I turned 35 on January 7.  It was quiet and delicious.  I stayed home all day, except to pick some food up so that I didn’t have to cook and to pick up some more paint at Lowes as Tim worked all day on his day off on my birthday present: painting the office.  It was all I wanted and now I have a beautifully painted room.  For supper, we had pizza

 

and a cake that I picked out (at the store ), which contained 29 candles, as that was all that I could find and I thought it was an appropriate number, after all.   

I sat around the table very happily with my chattering family and when they all sang Happy Birthday to me and I blew out all of my 29 candles, I had a huge, satisfied grin on my face and in my heart.  Just a very good day.  

I also: wore a very nice present from my mother-in-law, received a birthday check from my parents and a birthday card from Tim’s Grandma Polly, got a birthday call from my brother and aunt Frances and another one from my sister-in-law, Melody, and a carefully wrapped shoebox from Israel containing a little plastic container with a folded $2 bill in it that he had found laying around somewhere.  He thought that I could use the container to keep my money in.  Initially, he had been working on this project, which was abandoned in favor of the “money container” when I accidentally caught sight of it.  

Thirty five is a sort of startling number to have as a birthday.  It means that I am officially closer to 40 than to 30, while 18 still doesn’t feel that long ago.  Just weird.  

We also had a very generous couple who know us a bit offer, out of the blue, to babysit for free so that we could have a break, and so the weekend after my birthday we went out for Indian food and old-people shopping (heh heheh heh) to Home Depot, where we browsed interested-ly around, to Michael’s (where Tim expressed extreme disinterest) and then to Staples (where I was ready to go PRONTO and Tim would happily have lingered).  We came home to find four happy kids, who had a great time, and a full batch of chili waiting in the fridge to be served as a meal, and two frozen meals in my freezer all of which I discovered in the night and day after they left!!! That is three meals that I don’t have to worry about, PLUS free babysitting…may they be blessed at LEAST ten times over!!!  Awesome way to end my birthday week!

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I am reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the boys right now after happily finding both the book and the (original) movie at Goodwill.  Tonight i got to the part where Charlie finally finds the golden ticket and i was going to stop there for the night but relented when both of the two older boys begged me to read the next chapter too where Charlie goes home to tell his family. They jumped up and down and pleaded, and Gabe told me that he was so excited that he was shaking.  

This book in particular has really caught Gabe’s imagination.  It’s just so much fun to share good books with your kids.

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Zion: (heaving the bathroom scale over to the bathroom rug) Mom, don’t you want to see how big my feet are??

(His feet were 34 1/2 pounds big.  )

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She stands in front of me

teething

and sleepless

again

wrapped in pink ballerina monkey pajamas

Her baby belly rounding out the front

Diapered bottom rounding out the back

Her feet stand in her brother’s shoes

splayed out on the wrong feet

Blond curls fuzz around her head

Dark-lashed eyes peer with interest into mine

her cheeks puff out and her gaze is bright

as she talks to me of “shoosh” (shoes)

I watch her face

this cheerful night-time friend

and hold her hand

my eyes smile back into hers

and I think

about how she makes my heart

feel like it could burst with joy.

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For a while, lately, I’ve been sort of taking a blog break.  Writing down things here and there, but not necessarily publishing them.  A breather.  I feel like I am just doing the living, and the living is sweet, and I am savoring it.  

The living involves lots of care of a one-year old who needs lots of lap time and nursing and holding and cuddling, and a four year old who loves to be held and needs tending and attention and help with sippy-cups/clothes/bathroom/shoes/etc, and a six year old who is very creative and artistic and always creating things or painting things and who has a ready, happy smile, and an eight year old who has two new front teeth that make him look a lot older and who needs help refocusing on school work that needs to be done and who enjoys reading and loves to laugh and a house and laundry pile which is ever reflecting the existence of all these people.  

I feel like I’m just soaking life in, and watching each day pass with a smile, without the pressure of recording it, and it is good.  But at the same time, I love to read back on the days that I have lived with these kids and have been surprised at all I would have forgotten if I hadn’t written it down, and so I’m trying to figure out the balance of the two.  

We left for the long journey to IN on Friday, Dec. 21 at 4:30 AM.  We arrived in Middlebury, IN, at about 5:45 PM of the same day.  That, my friend, is a LONG TRIP with four young children, in case you’re interested.  But ’tis the price of living far away from family!!  The boys were thrilled to see their Grandpa Norm and Nana Carol and aunts and uncles and cousins Tyler, Aubrey, and Henry.  This was the first I had met Henry, who was born last Christmas in Thailand while we were visiting IN.  

A collection of cousins.

 

One of the fun adventures in IN was the new and exciting cabin that Grandpa Norm constructed for grandchild adventures.  

The boys enjoyed several nights of sleeping in the cabin and an evening of roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. 

 

Other activities enjoyed were S’more making -

 

(Zion was very enamoured of the corn-cob fork he discovered in the silverware drawer that he thought made an excellent marshmallow fork)  

and rice krispy trains constructed with the help of uncles Rusty and Wayne.

Aunt Lynette reads to Layla.

Tim and his faithful companion, Zion.

Grandma Polly came to be a part of our Christmas celebration.  Here is everyone listening as Grandpa Norm reads the Christmas story before we open presents:

Gabriel was very attentive and participatory in this Christmas story telling, as he had just memorized this passage in Matthew at school.  

Henry helps Layla open her present.  

 

Family pictures.

We left at 5 AM on December 26 for Virginia – and drove smack into snow.  

Wet, icy, huge snowflake snow and sleet that kept icing over our wipers.  Eventually, we decided that it was just the best idea to stop and wait a night for the roads to get cleared off.  We stopped in Pittsburgh at a Holiday Inn Express – and honestly had a great time being snowbound.   We watched that marvel known as cable, swam in the pool, ordered in pizza, wrapped ourselves in the curtains,

and had a generally splendiferous time.  

We packed back into the van the next morning and finished the remaining five-plus hours to VA, where Grandaddy, Grandma, Uncle Quentin, and SNOW awaited!!

The boys liked to see how large of snow chunks they could pick up.

 

Gabe was excited that he could even stand ON TOP OF the snow.  He found this quite nifty.

Christmas.  

The plastic-knife wielding ferocious hunters of the house.  They were pleased as punch with these nifty new acquisitions.

Layla’s new stroller and purse set.  All that a little Lucy needs.

Before getting together for the Heatwole Christmas (my mom’s side), we met for our annual grandchildren picture, which is one of my Grandma’s yearly Christmas gifts.

Despite all that we had going on, my camera sat unused and quiet and picture-tired a lot this Christmas.  So I don’t have much of a picture record as I could.  Thank you, parents and in-laws for your generosity and hospitality!!  We love you all dearly! 

We celebrated Christmas as a family the weekend before we left for our Christmas traveling, since I wanted to have a whole day to savor the Christmas goodness with.  Somehow, I ended up with aaaaaalllll the presents to wrap Friday night.  Layla “helped”, and so did Tim.  

We opened presents when we woke up.

Here are the kiddos with their stockings.  I like this picture just because it is the way it is.  

Exploring the contents of their stockings…

 

I was actually lucky enough to find a lot of their presents (especially for the younger two) at Goodwill this year – wahoo for my wallet!!  One of the things that Gabe really wanted that was not at Goodwill was a Wolverine costume.  I loved seeing the expression on his face when he opened it – he was genuinely surprised and delighted. Just what you like to see on their faces on Christmas morning.

All of the Christmas mayhem goodness.

There’s a Wolverine in my living room!!

Yummy Christmas breakfast.

There were all kinds of transformed creatures running around outside that afternoon.  Scary and ferocious, indeed.  Super Mario man, I mean…

 

Also this cute little critter…

We got Layla a little kitchen for Christmas, and all of the kids thought it was great.  She actually got rather frustrated because her brothers were so busy “cooking” and opening cupboards that she could hardly get in to play with it herself. 

 

After a full day of playing with toys and having a greatly relaxing afternoon, we had a yummy snack supper.

A lot of fun.  Also a very full day for a mother.    Such a busy day if you want to have yummy food.  Phew.  I didn’t even get around to everything I had planned on making, which was fine.  The soft pretzels happily waited for another day, as patient as could be.  Merry Christmas, us. 

December was properly full of all kinds of Christmas activities, and good days in between.  We had a warm start to December, and Layla and her daddy had some good time outside.

 

There were babies to “get” on the bed…

  

Fall pictures to take…

 

Music to make…

Christmas parties for mommies to attend…

and for baby girls to “help” with…

Christmas concerts to attend…This was Israel’s kindergarten class readying themselves for their part.

Here was a little shepherd I found that I knew and took great delight in…

Here Israel and his buddies sit and wait for their part.  

And then there was the gussied-up second grader…

and the four year old who wanted to get dressed up like his brothers…and whaddya know, I had just the thing…

He was quite pleased.

Gabe sitting with his class.  That is his teacher, Mrs. Lowe sitting right beside him.  

Israel’s turn in the spotlight…

And then Gabriel’s second grade class…

and then the whole of the elementary grades…

The boys enjoyed the songs they learned for their program.  Israel in particular sang his songs a lot before and after this program.

I was completely delighted to find a day of drastically reduced ticket prices for one particular show in Salisbury that I had my eye on, wishing I could take the kids. It was called Cirque Holidaze and was at the Wicomico Civic Center, and was basically supposed to be kind of like Cirque De Soleil with acrobatic feats.  It was our official “Christmas event” for the season and was a lot of fun.  We sat in the nosebleed section, which was just fine with me.

  

I had plans to try to get at least one good picture of the action…but…I had this little lap-inhabitator that made that job virtually impossible.    She INSISTED that Mommy be the one to hold her and was a very busy little squirmer.  She nursed through the entire first half of the show.  Seems to be what one does when it is evening and one is surrounded by darkness and one is one year old.  Apparently.  

At the intermission, we took the wee chillun’s out into the empty corridors and let them loose so as to work some of the wiggles out.

 

Layla decided she was just plain done after the first section of the show, so I took her out and we rode down the down escalator and hold hands and she would run across the floor and then we would go up the up escalator to her heart’s content.  

One funny memory is that after the show was over I took her back in and pointed up to where her Daddy and brothers were to show her, and then she caught sight of a woman with brown curly hair who was kind of turned away, and she pointed at her and said, “Mommy!!” and sort of fussed and wiggled to go to her.    Ahem, child.  

We finished the night with ice-cream sundaes for the drive home.  A fun, good night.

Here’s a picture of the Confused Child with her ACTUAL mommy:

Tim was out of town this week from Tuesday evening until the wee hours of Sunday AM.  During this time, Layla didn’t notice he was gone, even though he is normally very involved in her care from day to day.  Saturday night, she was tired and cuddly, and sitting on my lap at the computer.  She leaned back from me to point at my black rimmed glasses, and said, “Daddy’s!”, because they look kind of like Tim’s.  

“Do they look like Daddy’s?” I asked her.  

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, and I saw the dawning realization in her eyes.  Waaaaaaaiit a minute – where is that Daddy??  ”Down!” she insisted, twisting to get off my lap.  ”Down!”

I let her down and she began tromping busily around the house, searching.  ”Daddies!!!” she called.  ”Daddies!”  She turned to look at me and said conversationally. “Daddies.”  

“Yeah, Daddies.”  I nodded.  

In the doorway of the living room, she stopped and beckoned me.  ”Come!  Come!”  

Mommy dutifully got up and followed her into the next room as she looked around.  ”Daddies!” 

“Where is the Daddy?” I asked.

“Daddies!” she insisted, a little angrily.  

“Daddy is bye-bye,” I told her.

That was too upsetting.  She whumped down angrily and began to cry.  

I carried her down the hallway to her room.  ”Daddy is in his car,” I said.  ”He’s in his car and he’s going to come home.”  

She laughed happily.  This was good enough for her.  She settled down to the business of getting to sleep.

Girl Baby loves her Daddy.  

Gabe: (playing with stuffed monkey) Dad, you know what would be weird?  If spider webs came out of monkey’s butts!

Tim: (making a face) I don’t think that would be weird, I think that would be gross.

Gabe:  (thoughtfully) Yeah, and I think getting stuck in one would be even grosser!” (wanders away, nonplussed)

Things about Layla at this stage:

- even before she could talk she will “diggadiggadigga” you, where she runs up to you and squiggles her little fingers around to tickle your arm or forehead, while she smiles a big smile and says “diggadiggadigga!”  Sometimes it’s the first thing she says to me when I get her up from her nap.  Sometimes the first thing she says is “Dose”, and points to my nose, then sticks her finger in my eye “Yi”.  Often she looks very pleased with herself after this conversation.  

- she loves to help me.  She helps with everything.  Cooking – pushes her stool over or asks to be held so she can see, washing dishes – stands beside me on a stool and busily dumps dishwater over the clean dishes (or has herself a nice long drink of dishwater !!!! BLECH!!! Then when I take that nasty stuff away from her and put fresh water in her cup she busily dumps it out into the dishwater and goes back to scooping.  Shake of head…), putting clothes in the dryer – she stands beside me and throws clothes in that I give her, hanging wash on the line – she follows me out and hands me items of clothes, and then helps to carry the empty basket back in, sweeping the floor -

she likes to run the little sweeper herself, and pushes the handle of the bigger vacuum while one of us are sweeping the hardwood floor.  

- “Dea!” (tea) was her first word, and is the word she uses for all drinks.  She just started saying “Gabe” and it seems to be the word she uses for any brother.  ”Kie-kie!” (kitty cat) is the word she uses for animals, and “woo woo!” is the word she uses for animal noises.  Hence you have kie-kies who woo woo.  

- She still nurses to sleep (don’t necessarily love this) but I find it amusing how she “kneads” her way to sleep by giving my arm lots of tiny pinches.  She also has the “trachea clutch”, the “trachea jab”, and the “collarbone clench and twist” in her arsenal, along with the “face/chest whack”.  Wince.

-One of her favorite activities: catching running water with a cup and dumping it elsewhere.  This will occupy her for long periods of time.

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We switched back from Daylight Savings Time today.  I came out of Layla’s room this morning after getting her back to sleep, and the morning light was beautiful and golden.  And the cozy stove out in the office to that mix, throw in a nice hot beverage, and getting up might not hurt quite so bad.  

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 I picked up the game Sorry at Goodwill the other day and brought it home for the boys.  We’ve enjoyed playing it, even Zion.  

 

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 A conversation with Israel the other day…

Me: I love to have flying dreams – Israel, do you ever have flying dreams?

Israel: (looks at me thoughtfully, then gets a little smile on his face, and looks back down, shaking his head) No.

Me: Really, you’ve never had a dream where you were flying?

Israel: (secretive smile) No.  But I can fly.  In real life. (looks pleased)

Me:  Oh really?  When do you fly?

Israel: At night.  When everyone else is sleeping.  

This was about all he would say about this, other than to reiterate his abilities.  Well, then.  

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Four kids in a closet.

 

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We stayed home this Thanksgiving and enjoyed it at home.  Yummy food.

Israel’s Thanksgiving creation from school.

 

So….I dressed Layla up like a strawberry for trick-or-treating after succumbing to a sale at Old Navy….and she was just the sweetest thing this side of the Mississippi.

Can’t get much sweeter than that.

 

Ummmm, hello. I think it’s an Oompa Loompa.  On the sidewalk in front of my house.

Sigh.  I’m just overcome by the cuteness factor here….

  

Her brothers were equally enamored.   And they were quite dashing-looking, themselves, in all their Iron Man-icity, their Spider-ness, and their Ninja abilities….

Down the street they go.  

I took them by myself, since Tim had a meeting, and didn’t get any clear pictures of the process, with the constant movement and low light.  But the delight comes through.  

Our neighbor Barry across the street wanted a picture with them when we came back around the block.  He calls them his “kids” and is always bringing over gifts he finds for them or us.  A great neighbor.

Well, we weathered Hurricane Sandy with only lots of blowing rain and heavy wind – but not too heavy.  No branches down or anything, but if you went outside for any reason, you immediately understood the hurricane status.  We didn’t even lose electricity, much to my relief!!

The boys had Monday and Tuesday off of school, and it was kind of nice.  Today was one of those cozy days where the pellet stove hummed warmly and I zoomed around getting the house in order, and even ended the day with making some party mix – yummy!! We also had a delicious brunch with Baked Oatmeal with raspberries, chocolate chips, and bananas, and Chipped Beef Gravy with hash browns (Tim made the gravy and hash browns because he was hungry for it), and hot chocolate.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, delightful.  

 

It was sort of one of those meals where you have to let go of your expectations, because there was all this yummy food on the table and Dean Martin was singing Christmas music in the background and candles were burning on the table and it was so cozy and the boys were acting silly and Zion was refusing to eat (that child has to be hand fed at almost every meal, because he just doesn’t hardly eat!)…but once we redirected the conversation away from butts…things got better.  

I had “prepared” for this hurricane by making sure I was stocked up on some indoor activity items like modeling clay and paint.  Layla tried her hand at painting today for the first time and thought it was great.  

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I noticed yesterday that Layla was calling me Mommy, finally.  She has been calling me Dat-dee this whole time.  

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Last night Layla got in the Vicks Vaporub and rubbed it over her face and it was all over her hands and she rubbed her eyes and got it into her eyes.  We wiped her off, but she was still fussing like her eyes hurt, so I got into the shower with her and washed her face off well, much to her utter fury.    After that, I was cold, so we clambered into the bathtub and took a nice warm bath with the jets running.  Ahhhhh bliss.  Layla noticed some face lotion on the side and asked for some on her hands, like she does, holding her little paw out palm up and saying, “Ennnhhh!! Ennnhhh!”  I let her have some, since it is lotion that I never use, and she would get it on her hand, and then slather it carefully and studiously on my face, over and over and over and over.  I was about 15 layers of lotion deep, I think.  :)  It was just so sweet though, with her little hand carefully rubbing my face, and her sweet little face so close to mine as she was fixated on her work.

We have had our first “winter” virus go through, and she has had it the worst – she got it first and still has it.  We got up with her at 5 AM this morning to give her a nebulizer and more Vicks.  I contemplated just staying up…but then we all went back to bed and slept in.  Delightful.  

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Here’s another “eating” picture.  

The reason I took this was because it makes me laugh how often my side of the table is empty except for me, and Tim almost always has two close friends.   They love their daddy.  He’s just very popular at meals.  We are eating tomato sandwiches in this picture.  We had a tomato bumper crop right here at the end of October.  I had a bunch of massive tomato plants that STILL had not produced any tomatoes – until now.  Here were my gleanings.  

 

And here was one of my helpers, my resident Tomato Princess:

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Zion and Layla and sometime the other boys loooove to play in the closet in Layla’s room.  It’s just such a delightful hidey-hole, once you chuck out all those “extras” (like clothes, rugs, and baskets ), and bring in your flashlight.  Sometimes it makes me yell when I walk in and YET AGAIN they have made a mess of Layla’s room.  But sometimes, like yesterday, they were just so happy and excited and giggly, and so I just swallowed my yells and took a picture.  

It really doesn’t take that long to put things back in order, but…just as long as it’s only once in a while.  

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Gabe did this All About Me poster for his class the other week.  

The kids in his class take turns, and it was his turn.  He did all of the poster himself, and it was such a nice little depiction of him at age 8.  He also filled out a worksheet, and my favorite entry was where he was to name something that was special about him, and he said, “The things that I say and the way that I move.”    Tim tells him that he has ninja moves, and he likes this very much.  

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Here’s Layla and her babies.  

She loooooooveloveloveloves her babies.  She is so tender and sweet with them, and gives them sweet little hugs and pats them gently on their backs and gives them kisses.  The other day I found her sitting on this one, jabbing her fingers into it’s eyes/nose/mouth/ears, and naming the appropriate place.  Just made me laugh.  

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Our friend Chuck came over the other day to pull out the stump of a bush we had cut down at the side of our house.  It was all very exciting for boys.  Chuck even let the boys run the controls to release the hook from the top of the truck and pull the bush up onto the truck.  

Good memories for boys.  

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Pumpkin painting memories.  

I think we have been doing this every year.  This year we used acrylic paints since the water-based ones we used last year were so too light.  Israel was the most dedicated pumpkin painter.  He bought the eyes on his pumpkin with his own money, and had talked about getting them for about a week before I was able to.

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The other day was beautiful and warm outside, and Zion and I went outside to wait for his brothers to get home and do a craft I found on Pinterest.  Zion liked it at first, but then sort of lost patience with it.  I was a little obsessed with getting the Cheerios “just so”.    Israel wanted to do some too when he came home.  

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Zion and his mommy cuddling on the couch by the pellet stove one fall day.

Israel: (excitedly after asking to set the timer during a room-cleaning episode) GUYS!!!  When the timer goes off, we’re doomed!!”  There’s just nothing like the thrill of impending doom to build that fire under one’s room-cleaning rear, apparently…