5 Happies

1. My mom visited for 3 days this week. She cooked us some amazing dinners and 3 batches of Christmas cookies. If you know me, you know that I am no baker, so those Christmas cookies are exceptionally wonderful. She even let Jay and Rose help her do practically everything in the kitchen. I spent a lot of time marveling at my mom’s patience. She also went to the Tri Cities with Rose, Amber, and me on a long day of errands (including 3 hours worth of car repairs). It was such a help having an extra person along. We watched one of our favorite Christmas chick flicks (Borrowed Hearts) and wrapped a few Christmas presents together. We spent lots of time admiring Amber’s every perfect feature together late at night. Grandmas are the greatest.

nobody makes cookies like Grandma!

snuggled up at Target

2. At nearly 6 weeks postpartum, I’m more or less healed up from all the physical trauma of childbirth and surgery, so now all I’m dealing with is 10 months worth of muscle atrophy. In other words, I am wimpy. I went on two walks this week—one mile each, at Rose’s 3-year-old pace—and I was sore after each walk. Going to the store for more than 20 minutes also makes my legs sore. Everything is a workout at this point!

 

my three cuties

3. Jay is really getting excited about Christmas. He has two presents wrapped under the tree, and he has guessed both: a book and Legos. I suppose they are pretty obvious when wrapped/shaken. Oh well, at least he doesn’t know which book or which Legos, right? One day this week, Jay brought the kid table outside to the front porch and brushed his teeth out there? I spied on him through the blinds. The things kids do to play are so funny! Jay also sang with the primary kids at the ward Christmas party on Friday night. Cute as always.

4. Rose is still the sweetest little companion I could ask for. She is a tad headstrong, which is a trial when I’m feeling exceptionally sleep-deprived, but for the most part she’s cute, patient, and lovable. And then there’s her hair. It’s the only part of her that does not benefit from a good night’s sleep.

morning oatmeal

on a walk together

 

all ready for church

5. We have a happy baby. Amber started smiling this week! It took us off guard because she was only 5 weeks old when she started grinning at Jeff and me. I LOVE IT!

[bath time interlude—typical]

 

this is love.

Family torture

Last week I decided it was TIME for family pictures. Amber’s face has unfurled enough and my body is somewhat more normal. I researched pose ideas for a family of 5 with a baby, we set up the tripod, arranged ourselves, and started clicking. Oh boy. Remember what I said about not needing photography skills to take a good picture? I think I said as long as you take enough pictures, one of them is bound to turn out, professional photographer or not. I hereby recant that statement. Three days of photo shoots and at least 200 pictures later, we finally got a few keepers.

The kids are more or less traumatized from the whole experience. Our three family photo sessions only lasted 10-20 minutes each, but to a 3 year old and 5 year old who are repeatedly being asked to smile smile smile cheeeese and look at a boring black camera, that may as well be an eternity. At one point Jay was laying on the floor crying. 

It was too cold and wet to take pictures outside with a tiny baby, so we had to figure out how to take a non-blurry picture inside with minimal lighting. That proved harder than it seemed at first. We finally had success when the sun emerged briefly on Saturday morning. We opened the blinds WIDE and finally took some clear pictures. With the help of a funny photo editing website I found (picmonkey.com), I managed to fix up a couple of our quick snapshots. And that’s how we do family pictures in this family. I say it every year, but…maybe next year we’ll get a professional to take them? HA!

There are way more of the hilarious failure-photos than the fancy kind. Personally I kind of like the crazies, but my inner historian also required at least one normal picture. Hence the three day group torture.

Day #1: The Christmas Tree
Problems: it was just too dark in there, so all the pictures were too grainy to print. And our pose was kind of boring.

The best two from this session, edited to compensate for the lack of light, and yet still too grainy:

  

Day #2: The Bed
Problems: we had light from two sources—the window and the ceiling light—and it messed with the colors too much for my limited editing resources to fix (neon orange hair). Plus our poses were awkwardly awful.

Possibly the most epic of all the failures: here’s the photo-inspiration and the reality. This makes me laugh so hard. Amber was passed out asleep and her head was flopping. We couldn’t figure out how to get Jay and Rose any higher/more visible, and their bones were gouging our backs, so our smiles were closer to grimaces. We switched poses pretty fast.

In all the ones we’re all smiling, someone’s head is inevitably cut off.

At this point we admitted defeat…

 

Ok, the two best from that session:

  

Day #3: The White Wall
Problems: the kids were DONE.

 

Two of the best three from this session:

I like these a lot (minus that pesky doorknob). I actually thought of this pose all by myself too. Take THAT, Pinterest!

 

WHEW! That was painful. The last good picture we took will appear on our Christmas card in your mailbox in about 2 weeks (if I have your address and if I’m really on top of things). I hope you can stand the suspense.

One month later

Somehow it’s been an entire month since Amber was born. Naturally, I took some pictures to commemorate the occasion. She is really such a perfect little baby, with her bright eyes, tiny nose, and pointy chin. She is growing so fast. Her size newborn footie pajamas are getting short and snug already! I am so glad to live in the digital age where I can easily take a picture of her every day if I want to (and I almost always do). It is so much fun having a baby in my life again. I love hugging her warm little body to my chest and kissing her soft cheeks and smelling her baby sweetness.

What is it about babies in hats?

Our photo studio (my unmade bed).

I still can’t believe that I actually took these pictures myself, with my little Canon point-and-shoot camera. You don’t have to be an expert to take a cute picture; you just have to have a good light source and take a million pictures. One of them is bound to turn out!

 

Basically, I love her face. And the rest of her too.

And because I can’t resist, here are Jay, Rose, and Amber at one month old, all draped on the same pillow.

Meanwhile…our family has been passing around congestion and coughs for the past few weeks. Once one of us overcomes it, the next person gets it. Blah! Rose was the worst—she was down for an entire 6 days. I finally took her to the doctor this week, but she won’t take her medicine so it was all in vain. Sigh. At least we have our Christmas tree and Christmas music and Christmas books and Christmas movies to cheer us up. All we need are some Christmas cookies and we’ll be SET.

Jay and Rose like to save every box. They made a “Christmas Train” one morning and filled it with books and stuffed animals.

Kids at Christmas! The best.

A REAL tree!

We got our Christmas tree on Saturday. It’s our first REAL LIVE tree in 6 years. We have had a midget skinny fake tree for the past six years. How did we survive without the height, scent, and beauty of a fresh fraser fir all this time? This is also the first Christmas in six years that we are staying home for the holidays—no traveling for us! That’s why we got a real tree this time—we decided it was only worthwhile if we were going to be home on Christmas. We spent some time on Saturday morning rearranging our family room to make room for the tree, and then it was off to the farm.

We went to none other than trusty Bill’s Berry Farm in the blustery mid-20 degree windy weather on Saturday to find the perfect Christmas tree. Luckily we parked close and found a beautiful, affordable (only $45!) tree in less than 10 minutes. Paying for it and toting it to the van took longer than picking it out. Poor Rose was sick. Amber was only three and a half weeks old. But when Thanksgiving ends, Christmas begins so we went for it anyways. I zipped Amber underneath my coat and she stayed toasty warm in spite of the frigid air. We found the tree and then the kids and I hustled back into the warm van while Jeff did his manly duty and tied the tree to the roof.

I love this place. Bill knows how to make magic.

We found it! Rose smiled in spite of her fever, little dear.

Jeff brought our 50-foot rope and quickly realized that it does not take an entire 50 feet of rope to secure a Christmas tree to a van roof, ha ha. He made it work though.

Sweet sick Rose slept on the couch while we decorated the tree.

Beautiful. With that old sheet crumpled up underneath as a tree skirt and my homemade cardboard star on top, it’s so lovable.

Speaking of lovable…

I spy a darling little Christmas present under there…

 

Our Amber-elf. That red velvet dress was so warm, Amber slept the rest of the day away.

Peace on Earth.