Christmas Eve

Today was a fun, sweet day that I want to remember. There was nothing special about it, just a lot of family time, laughing, snuggling and moments of questions/answers that were precious. It all started with Emelyn in our room at 6:30am telling us in was Christmas Eve and "that means we get to make Jesus' birthday cake!!!" She was just a little excited about that. I think she's been planning for weeks now what she wanted it to look like. Before we started decorating, though, we made Christmas cookies with dough we made last night:

We did all of this before breakfast and while Isaiah was still asleep. Around 7:30 we heard him singing and talking so we opened the door to find him pulling the bumper pad down so that he could look out the door as soon as we opened it... I think he knew he was missing out on something! I love how Emelyn talks to him as though she's his mom... "Good morning little man! I see you're awake. Did you sleep good last night? Yeah? Oh I'm so glad! Are you hungry? yeah? Me too..." 

After breakfast we went to work on Jesus' cake. Emelyn just knew He wanted a picture of Himself in His manger and decided to add the stable, Mary, Joseph, and the star. Not to mention a very colorful, "Happy Birthday Jesus" around the side.  

 With all of the leftover buttercream frosting we frosted cookies... with lots of sprinkles and lots of concentration.

In between all of this, we also watched "The Nativity" which Emelyn seemed to enjoy. She cried at the end when Herod was trying to kill Jesus but we assured her He got away. There were a lot of sweet chats during the movie about what was going on. My favorites were when she had those "Ah-hah!" moments... like when she realized that the star cookies we made were just like the star in the sky the night Jesus was born. Or when she recognized parts of the movie that were things we've recently read in our nightly ornament devotions.

We ended the day with a beautiful candlelight service at church and supper with some dear friends.

Snowmen!

Emelyn has been wishing for snow lately, and seeing pictures of family members playing in the snow doesn't make it any easier... SO, last night we made snowman biscuits for supper.

Organization Project

Emelyn has been given various clothes; add that to the change of seasons and a change of size (from 3T to 4T) and you end up with mornings where we're going through her closet/drawers (stuffed full of clothes) looking for outfits that match. Top that off with a little girl that wants to get dressed all by herself each day AND someone who is really into having a place for everything  and we knew we needed to simplify her clothing "situation."

My solution to all of our morning dilemmas/questions was to create this little closet organizer for her:

Emelyn is getting really good at word recognition (and for those she can't recognize, she's good at figuring the word out by sounding out the first few letters) so I put one day of the week in each slot:

Emelyn has socks that have a day of the week on them so she matches the socks with the weekday slot when I do laundry and then after she takes an outfit out each day I put a new outfit in its place for her to wear the following week. This way she's rotating outfits at least every two weeks (the tops anyways.)

She also likes to know what day of the week it is so this is a fun way for her to learn the days (and to countdown the days until the weekend which is when she knows we're all together as a family.)

Emelyn tells me over and over how much she loves her new closet. And we do to. It took a little while to find something that we could make work, but ended up finding this closet organizer that had 3 large cubbies on top with 6 shoe organizers on bottom. Jake clipped the top 3 cubes together and hung it from the bottom rack in Emelyn's closet so that it was at her level. She asked if we could add a hook for her backpack (and I'm sure coat will be next!)

One nice thing about this "system" is that it keeps our clothing simple. Since I do laundry twice a week, 6-7 "everyday" outfits is all she really needs even though she has about 5 times that many shirts. In doing this, we did realize that she needs more socks and stretchy pants too. Her "days of the week" socks are almost too small on her but seem to be the only ones left that fit her. She also has lots and lots of jeans but she can't put them on/off by herself which makes it hard to go potty by herself. I have a good idea of what color of pants would match multiple shirts to go buy now. And it looks like we have more than enough shirts and jeans to pass on to someone else this winter while still leaving us with more than we need.

Hunting Pictures

Here are some pictures of Jake's hunting trip.

 Here he is with the owner of Wild Boar Rigde.

Hunting trip

This is day three of daddy being gone. He is on a wild hog hunt with his co-workers and should be back today. He decided to hunt with his bow so upon his leaving I requested he take a pistol AND take a last picture with his children just in case. :) He agreed to both. Thankfully, neither were needed. He called after the first day and said he "shot" a wild boar early that morning with his bow and arrow. He shot it at 28 yards, and only used one arrow... both things that I assume must be impressive. He says it's on video (well, until the boar turned towards them at which point he says all you see is the ground and hear them running) and I think it will be mounted... to be displayed anywhere but our house.

All joking aside though, I am quite proud of him and glad he got to go and have a good time. The kids and I have had fun in his absence but I also know we're excited to see him and hear all about his trip. I'm sure we'll post pictures of him with his "kill" upon his return. In the meantime, I guess it's time I start cooking again after my three day break. :) 

A picture before daddy left:

A few lessons and thoughts

Emelyn's at school, Isaiah's taking a nap, the washer is running (as is the dryer) and I wanted to take a break from my to-do list to write down some thoughts about Emelyn/Christmas. She is at the age of limited reasoning/understanding and a vital time for setting a foundation for what we teach her. Her little mind is a sponge and she takes in everything she hears as truth and believes every word we say. This is true for Christmas too. If we were to tell her it's about Santa, writing letters full of what she wants, setting out stockings, making cookies and flying reindeer, then that's what this season will be about to her. If we tell her we are getting ready to celebrate Jesus' birth, then that's what this season is about to her. Their minds are SO moldable and trainable at this age. While I know so many other people are past this stage with their kids, I feel the weight of this responsibility as well as the joy of it almost daily and end up thinking about it a lot. (Not just what she learns and understands about Christmas but about life in general... every answer I give her about anything is one more thing she stores away in her mind.)

So when Christmas came around, we had to sit down and decide what we were going to purposely tell her about this time of year. Unless we tell her differently, Christmas is another day like any other. So everything we have done this month from decorating a Christmas tree, to buying gifts, to hanging lights had to have a reason that we could tell her should she ask (and ask she did!)

Our family has chosen to make this time of year's focus be on Jesus' birthday. With no other perceived notions about Christmas, she believes we're getting ready for Jesus' birthday. Everywhere we look at night we see lots of pretty lights being displayed that we tell her are lit to remember the night Jesus was born. The books we read and music we hear talk about Jesus' birth. While she knows we bought her something special to show her that we love her, she also asks constantly where Jesus' presents are since his birthday will be soon. Every time we're at the grocery store, she asks if we can buy food to give to Jesus (since we told her that giving food to people who don't have any is one thing Jesus wants for His birthday.)

This is what shocks me the most and is teaching me more than anything:

In her small little three year old mind, Christmas has NOTHING TO DO WITH HER GETTING ANYTHING. She hasn't given us a list of things she wants. She isn't waiting for people to give her anything. She wants to know when we get to make Jesus' birthday cake. She wants to know when we're going to wrap His birthday presents to give to Him on Christmas morning.

This post isn't about Emelyn... she's three and somewhat innocent and simple in her way of thinking. The self-centered, "all about me" sinfulness that's in all of us is in her too. This post is more about wondering and pondering how we can always make Christmas about Christ. How do we instill in our kids for the rest of their lives (and us too) to want to find ways to glorify God and give things to Him on His birthday without ever asking for anything or expecting anything. I would love for their excitement every Christmas morning to be about getting to give Jesus things/time/energy. And if we happen to pull out an extra gift for them, that they would be excited and grateful, but never expect it.

I'm sure this will be something we have to work out and strive for every year... and that we'll fail to accomplish this many times over.

In the mean time, I'll go back to wrapping cans of vegetables and peanut butter, humbled that a three year old child thinks that unwrapping them and giving them to a food pantry is going to be the best part about Christmas morning:

Lights!!

Emelyn has been full of questions this Christmas season... why do we put up a tree... why do people put lights on their houses... why do we give gifts... who is Santa.... does Santa make it snow (she recently saw a show that said Santa makes it snow and that Santa gives you things you want... she had lots of questions after that and we had the first of many talks I'm sure.) All that said, one of her favorite things this year has been lights. She loved helping daddy put lights on our house and wants all Christmas lights on at all times. In the evenings if we ask her what she wants to do, she often asks if we can go look at Christmas lights. So we've driven through some very lit up neighborhoods, have gone to the Fayetteville Square numerous times, and this weekend, went to Silver Dollar City in Branson to see their light display.

As soon as we arrived, Emelyn told us her plan... teacups, swings, elephants, frogs, ships... she knew every ride she wanted to do. We also took a break to watch a 15 minute show about Frosty the Snowman. We arrived around 12:30 when the park opened and left shortly after the light show around 6:30. She was so worn out from the rides that when we starting walking around to look at lights both kids fell asleep within minutes. Here are a few pictures: 

A quick funny story... when we were getting ready to leave our house Emelyn was super excited, so to keep her busy we asked her to take things to the van for us. I never thougt to make sure everything actually went into the van. When we arrived in Branson, she had no coat or hat...  She ended up in Isaiah's coat (yes, they're now close enough in size!) and we found an old Arkansas Razorback hat I was given as a joke my first Christmas in Arkansas. This was the first time it has been worn and Jake received a few comments about his KSU hat and Emelyn's UA hat. (The two teams are playing in the upcoming Cotton Bowl.) From now on I will double check our packing!

Our sick little guy...

Isaiah's had a runny nose/cold for a little over a week now, and it seems he is almost over it. However, this morning he coughed once, and Jake thought it sounded a little raspy so asked me to please get him in to the doctor today to make sure he doesn't have pnemonia since we're planning on being outdoors all day tomorrow at Silver Dollar City. (I thought he was being a little over-protective and assured him it was just one cough from the heater kicking on and that he was fine, but also said I'd take him to the doctor if it made him feel better.) Well, as always, I was glad I took Jake's advice! While Isaiah's chest and lungs were fine, he did have two severely infected ears. We had no idea... he's been so happy and funny as always, and has been sleeping fine ... Would you have thought this smiley boy was in pain??

The difference of a year...

Putting "snow" on our tree:

One thing that I want to remember about last year's Christmas (as opposed to this year) is Emelyn's view of presents. Last year we talked a lot about Christmas being Jesus' birthday so we discussed giving gifts on birthdays to show others that we love them and are thankful for them and emphasized that Christmas is the time to do these things for Jesus. We made Jesus a birthday cake and sang happy birthday to him. We bought him "birthday presents" and took them to a food pantry. (We even wrapped the jars and cans!) All things that we will likely do every year.

Then when Christmas came around and we gave Emelyn gifts, she was really confused. She kept saying that it wasn't her birthday and so why did we give her presents? When she did finally open them up, she did so by justifying that Jesus needed her to help Him open them and literally for months she would say "This is the present Jesus got for his birthday" as she played with the new items.

So this year.... she's still really excited about Jesus' upcoming birthday, and even has the birthday party hats out to play with every day, BUT she's super excited to know that she will get a gift or two too. Here's a recent conversation after she saw a new wrapped gift under the tree:

Emelyn: Is that a present for me?

Me: Yes it is...

Emelyn: (Big smile) What is it?

Me: You'll have to wait until Christmas to open it.

Emelyn: What store did you buy it at?

Me: A big one.

Emelyn: Well what letters were outside the store?

Me: All kinds of letters...

Emelyn: Well does that store sell toys?

Me: maybe...

Emelyn: (Big smile...)

Then later when Jake came home, she told him all about the presents under the tree but told him not to tell her what was in hers because she has to wait until Christmas to open it... and she told him not to ask her what was in his because it was a surprise and he would just have to wait until Christmas to open it too...

And last week, after she helped me wrap a bunch of gifts and put them under the tree, she goes, "Uh-oh mommy! We forgot to buy Jesus a gift for His birthday!" So I asked her what she thought we should buy him and she said "Well since he's still such a little baby, He'd probably like some toys. I know which store we could go to to buy Him some!" Such a thoughtful offer. :)



10 Months..

Isaiah is 10 months old... not sure when that happened! Here's what he's up to these days:

• 23 lbs, 2 oz, 29.5 inches long
• 8 teeth (4 top, 4 bottom) He has the cutest gap between his two top front teeth... as in 1/4 inch gap... I think it's absolutely adorable! Of course I'm sure he won't always think that and braces may be in our future some day, but for now I melt when he gives me a big toothy grin!
• He seems to be weaning himself of his bottle. While before he would drink four 6+ oz bottles a day, he only drinks 2-4 oz at a time now going from 24 ounces a day to about 14. I asked his Dr about it Friday and we were told as long as he has wet diapers (plenty of those!) that he's fine and just obtaining enough fluids from his food that he doesn't need as much formula.
• Speaking of foods.... 3 big meals a day (usually eats more than Emelyn) along with 2 snacks. We're working on getting him to drink out of a sippy cup but he's not interested (another reason why I was worried about him drinking less bottles.) We'll keep giving him a cup every meal and I'm sure that (as with all things with Isaiah) he'll do it when he's ready.
• He still doesn't crawl. Doesn't walk. Doesn't pull himself up to anything. He does however RUN in his walker. And to get around corners he picks up the walker with his hands and turns it.
• Size 18 clothes. Size 4 diapers. Size 4/5 shoe.
• Another favorite thing I don't want to forget is that when his toys start to play music, he puts his arms up and starts moving his arms as though he's directing music. Not in a spastic way, but in a very controlled manner.... it really looks like he's directing an orchestra.
• He's also getting over his first cold. He's quite miserable and snuggly when sick. I think we're at the end of it though (at least this cold!) Thankfully we have cold weather coming that will hopefully stay and kill some viruses.