louder and his sentences are longer: babababababa, dadadaha. I can see the little pouting of his lips when I wash his face and I quickly start to sing a song and manage to distract him. By the time I am done singing my song, I have dried his face and he has forgotten that he wanted to start wailing.
I calm him down a little more while I drizzle some water on his belly, which he likes, and get ready to start washing his hair. That's when he really starts to talk loud: babbbbaaabababbahabaha -quick breath-bbabababadhadadahababa-quick breath-etc.
It takes my less than a minute to wash his hair and voila, we are done! I quickly wrap him in a dry towel and hold him close to me to inhale the scent of my clean baby. At this point he has decided that it is too late to start crying and he gives me one of those brilliant smiles - and I decide that I am proud of myself for achieving another bathtime without tears.
Now, daddy had to put up with Alexander throwing a fit for about an hour the last time he bathed him. Somehow I don't think Jim will be fighting me for his turn any time soon...

Bye bye baby tooth

On October 20th KK lost her first tooth. It happened at Ama's house and no one knows where it is. By now it is probably sitting safely inside the vacuum cleaner bag, where we will surely never find it! For weeks we had been asking, no, BEGGING her to pull it out or let us give it a try, but she would not let anyone close to it. Jim had a hold of it at one point, but could not get a grip on it, so his fingers slid off. The doctor told her to wiggle it, morning and night, and we kept reminding her to wiggle. She would wiggle the tooth for two whole seconds and move on to more pressing things, such as bug her mother to draw (yet another) horse so she could complete the picture with whatever her imagination conjured up at that moment.
The new tooth was already completely through and things started to look alarmingly crooked there for a while. All is well that ends well, as they say. It doesn't even look like she lost a tooth already!
Guess what? She has another loose tooth. Maybe this time we get to leave it for the tooth fairy (instead of leaving a note explaining why there is no tooth), who will then give it to mommy for safekeeping and sweet memories...

Freddy returns

The day of the Buddywalk, how exciting! For some reason I need to go online, something I never do on a Saturday morning, expecially since it's just about time to wake up the family: feed and dress Alexander, wake up Kaitlyn and choose her outfit (it's cold out and she would surely pick her most summery dress), get breakfast going. Then wake up Jim, who is Mr. Grouch in the mornings. He needs about 1/2 hour to get ready and out the door we go.

When I get downstairs, where the computer is, I see Hootie staring at the corner. This is in and of itself not a strange phenomenon: Hootie is known for staring at, and chasing, invisible things. For this reason I don't pay any attention to him and go about my business on the computer. Just as I am almost done, I hear a little peep coming from the corner. I look over and there is Freddy!

Mind you, it's not the same one as we had in the Summer, when Aaron was here. I know this, because Freddy number one perished, although we think it was Freddy number one. Now that I think about it, it could have been another mouse...anyway, we kind of adopted Freddy and put out little dishes with peanut butter and cheese for him in the basement, an area that Hootie could not get into. This went on for a little while until we noticed that the food was left untouched. We thought Freddy had moved on to greener pastures, maybe got tired of the same kind of cheese every time and needed a change, who knows. We had completely forgotten about Freddy until the spider eradication. Since we had brown recluse spiders in our house and KK had been bitten by a spider, we called pest control and they would come treat the house. In order for them to be able to get to all the baseboards, we had to move EVERYTHING 2 feet away from the walls. That is where Jim found Freddy, all dried up and completely dead.

So, this Freddy was completely alive and not going anywhere: he was stuck to one of those paper traps covered in glue that the spider people had placed all over the house. The poor thing was stuck from his cute furry face all the way to his tail! I got out Hootie's cage from storage and put Freddy in there so Hootie could not get to him and proceded to wake up Jim, who was not a happy camper at all. When Kaitlyn heard what I was telling him, she jumped out of bed, ready to get a good look at this cute mouse that she never got to see in the Summer. Operation Freddy began: I got out rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and water, not knowing which one would do the trick. Jim grumbled that he did not want KK to watch the mouse die; I told him Freddy was not going to die, I would not allow it! Slowly but surely, with Jim helping grudgingly, we got all body parts removed from the sticky pad. And then Freddy was loose and on the run! He escaped under the oven, where I promptly put a piece of cheese thinking he must be starving by now.

The rest of us washed our hands and rushed to get ready for the Buddywalk, where we had a grand time. Next year we will put together a team ourselves and raise a ton of money for DSAMT!

And when we came back home, I removed all of the sticky pads...

Buying a house!

I still cannot believe it: we put in an offer on a house. We already got a counter offer, to which we are going to counter again. This is all going so fast, it has not quite sunk in yet... God willing we will have bought a house by next week, with the closing somewhere in the beginning of December. That would mean Christmas in our own house. I am not quite grasping the reality yet; I have never owned a house before!
It is gorgeous, across from a park on a quiet street. Lots of light in the kitchen and living room, 4 bedrooms and a downstairs playroom, double car garage, and a nice size yard. KK is already envisioning her Jenna running around, the puppy she has been wanting for a long time now. She has already decided on the sex, name, and colors...all we have to do is find one that fits the description. Sure, it's not like we have anything else to do!
Alexander is oblivious to it all; he just wants us to play with him and talk to him. I know he will like the new house too: it is much easier to childproof it once he starts crawling and walking.
If it is God's will, it will happen!