Annie, three and a half

This morning, she ate tuna with relish and mustard--from a bowl, not on a sandwich--for breakfast. It's her new favorite food.

Being a grown-up

Friday was a long day. Nellie didn't have school, so we declared it a stay-at-home pajama day, which always seems like a better idea before you actually spend 14 hours in a house with active kids. When I put Annie to bed, she told me she wanted me to go to bed at the same time. I responded (probably with a sigh) that I needed to stay up for awhile and have some grown-up time. Meaning homework and TV, of course. Annie said, "can't you and Daddy just drink coffee in the morning?" At first I didn't understand, and then I almost laughed out loud - she equates grown-up time with drinking coffee.

Later that night, Nellie needed some cough medicine. As she watched Kevin pour the syrup, she thoughtfully asked, "so...how does the bottle know whether you're a kid or a grown-up?" Kevin explained that being kid-proof doesn't mean the bottle can tell the difference, you just have to be a grown-up to know the trick about how to open it. She tried to convince him to let her in on the secret, but he wouldn't budge. :)

They won't be little forever!

Okay, starting today, I resolve to be better about adding to this blog more regularly! Otherwise, I'm missing too many of the everyday, silly parts of parenting. Now that everyone is done throwing up (Nellie and DJ joined in pretty much the moment I ended that last post) and I'm into a routine for the semester, I have no excuse.

Plus, the fact that the kids won't be little forever has been nudging at my mind. Much of the time, I think about that fact with a little bit of panic--I want to hold onto every moment and appreciate every day that they're small. Lately, though, my mental response is something along the lines of thank goodness. At least once a day it dawns on me quite suddenly that soon, very soon, the girls will get their own clothes out of their dresser and just PUT THEM ON. They will POUR THEIR OWN MILK. They will BUCKLE THEIR OWN SEATBELTS. Someday, I will cook meals without a pre-walking baby clinging to my legs (which becomes quite tricky when I'm wearing sweatpants. Kevin has found me standing at the stove with my pants around my knees and a crying baby sitting next to me on more than one occasion. Not sexy.) Someday, I won't spend ten minutes of every shopping trip standing in the baby section wondering if we need diapers, nighttime diapers, wipes, etc. Kevin and I will sleep in our bed, alone, every night. There won't be 1,436,272 Cheerios in the van, or eight sippy cups filled with chunky old milk hiding around the house at any given moment. It's kind of like remembering in the dead of winter that spring really will come someday, and it will be warm again.

The point is, life won't always be this way. It won't always be so difficult in the way it currently is, when the kids seem to be dependent on us for everything. We've been in the "little years" now for 5 and a half years, and it's hard to remember what life was like before that or imagine what it will be like when we don't have preschoolers any more. It starts to feel as if the kids really will be little forever.

But I know they won't be. In fact, I've started to imagine myself as the mom of school-aged kids, and the mom of teenagers, and it seems much less strange than it used to. It's coming, and fast. The girls are quite suddenly starting to treat me differently, as if they just noticed that I'm a real person. They ask me questions about myself, and wonder what I was like when I was a kid, or before I got married, or before they were born. The other day, Nellie woke up, looked at me, and said, "I'm glad that Daddy asked you to marry him and you said yes. I'm glad you married Daddy because I love your face." I can't get over how funny it was, or how much I agree with her and how much I love her face. She also wrote me a note that says, "I love mommy. She is so pretty. I love her." I want to eat it up and let it warm my heart and soothe my spirit when, inevitably, she runs upstairs someday yelling, "I hate you!" and slamming the door in my face.

I digress. They're growing up, and as buried as we are in long days and everyday life with kids aged 5, 3, and 1, I need to unbury myself long enough to start capturing this stuff before it's gone.

My facial

I got a facial tonight. My mom got us groupons for facials when we were sitting in the airport months ago in honor of surviving advisory board meetings with DJ in tow. It was lovely. I woke up this morning at 5:00 to comfort a coughing Nellie for an hour and never went back to sleep, so I fell asleep right there on the table. But only for a minute, so I'm calling it a victory!

Also, it came to my attention in the last week that Kevin thought facials involve Botox. Now, he knows I've gotten a facial before, and my mom and sisters have gotten them. I'm not bringing it up to make fun, I just find it so curious that he would think I paid hundreds of dollars for a procedure in which the toxic substance that causes botulism is injected into my face in the name of vanity--and never say a word about it. Huh.

The holidays

Here we are again - time to sit down and turn out a holiday blog post. As usual, I was too busy living to write about living. This year had the added bonus Christmas day flu thrown in. Nellie came home from the Christmas party at school with a fever, and it kind of went downhill from there. At one point, I was making waffles for 14 people with a 102 degree fever. But that was the low point. All in all, there was a lot of merry-making!

The weekend before Christmas, Kevin and I went up north half to celebrate our ninth anniversary and half as an excuse for Kevin to go hunting. Of course, I can't actually say where we went, because that would break some sort of hunter's wife rule, but it was a cozy little motel/cabin and we pretty much spent two days hiking in much deeper snow than we had downstate, eating at local pubs with all the snowmobilers (including an end-of-the-world party on 12/21 where an Anheuser-Busch rep gave us free beer), watching cheesy Christmas specials on TV, talking, and sleeping...yada yada yada.

We made it back in time for the Wernet family party, then the next day was Christmas Eve! John and Genny were home by the time we got back and Pam came to stay, so it was a full house and we had lots of last-minute things to accomplish. But on Christmas morning, the candy canes were on the tree, the stockings were stuffed, and presents were wrapped under the tree. DJ got sick during the night, so he was tired and crabby for his first Christmas. It still seems funny to say that! He definitely had a strong presence last Christmas.

Kevin's family came for the Christmas waffle brunch and presents around noon, then it was off to my parents' for dinner and several more rounds of presents. The kids were, of course, wild with excitement. It's hard to pinpoint "best" presents, but I have to say, my favorite part of gift-giving this year was that we had the kids get gifts for each other and pick out gifts for us. Nellie very thoughtfully selected the Taylor Swift fragrance for me. I love it. :) And Nellie's favorite gift was the little kitten that wags its tail when you pet it that Annie picked for her. Annie's favorite is the purple Rapunzel blanket with her name on it. Genny passed down her Molly doll to Nellie, which has brought much joy to our American Girl-obsessed offspring.

Like I said, I came down with the flu in there, which was sad because we missed out on the post-Christmas fun with my family. It also made planning special birthday events for Kevin and DJ much less pleasant, though we still had a nice time. It was nice to celebrate our year with our fun little Donald! For the fourth or fifth year in a row, I made Kevin a pineapple upside-down cake, though as it happened I made it the next day for DJ's birthday. For the first time, it came out of the oven looking beautiful but when I went to invert it, the entire thing was liquid under the surface. Gross. We just served the crispy edges. Oh well, there's always next year! I really need to work on the whole "two birthdays right after Christmas" thing. I'll blame it on being sick, but the birthdays snuck up on me.

We had a great time with Dave and Laurel--it was nice to see them when we weren't: a) moving, b) having a baby, or c) on our way home from vacation. Kevin and I even got to spend a morning with them. They're the only people I know who don't bat an eye at the thought of going out for breakfast (where we consumed large amounts of coffee) and then going out for coffee after. That was a great day.

And then there was New Years Eve, when for the second year in a row I was asleep well before midnight. I think I woke up just in time to see the ball drop, kiss Kevin, see how annoying the NBC coverage was, and go back to sleep. Once again, there's always next year!

Nellie fell in love with the winter camp at Woldumar, so she stayed busy for the rest of her break from school. Annie, DJ, and I just tried to settle back into a routine and recover from being sick. There was (and is) plenty to do to get ready for a busy semester filled with gymnastics lessons, kindergarten, dissertation proposals, and teaching.

It seems like now that Nellie's in school and the kids are getting older (and, you know, there's more of them), the Christmas season is increasingly busy, noisy, and messy. And this year, there was the added sorrow over the school shootings in Connecticut and tension due to complicated family relationships, among other things. But I randomly heard a snippet of a radio sermon the Sunday before Christmas in which the pastor reminded me that Christmas is a time to celebrate that Christ came to fix messy situations and give us rest--okay, I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. I took comfort in that message, and I think our family found great joy in the holidays.

And I end here. If you've been reading our blog for awhile, you'll know there's one holiday tradition I'd be happy to give up. Once we put away the Christmas decorations and the parties are over, the Wernet children start throwing up. In fact, Annie just threw up on the computer screen (seriously, don't ask me how it happened) five minutes ago. So it's best I move on to other things, like laundry. But here are some pictures.

Nellie's kindergarten nativity program - third angel from the right :)

Annie showing off her trophy and medal from her gymnastics meet. And the two candy canes, which she was more happy about!

Getting her medal

Christmas morning. You can tell DJ's not feeling so great.

First gift of Christmas!

One of Nellie's gifts for Kevin

DJ and a Christmas apple

Opening the Brave archery sets

Nellie in the Christmas show at church

Annie singing Silent Night with sign language. Cutest. Thing. Ever.