End of 2015 Video Dump

Since we didn't make it to Utah to see family this Christmas, here are some videos of what our boys are like right now. Most of them are slow-paced, just like our lives.

This video is from early November, when Matthew still was learning he had a voice.

When Joseph starts playing by himself, it's delightful.

Matthew figured out where his hand belongs.

He's getting stronger!

He's added "ya ya yas" and "da da das" and even "blah blah blahs" to his vocabulary . . . and none of them show up here. Still cute.

If you listen really, really carefully, you'll hear some lyrics from "What Makes You Beautiful." The headphones were so his voice didn't get drowned out, but it also made it a little incomprehensible.

Oh, those legs.

More independent play. I should close caption these because they're just darling. (And Joseph doesn't mind me filming him. He likes to watch them later.)

Every now and then, mysterious toys pop up in our house. I believe this remote control car was by the dumpster, and it was supposed to stay an outside toy. When I just watched this again, I forgot we even had it because it had transformed again into an outside toy. I've discovered that "new" is the most important quality a toy can have. (Which is why I threw away that little orange guy in the background and he hasn't noticed yet.)

Dancing.

He did pretty well explaining Christmas, even with the confusing questions.

A Christmas song about drums. Hard to beat that.

I made this video mostly for the sake of my family. Hooray for long-distance impromptu performances!

Christmas morning.

Matthew got a lot of cool crinkly toys.

More adventures with more toys that mysteriously show up in our house.

Edit: I finally caught a video with Matthew gnawing on his fingers. I don't really think he's teething.

It's been a good month and good year, and we're looking forward to next year!

Slow down, time!

Guys, Matthew is old now! I keep thinking, wait, how is he almost 5 months now? He keeps doing developmentally appropriate things and I catch myself thinking, "Well, he's about the right age for that," and then I'm just shocked that it happened so fast.

Luckily, this is my favorite age, so we're happy to be here. (I keep thinking whatever age he is is my favorite, but then I'm always pleasantly surprised by the next. [except three years old will probably never be my favorite]) I think I mentioned once that his first, second, and third months were progressively harder for me, but once we hit 3 months it started getting easier again. Maybe it's that we got used to the sleep deprivation. (He still knows how to sleep through the night, but we only get a few nights of that before we lose it for some reason such as colds.) Overall, he spits up less and naps longer, which I appreciate.

It's been so fun watching him grow up. I had forgotten how fascinating it is to watch a little person discover the world using his hands, feet, and mouth. He still loves and demands attention, but he is better at entertaining himself now that he has those to play with. He's also happier now that he can sit by himself for a minute at a time (we have to catch him before he falls, but it's a start!). When we eat, he watches us like hawk, so we'll probably start solid food before too long. He is liberal with his smiles and careful with his laughs (except around Joseph). He growls, shrieks, coos, and babbles all the time.

Basically, we are all crazy about him. And for good reason.

But seriously! Slow down, time!

Christmas Traditions, Part 2

As I recently mentioned, it turns out my family did have Christmas traditions!

source

 I loved it when my mom hung up the snowflake made of 6-pack rings. I loved it when she brought out the basket of Christmas books. I loved it when we got to make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. I loved dancing to Christmas music, especially the musicological journey through the 12 days of Christmas. I loved getting a new ornament every year in my stocking.  I loved seeing the wall get plastered with Christmas cards and newsletters from friends, and I loved even more seeing what my parents wrote about us each year in our newsletter. 

But, it's more interesting to talk more about funny memories than sweet traditions. So here instead are the top 10 unsentimental memories from Christmas time.

10. Gathering my mom's side of the family together at the age of 4 on Christmas to let them know it was no longer okay for them to call me "Kyra Bagheera." To their credit, they respected my wishes. I appreciate that.

9. Writing a letter to my dad at the age of 6 or 7 which stated, "Dear Mister Moon, I do not think you should get any Christmas presents this year. From, your daughter," leaving it in the office for him to find, hiding in the nearby bathroom to witness his response, and hearing him laugh. I had wanted to provoke him into apologizing for getting mad at me earlier, so I was infuriated that he laughed.

8. Spending Christmas Eve with my cousins in Lindon, then driving back up to Logan and expecting to go out to eat. Everything was closed as far as we could see. As we drove around in hunger I thought of ancient Jews searching for a place to eat and sleep. Then suddenly, there was standing before us an open store -- Little Caesar's! And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a pizza from Little Caesar's, and all the family was taxed. (Sales taxed, that is.)

7. Matching pajamas.

But you had to have the right color hair to get them, I guess.

6. Not going caroling to the fire station along with my mom, sisters, and other relatives one Christmas in Kansas because I wanted to be difficult. The next day, there was a picture in the newspaper of the group caroling. All I wanted in life at that age was to make it into the newspaper someday, so I was terribly disappointed. Naturally, I think I blamed my mom for not making me come.

5. Making the best of an unseasonably warm Christmas. The Christmas after Kevin and I got married, it was in the upper 40s, possibly even warmer. After we all opened presents, my mom pointed out one last present on the patio -- a new fire pit.

"Instead of ham for our Christmas dinner, we can do hot dogs!" my mom said. After a few hours of trying to start a fire with winter-wet wood, we brought them in and cooked them in an oven. I could see the disappointment in Kevin's face as we ate -- we gave up ham for this! 

4. Spending all the fall writing my American Girl spinoff series novel "Hello Kristie," hiding it in with other presents, and watching my confused relatives open it. "It says it's from Santa." "I think I saw it come in with Barbara's presents." Finally I couldn't bear it any more.

"I wrote it! It's my story!" They all sat down and read it. I have no clue how they kept straight faces. (Find the first two chapters here.)

3. More matching pajamas.

We didn't much care for dogs, actually.

2. Giving and getting Christmas treats from the neighbors. In particular, in 2004, our family went without candy from the beginning of January until Christmas morning. It wasn't that hard, really -- we had all gorged ourselves on candy on our drive back from our grandparents in Kansas, so for the first few weeks we were just grossed out by the thought of candy. 

And then after that, we just never bought it, and we just got used to life without it. And, like, things weren't too strict -- we could still have chocolate chips as long as they were in cookies, and we could still have ice cream and other treats, so it really wasn't that bad. Sometime in the fall, Kaylie was the youth speaker and talked about what we had learned from the experience.

After that, the whole ward knew that we weren't eating candy, and it affected the treats we got that year for Christmas. "I heard you guys weren't doing sweets this year, so I brought something else!" one neighbor told us cheerfully as he handed us a jar and left.

It was sauerkraut.

It was bad enough that we had to live with the smell of sauerkraut 3 days every fall while our town celebrated it in Providence Sauerkraut Days. Now it had been brought into our house!

"And the year was almost over, anyway!" my mom exclaimed as she sent us to take the jar somewhere far far away from her. I think my dad ended up eating it.

1. Bringing good tidings of great joy unto all people.

Or something like that.

Christmas Traditions, Part 1

"What are some Christmas traditions you had when you were growing up?" I've been asked a few times this year.

I have responded with a blank stare, then a slow response. "On Christmas morning, there would be presents under a large fake coniferous tree, and we would open them." Okay, I've never said that, but I have drawn a blank an embarrassing amount. (So much, in fact, that I turned down a chance to give a brief talk during Sacrament Meeting this Sunday, explaining, "I'm not very good at Christmas.")

And this year, I haven't been super great at it yet, though it had a promising start. We got all of our Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving (the snow came down and the tree came up -- it's Newton's third law of physics). The first week of December I attended a Christmas white elephant party and hosted a Christmas carol party, complete with wassail. But the next day I noticed a tickle in my throat, and both Matthew and I got hit hard with a bad cough and cold.

So that put a damper on things. I mean, it's not like you really want to go walking around with plates of cookies saying, "Here, have these rhinovirus laced treats!" (And it's not like we'd eat them ourselves . . . I may as well be mixing toothpaste into all of our treats for how much Kevin likes any sort of mint, and that and gingerbread are the two treats I think of when it comes to Christmas.) And all those books Kevin checked out of the music library for me with old English and Latin and French carols? I would be singing them in Phlegmish instead if I could sing at all. So the past week and a half hasn't felt terribly much like Christmas time (except for when Joseph and I would sit and watch these).

But it's actually been a good thing because it's helped me realize that my family actually had tons of traditions, none of which I'm carrying on this year. It turns out poinsettias and advent calendars don't just spontaneously appear, nor do games of "Warmer, Colder" with baby Jesus start on their own. Christmas books don't check themselves out of the library, tickets to the Nutcracker don't buy themselves, and even Christmas specials like Rudolph have to be found on YouTube before they get watched.

So yeah, my family actually did a ton for Christmas. There were decorations, foods, service projects, concerts, parties, movies, stories, nightly readings, all of it. I think I was just so busy as a teenager with AP projects and Christmas concerts that I forgot that we did anything. (Actually, that's also why I didn't think I did any extracurricular activities until I realized that choir and piano lessons and play practice counted as extracurriculars.)

Oddly enough, being able to remember how much we did for Christmas has helped take the pressure off for this year. Can't quite say why. Maybe it's that we still have time to tweak and add traditions -- nothing has to be perfect when your oldest is only 3 years old. Maybe it's that the process of forgetting and remembering traditions has helped highlight what matters most about Christmas. And, to be honest, since that's stressed me out too (I can't fix everything in the world and my ward for Christmas, and it drives me crazy), it's helped me realize that something is always better than nothing -- you are allowed to carol empty handed.

All that said, it's still nice to not have to give that talk on Sunday.

Let Brotherly Love Continue

One blessing we've enjoyed so far is how well Joseph and Matthew have gotten along. Joseph is very solicitous of his brother and makes sure we know when Matthew needs help (or when he doesn't, insisting that he can't be hungry or tired yet if he's not crying). They've started to interact more and more, even perhaps when Joseph would rather they didn't.

But Joseph gets his revenge, so to speak, in other ways. I asked him today to sing the ABCs for his brother. "A B C D E F feet, H I J K L M N O feet. Q V W R S feet," and then he started giggling so he never finished. There goes my plan to outsource all of Matthew's education to his older brother.

Too bad. These would have made great homeschool uniforms til they outgrew them.

Pants

This morning, Joseph came bounding into our bedroom.

"I had an askident," he informed me. "But my Iron Man shirt didn't get wet."

I started to get up to help him, but then I realized my back hurt a lot. How do you sleep on a back funny? But I guess I did.

"I need to stretch a little bit first," I told him. I lay back down and began to stretch, lifting my arms and legs a little bit to try and stretch just the right muscle.

"Hey, you're not stretching. You're exercising!" He then stopped for a moment to ask, "Do we say 'silly-billies?'"

Presumably he was planning to call me one, but first he wanted to make sure a word he had picked up from his friends would be allowed in our house. Occasionally I have to remind him that we don't say some words even though his friends do (they're not bad words, just unnecessary ones), and he asks things like, "What do I say instead of 'what the heck?'"

But "silly billies" was okay today. He didn't end up calling me that, and I went to change his damp pants. "What do you want to wear now?" I asked.

"My astronaut ones!" he said.

". . . What color are those?"

"Green." Okay, now I knew what he was talking about.

"Actually I want to wear Iron Man pants," he said, reaching for some black pants with a red stripe on them. He took off his wet strawberry shorts (that is, the red mesh ones) and put the Iron Man ones on instead. Iron Man shirt and Iron Man pants. He could be really strong today because he was Iron Man.

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After Institute, I did a little bit of shopping for Christmas. We stopped in the men's active wear section, and Joseph commented, "Black strawberry pants? That's so funny." I looked, and there were some black mesh pants. Once I had decided on an appropriate pair, we finished shopping and headed home.

"Now, Joseph, do we tell Daddy about the pants?" I asked him at a stoplight. I looked back and he was nodding. "No, we don't. It's a secret. We want them to be a surprise for him. So do we tell him?" He nodded again. We went back and forth like this til he said he wouldn't tell.

When Kevin came home, he brought a package from the mailbox with him. "Looks like a present for Mommy," he said.

"Oh! We got a surprise for you, Daddy!" Joseph said.

"You did? Well don't tell me what it is."

"It's a present."

"Yeah, don't tell me about it yet."

"It's pants."

§

Today was a really great day, but there were some really hard things about it. I've wondered throughout the day when we'll be through all the meltdowns and bad-guy fixations and taking things apart and roughhousing and all of that. I've also wondered how on earth you teach empathy and compassion and inclusiveness and gentleness and resilience and selflessness to a little person, especially when you're not an expert at any of them. Do these things ever come naturally?

So in a lot of ways, I'm really grateful for all the cute things Joseph said about clothes today. A lot of it is just little kid cuteness, but a lot of it is also the real him, the him who will last when all the hard little kid things will stop being such a big issue.

And in the meantime, at least we can enjoy the company of Iron Man. (Or Capta Nerica. Or Superman. Or Buzz. Or Batman. Or even X the Owl. Depends on the shirt and pants that day.)

Iron Man today!

Called to Nurse

The other night, Kevin asked me, "What would your dream calling be?"

I responded immediately, "Ward Texting Committee."

When he looked at me quizzically (I think he was expecting an answer more like Gospel Doctrine teacher), I responded, "I dreamed I was on it the other night. I don't remember what we had to text, but I do remember one guy getting mad at me for going on a hike instead of staying back and texting, since I didn't have service on the hike."

Clearly, callings have been on my mind a fair amount if they have made it into my subconscious. Perhaps it's because it's time to get a new calling -- I've been in my current one for longer than the handbook recommends, and I've heard that I'm supposed to get a new one.

But in a big, strong ward like ours, it's not so easy to find a place where I'm needed at this point, especially since we'll likely be here only nine more months. The fact that I spend about 20 minutes in the mothers' room nursing a little baby only makes it more complicated.

Today I felt impatient about it all ("Just call me to Primary already . . . I know they need me there!" I metaphorically shouted to the void). But then I realized that maybe I should just have them call me to something that I'm already doing.

So here is my list of appropriate callings to extend to a mother of a young baby to legitimize the way she is currently building the kingdom.

• Baby nourishment provider: Following the injunction given in the Family Proclamation that a mother's primary responsibility is to nurture, a mother is called to feed her baby at church whenever the baby desires it. When the baby desires nourishment during Sacrament Meeting, and the meeting already includes that baby's blessing, the mother's participation in the ward choir, and the mother filling in on the organ, it may be appropriate to feed the baby instead of partake of the sacrament. Actually, it's entirely appropriate.
• Mothers' room coordinator: the mother is called to enter the mother's room before any other nursing moms and set a tone of reverence throughout Sacrament Meeting. She may be called to stop sitting on one of the comfy chairs in there if she plans to stay the whole time.
• Comfortable seat sacrificer: The entire family is admonished to misplace a sock, make a hole in nylons, or have some other small mishap that allows the family to consistently be 3-4 minutes late to church. This will allow other families to get the comfortable seats near the front of the chapel. As an added bonus, this will give other children in the family the opportunity to learn how to be reverent even when they don't sit near the front.
• De facto Relief Society/choir/musical number/baptism pianist: It's someone else's turn to hold the baby. Go play the piano.
• 2017 addition: If you know that the youth are not where they are supposed to be, go and nurse in whatever classroom they're hanging out in. They will skedaddle.
• LDS Tools Access Provider: Throughout the week, when you are nursing your baby, use your least-occupied hand to text fellow ward members information such as phone numbers and addresses when desired. It's your calling, after all.

Actually, that sounds suspiciously like Ward Texting Committee.