12.31.17 - December joy statuses

12.29.17 - Starbucks with Neil

This is the first MO trip where I've made a concerted effort to keep earning while here. Most days I leave in the morning and go over to Mom's and work there for the better part of the day before coming back. That works alright, but recently Dad assigned me a task that takes a considerable amount of concentration, and while Mom's house has fewer interruptions than when I try to work wherever Clara and Jane are, it's still fairly distracting.

So today I decided to get more serious and go get some work done at Starbucks. I got some chocolatey caffeine in the form of a mocha, enjoyed the fact that I'm not calorie counting in the form of a warmed up morning bun, and felt guiltless about it because Merlene had gifted me a Starbucks gift card she got through work to use for just this reason. So that was a good start. I sat on a tall chair in the corner against the bar, and no one sat near me so I was able to spread out my stuff. Plus, just in general I feel more relaxed in a suburban MO Starbucks because the odds of anyone coming up and trying to scam me or hit on me are vastly lower than if I were in an urban CA Starbucks. So that's always nice.

Yessssss

I was able to focus pretty well and make good progress on my project (a hunt for FCC documents regarding the creation of cellular bands). I still got sleepy after a while so I messaged Neil and told him he should join me. He was working hard to finish a scrapbook he's making for Emily, so we could just work alongside each other. So he did. That's another joy - instead of trying to stay awake while chatting with a sibling online (while they are hundreds of miles away), I could just ask them to pop on over. Nice.

So we worked alongside each other, stopping occasionally to chat and keeping each other awake and focused, for several hours. Neil showed me some pretty hilarious screen caps he took from video of the Thanksgiving trip. I had nothing to entertaining to offer by way of FCC research but it was fun anyway. Just wanted to remember that tidbit.

One of the screencaps: right after Everett beat Dad in a not-smiling contest.

12.27.17 - drinks with David and Sarah

David and Sarah and I met at Llewellyn's in old town St. Charles. We sat at a tall table for 6 near the door but since it was only a Wednesday we weren't taking up needed space. I got a rum and Diet that tasted like almost all rum; David said the same about his gin (don't remember what the drink was supposed to be), so next I ordered a very sweet Moscato and that was much better. All three of us split some soft pretzels, and David ended up paying for everything because, so he claimed, Sarah and I had come all the way to Missouri and it was the least he could do. Very kind.

We had a great time. We got there about 7 and stayed until nearly 11 just talking and laughing so much. I can't remember all of it now but I know we made jokes about exes and the Ghost of Christmas Present leading them to us at that table, laughing hard about old stories. I was definitely crying laughing at several points. At one point it was also a bit somber as I vented to them about Clara's speech issues, but they listened well and I appreciated that, and we still ended up laughign more before the night was over. It's so rare we are all in town together but it would be nice to make it a Christmas tradition.

12.27.17 - GF house

12.25.17 - Christmas Day

With help from Don and Merlene, we managed to get the girls (beautifully) dressed for Christmas and make it to Mom's by 9am. That's a Christmas miracle all by itself. The Wolks also got there about that time, so we had a solid 1 - 1.5 hours with everyone there at once. (The Wolks had to head to the other side of the family's shortly after so Denny could get to work that afternoon.)

Love dressing up my kids for holidays.

We opened gifts - Zoey very helpfully handed everyone's out. Clara still doesn't really get excited about opening presents, but once one is open she's interested in exploring the new item. Jane of course has no idea what is going on but she was happy to sit in Jama's lap and observe. Zoey and Malcolm are more the age for this, and they both were excited to open their own gifts and help everyone else with theirs. I have to say I was pretty excited about some of my gifts this year, especially some extremely comfy Ravenclaw PJ pants from Jack and a really cute Hogwarts hoodie from Mom, complete with fancy hood.

Behold.

Mom got the grandkids a figure-8 type train set that was very popular. Malcolm and Zoey were really excited about it, and after the Wolks had to leave Clara played with it for a very long time. The other siblings and Jack played Betrayal with a new expansion Mom had gotten Neil for Christmas, and I hung out with Mom and Jane in the kitchen, enjoying the french toast bake Mom had made and gathering screencaps of the Christmas Eve festivities from yesterday and laughing to myself. It was really quite fun. Jane kept herself busy with various kitchen items Mom brought to her in her high chair. It's so nice having grandparents' houses with all the baby stuff already around to use.

Goofing around after opening gifts.

(Unfortunately I am actually writing the rest of this in early February, as I never made it back to this post.)

After visiting at Mom's we went back to the Jackson's for dinner and their Christmas family traditions. Merlene made an extensive and completely gluten free meal, even including GF bread and GF french onion rings for green bean casserole (among much else). She hadn't realized the oven had gone off while the turkey was in it, and so dinner got pushed back a bit and she lamented that a lot, but she didn't need to. She had shrimp and cocktail sauce for appetizers and frankly none of (I think) were really starving to get going anyway. Christmas always involves eating all day long.

While we waited for the turkey to catch up, the family played Buckets of Doom, which involves making up elaborate scenarios for how you are going to use random items to get out of dooming situations. It involves a lot of creativity, which the family has in spades, and they were laughing until tears in some cases.

Eventually we ate, sitting down around the bigger table in the dining room. I think it's the first time I've eaten in there since we had a fancy meal before a high school dance. Strange life.

After dinner (which was great), we tried to do Santa photos with Jack dressed as Santa. We had him get dressed in front of the kids so they could see the transition, but ultimately it didn't do the trick. Even before he put on the fake beard, Clara was nervously standing behind the couch. Josiah and Jane were too young to be concenred, but Naomi kept declaring bravely "You're not scary!" while refusing to go anywhere near Jack. After many different strategies and attempts (and some tears from Clara), we let go of the Santa pic dream and came away with this series of photos, which I actually think is hilarious and probably better than any posed pictures:

We won't sit in his lap but we will happily sit *on* him on the floor.

Jane tips over.

Josiah doesn't appreciate being adjusted.

After giving up on Santa photos, we moved on to exchanging letters and going through all the goodies Merlene always stuffs our stockings with. This is the first gluten free Christmas, so she found GF treats to replace the Christmas tree-shaped cakes she got us in the past. I was really touched by all the effort and details she thought of to make the whole celebration inclusive and safe for Clara.

Don & Merlene also got the grandkids gifts, including some pretty sweet, cozy, warm PJs, a clock puzzle for Clara, and I can't remember what all else right now. We also had some surprise gifts mailed to us from Renata: a magnetic Santa doll set and an animal puzzle that makes the noises of the animals when you put the pieces together correctly. Clara was pretty interested in that.

The letters were sweet too. In particular I like how Don & Merlene write individual letters to each of the grandkids, even though they are not yet old enough to understand. I save all those letters to show them one day.

Oh there was also gluten free cheesecake in multiple flavors for dessert, so that was awesome.

Aaron and Katie had cleverly planned ahead and brought PJs and night time stuff for their kiddos, so they put Naomi and Josiah down in Don & Merlene's room, and the rest of us (minus Dave, who was exhausted) stayed up and played some Quiplash with relatively few interruptions. Clara peacefully stood in front of the screen dancing along to the background music.

Overall it was a really relaxing and enjoyable day.

12.24.17 - Christmas Eve

This year Mom's wish list included going to lunch or dinner with the five siblings, so we arranged to go to Bradden's in Old Town St. Charles on Christmas Eve. We were originally going to go to Magpie's, but they aren't open on Christmas Eve. Bradden's would be open but they weren't taking reservations. We knew that "Christmas Traditions" (in which people dress up as famous and historical Christmas figures and act out their roles all up and down the street) would still be going on, and we suspected Main Street might be very crowded. Originally I offered to get to Bradden's at 11:30 a.m. and hold our spot in line, and I asked if anyone would come and wait with me. But it turns out that Mom was going to Christmas Eve mass later in the day (instead of in the late morning, like I thought), so actually all of us except Julie drove to Old Town together.

Mom with Christmas Traditions' Jack Frost

It was snowing when we left Mom's house. In fact I think it had been lightly snowing most of the morning. It was the best kind of snow: pretty and powdery and not really sticking to the streets (perhaps because it was so cold outside!) Not only was the snow pretty but I think it meant fewer people were out and about, so Old Town wasn't as jammed packed as we'd anticipated. There were still a lot of people there, making the place seem bustling and fun, but not so many people that we struggled to find parking or even had to wait long at all once we got to Bradden's. In fact I think we waited less than 5 minutes before getting seated at a round table in the corner by a window.

The place was charming. They had holly and stockings and other Christmas decor over the brick walls. The window next to us was oddly bright because of all the fresh snow outside (still falling as we sat there). From my seat I could easily see the street and the horse drawn carriages and the Charles Dickens costumers and so on. It was ridiculously Christmasy. I loved it.

Carolers

We split some portabello mushrooms and cheese sticks while waiting for Julie to get there (since we had originally planned on meeting at noon and didn't realize we'd be seated so quickly). Our server's name was also Monica, which seemed to delight Mom, haha. Monica the server was friendly but not overly so, just down to Earth and easy to talk to. She was nice. The women (except me) had some wine (I had Diet Coke). Ellen and I had some lobster bisque and I think I had a fancy ham and cheese sandwich. It was all delicious. Julie ate nothing but wine and a piece of lettuce, I kid you not. We talked about kids and Betrayal and the Thanksgiving trip and who knows what else. Laughed a lot. It was a really nice lunch.

Julie talks about Zoey resolving to be good the last day before Christmas.

Afterward we had planned to walk up and down Main Street and check everything out, but it was so cold just walking from the restaurant to the car that we changed out minds. We invited Julie to come back with us to Mom's to hang out a while but by the time she would have gotten there she would have had to go back home in about 30 minutes, so she decided just to go back home after all.

After we got back to Mom's, Ellen and I went out to get Mom a Christmas gift. Even though the lunch was supposed to be the gift we wanted her to have something to open Christmas Day. I wanted to go to a craft store and look for some Christmas decor for her, but the JoAnn's fabrics I thought was nearby appears to no longer exist. Instead we went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, which was almost a bust. We walked through the entire store pretty much uninspired, but we settled on a Snoopy-themed Christmas welcome mat that was actually pretty cute. (I had noticed Mom's current welcome mat was just plain black.) As soon as we got back to the house I hurried downstairs to wrap it, and it had to go in the largest box I could find. I was a bit tickled by this because I suspected Zoey and Malcolm would be excited/intrigued when they saw such a huge present. They are still young enough the present size equates to awesomeness, haha.

Not too long after that I went back to the Jacksons so I could spend at least some time with the girls that day. I very briefly did a bit of work (construction payroll).

I went back to Mom's around 7 p.m. Ellen was making a potato soup and gooey butter cookies and Julie was cooking wassail (a word she loves to say repeatedly). I finally got around to wrapping my secret santa gift, but we held off on our gift exchange because Denny was coming over with Zoey and Malcolm to say hi (we hadn't seen him yet since being in town). Sure enough, when they got there the kids went into the living room to examine JaMa's many wrapped gifts, and they were excited about the huge present in front for JaMa herself. Bwaha.

We all went downstairs to play some Quiplash and eat too many gooey butter cookies. Julie has pretty consistently answered all Quiplash questions with Game of Thrones references, which has led to her pretty consistently getting dead last in every Quiplash game. She seems to think it's hilarious though, and we tend to think her own amusement is pretty funny. We couldn't figure out how to turn on "family friendly" Quiplash, so if a slightly pervy question came up it became a game of finding the answer to best turn the question on its head. For example:

These answers were especially funny because they are the same exact humor, yet the people answering (me and I forget who now) couldn't have known in advance what similar answers they were putting. We laughed pretty hard.

Soon it was time for Denny to take the kids home to get to bed. As they were getting ready to leave I asked Zoey, "Can you believe tomorrow is Christmas???" And she was so excited she started hopping in the kitchen. She is the perfect, peak age for this, I think. Julie and Mom explained to Zoey that Santa won't come if she stays awake so she has to go to sleep easy.

After they left, the rest of us did Sibling Secret Santa. The best part of the whole tradition is standing in a circle, trying not to look at the person you're about to shove your gift toward, counting to three, and then shoving the gift as quickly as possible. 

Julie had me, and she gave me this lovely poem (helpfully colored by Zoey):

A couple weeks prior Mom had transferred me a decent sum of money she said was anonymously donated by a family member. Turns out that was Julie, out of nowhere. We are very paycheck-to-paycheck right now while Jack finishes his degree, so it meant a lot. Julie told me that evening that she wrote the poem while at work, haha.

I had Everett and gave him the only gift he asked for, which was a large desk calendar that he could actually hang on his wall. He liked it. But even better, Everett had Julie, and he had wrapped a giant box filled with tissue paper only for her to find it had nothing in it at all. She then realized that the bow on the box had a tiny note taped to the back that just said "I donated to the thing" (meaning Amanda Hitchen's CERBC work). It was such a hilarious presentation for a gift Julie really did want. I was impressed.

Everett laughing at his own handiwork.

Not long after gift exchange Julie headed home, but I stayed to play what turned out to be the only game of Betrayal I played the entire trip. It was Neil, Everett, and me, and I ended up being the traitor. I transferred the house to some other dimension filled with poisonous gas, and Neil and Everett had to roll for damage at every turn. Ultimately Neil was so weakened that when he had to try to roll to exit the junk room, it killed him. Everett started joking that he is on the first floor basically punching himself in the face (rolling for damage) trying to get to the organ room to play some magical song that would take them back to the other dimension, and he calls up to the second floor (where Neil's character had been) saying, "Neil can you come help me?" and then he just hears "AHHHH!" *sounds of junk falling all over Neil* *silence*. Both boys were acting out the potential scene (while in the background Ellen kept singing the organ music from Ghost and Mr. Chicken) and we were all laughing so hard. My stomach actually hurt from laughter. It was great.

Goofing around during Betrayal.

By the time we finished the game it was 11:30 p.m. (Betrayal never goes as quickly as the guys say it will), so Everett took me back to the Jacksons. We were going to take Mom's car since it was under the carport and had already been driven that day, but it was out of gas. So we went to Everett's frozen, covered-in-snow car, and with two scrapers we both cleaned it off. Right before Everett got in the car he realized he'd gotten snow all over himself and as he brushed it off he said "Minus two points Sanity" (a Betrayal reference) and we laughed.

Overall it was a wonderful, Christmasy, happy day.

12.11.17 - Day home with the girls

Beth has gone home for Christmas but Jack still has tests and a paper due, so I am home all day with the girls, and today was lovely.

I made gluten free blueberry muffins with zucchini baked in. I turned on the oven light so Clara could see the muffins baking, and she responded "I...want...muffins!" I got one of her kiddie spoons and gave her a small spoonful of the muffin batter, and she couldn't stop giggling as she ate it and stomped around the kitchen. I gave her two more spoonfuls after that and enjoyed her delight and my own childhood memories of Mom letting us lick the spoons when she was baking. So surreal to think now I'm the mom.

Not long after the muffins were done baking and cooling, the huge trash truck came to get our apartment complex's dumpsters. Clara loves watching the trash truck (even though she keeps calling it a cement truck), and she sat on the toy box in the nursery and watched the trash truck do it's job while she happily ate one of the muffins.

I tried not to have her watching videos all day, and one of the best ways to distract her from the computer is with books. She "read" me Hello Ninja while I sat on the floor holding Jane in her sitting up position. At this point I can tell what Clara is trying to say on every page, and I repeat the phrases back to her and then she goes to the next page. She also spent a long time looking at one of our Christmas books, Fair's Fair, presumably because it has a lot of pictures of a big black dog. And right before nap time I read her the pop up zoo book (the title of which escapes me), If Kisses Were Colors, But Not The Hippopotamus, and A Time For Everything. As long as I let her hold the books and turn the pages, she's fine with me reading them to her. She gets really excited at the end of But Not The Hippopotamus when I ready, "But YES the hippopotamus!" Haha.

She's started doing this thing in the evening where she runs up to either Jack or me with a big grin on her face and says "I'm gonna get-chu!" before running away from us and trying to get us to chase her. Tonight I chased her from the living room to our bedroom maybe half a dozen times, each time grabbing her and throwing her on the bed and tickling her. She laughed so hard, and it was not a bad workout for me either. Each time I ran back into the living room I'd hide around a corner, either toward the kitchen or toward the front door. It would have been impressive if Clara had noticed that Jane was staring at me and grinning from her high chair, completely giving away my position. Clara would cautiously peek around one corner or the other, and sometimes I'd startle her and she'd squeal and run away. Very sweet. Later in the evening she and Jack played the same game, only he carried Jane with him back and forth as he chased Clara, and when he hid around a corner he'd peek Jane's head out to look at Clara. It was hilarious.

We're starting to play pretend more. Whenever we play with Clara's fake food she wants to go find her doll Debbie and have me have Debbie "feed" herself and then feed Clara in turns. Sometimes we'll include other stuffed animals like the zebra, but no matter who is involved Clara can't stop smiling and giggling each time Debbie "eats" some of the food and then offers the spoon to Clara.

I also showed Clara how her little dalmation finger puppet fits perfectly in the engine of her duplo train, and she was thrilled about that. For a while tonight I sat on the floor and made the train "chug" around the living room only to brake right in front of Clara. Clara would open the engine, take the dalmation finger puppet out, put it back in and say "Dog in the train!" as her signal to me to have the train depart again. Then I'd say "Alllll aboard!" and chug the train around again. Clara would lie on her tummy on the floor and watch; I think she was trying to get as close as possible to eye level with the dog engineer. When it circled past Clara I'd tell her to say, "Hi dog!" and she did and she giggled and giggled. (Jane was also hanging out on the living room floor a couple feet away, and she watched this entire process in fascination as we repeated it maybe 5-6 times.) Watching Clara get psyched about these things helps me remember what it was like to play pretend as a kid.

I get stressed about not being able to work because we need the money, but it is a nice trade off to get to spend so much time with my kids and to see things from their view.

12.10.17 - Calvin & Hobbes Christmas

12.1.17 - Mom's Christmas emails

11.30.17 - Dad's idea of agreeing

"Seems like most of the time Dad's idea of 'agreeing with me' is that we didn't physically attack him in protest" - Neil

11.30.17 - November joy statuses