In Which Santa Is Revealed And It's Almost Christmas

So the kids are in bed (though it's likely neither child is asleep as they're both too excited), Santa has come and gone, and in just a few hours it will be Christmas!

As tempting as it was to leave Eden in the dark about the true identity of Santa for just one year as this is her first Christmas home, we figured we'd be setting her up for some major teasing at school if we didn't clue her in.  We made sure to tell her, however, that Connor doesn't know and that she should keep it a secret.

 She was absolutely delighted to be let in on the grand conspiracy, and it's adorable how she talks about Santa with a whole lot of grinning and exaggerated winking.  It's a good thing Connor doesn't pick up on that sort of stuff, because I'm pretty sure if he was a typical kid he would have figured out something was up about twenty seconds after we told his sister.

Oh well-- Connor could care less about where the presents come from, anyway.  He's way more interested in the wrapping paper, which makes delightfully crinkly noises.  And Eden's super excited to be let in on a "grown-up" kind of secret, so it all works out.

 Anyway, I hope tomorrow is filled with peace and joy for all of you, or if you have children, with joyful chaos followed by peace some time late in the afternoon when the kids' Christmas cookie sugar-high wears off.

Merry Christmas to you all!

~Jess

In Which Christmas Makes Me Overly Sappy Again

The lights are up in our neighborhood, presents are piled up high under our tree, and frost laces its way across our windows in the morning.  It's almost Christmas.

As I cozy up next to Jeremy on the couch, I'm reminded of all the things I have to be grateful for this season.  It's been over four years since I almost lost him in Afghanistan, and it's moments like these, when I'm sitting in our house, watching the cats dozing by the fire and the children reading a book together, that I feel most intensely just how incredibly blessed I am to have my family here.

This is a family built of almost wasn'ts-- a son who almost died, a daughter we almost never met, a husband saved by a vehicle that was armored just enough.  And while this place we are now is never somewhere we would have thought to go, I'm so glad we're here.

It's funny how all of those "almost wasn'ts" have made me, I think, into a stronger, better person, because I've had he chance to learn lessons in courage, in perseverance, and in living a happy life despite hardship from the best people I could think to learn from: my family.  How could my life be unhappy when I'm surrounded by examples of what living a life to its fullest potential should be about?

So I'm glad it's almost Christmas, even though I procrastinate and have to stay up way too late wrapping presents on Christmas Eve, I miss my siblings and all my other relatives who live far away, the kids get really bored and drive me nuts over Winter Break, and Jer has to leave again soon.  I can't imagine a better place to spend it this and every year, than right here, once again, against the odds.

Who could ask for more?

~Jess

In Which We're Back To Business As Usual

This morning we celebrated Eden's adoption at our church, which was lovely.  It's so nice to have a community that supports us and really makes us all feel at home!  And my parents brought a cake, which was an added bonus.  You can never go wrong with cake.

Connor stayed up until five in the morning, so we were all pretty tired though-- except for Eden, who was full of her usual energy.  I suspect she was a bit bored today, as we spent most of our time quietly at home.  Oh well-- we'll have a busy schedule tomorrow.  The little guy crashed at around seven and we have our night nurse anyway, so we should get plenty of sleep tonight.  Hooray for sleep!

Both the kids are off of school for their Winter Break, so we can all sleep in for a bit tomorrow.  Both the kids have their therapies though, and I need to get a bunch of last-minute things done for Christmas.  It always seems to sneak up on me!

~Jess

In Which We See A Play

So last night and this morning the kids had their Christmas play! Connor played the part of the donkey and the Christmas star, and was adorable as usual.  Hus donkey hat kept falling into his eyes or getting cocked to one side at a rakish angle.  It was pretty cute.

Eden's costume was a combination of wisemen and shephard costume pieces; she wore a shephard's tunic and a wiseman's crown. So she was a wise shephard, I guess.  She was a bit worried at first about wearing the costume, but after she saw boys put theirs on and was assured that hers was not, in fact, a dress, she was fine.  This kid does NOT do dresses.

Anyway, she participated in all the songs and dances and also pushed Connor around the church when it was time for the wisemen (or in this Christmas play, wisegals, as all three were girls) to approach the baby Jesus.  She did a great job; I'm so proud of both my kids!

The whole performance was just fantastic, and all of the kids were so enthusiastic and joyful. It's given Eden confidence to try out for her school play too, which I think is great.

In other news, Jer made it all the way to Idaho today; that's a lot of driving in two days! Hopefully that means he'll be here tomorrow afternoon.  I'm so excited!

~Jess

In Which We Raise A Pair Of Lilliputians

As requested, here's a photo of the kids with The Best Santa The World Has Ever Known.  Note Eden's awesome flame-covered AFOs and Connor's festive tweed cap and cowboy boots-- all important fashion accessories for any holiday photo shoot.  

Also I believe that Connor is wearing the same train vest he wore for this same Santa not one, but two years ago (and also like two years ago, Santa once again wouldn't let us pay for our photos, because this guy is amazing).  My kid is tiny.  I swear we feed him and everything; we're not sure if this is related to his genetic condition or if it's just because he takes after his daddy.  Who knows?  Maybe he'll shoot up at some point.  Somehow I doubt it, though.

At five feet tall, Eden is also on the teensy side and we think she's done growing, but Thai women tend to be shorter than the average American woman as a general rule, so that isn't really surprising.  Also we're not sure what kind of nutrition she got as a little kid, so that might have had something to do with it as well.  At any rate, I'm kind of resigned to being the tallest person in our family, unless we adopt another boy in a few years (which is entirely possible).

Anyway, today I ran by the store for a few odds and ends after picking up Connor from school, and I noticed they had Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World on sale.  Eden read the first book of the series out loud to me a few weeks ago, and I thought that maybe she'd be more interested in reading books if she could see the movie that's based on them afterwards.  So we watched it together this evening as a special (late) reward for finishing the book, and she enjoyed it tremendously.  I think after we're done with Awkward, we'll try something else that has a movie tie-in and that other teens will probably have read, like Harry Potter or the dreaded Twilight.  While the Harry Potter series is, in my opinion, much better written than anything Stephanie Meyer has come up with, there is one thing to be said for Twilight-- at least the language is simple enough that Eden shouldn't need too much help with it.  

Thus far she hasn't been interested in reading any series past the first novel and it takes her a month or two to get through a book (reading in twenty minute intervals), so I don't know that we'd get to some of the more mature things that happen later in both series, and if we do we'll have plenty of time to discuss them.  While there are a few other more recent YA novels the kids are all reading that have been made into movies, most of them have pretty dark plot lines fairly early on.  While she's definitely become way more mature in the past year, I don't think Eden's quite ready for stuff like The Hunger Games just yet.

~Jess

In Which I Discover The Best Game Ever

So today after school and Eden's physical therapy, I drove the kids to the mall to take pictures with Santa.  They have an amazing Santa at our local mall, and this was Eden's first time to take pictures with any Santa, since the only one we saw in Thailand last year was terrifying.  No, seriously-- he was a twenty-something year old Thai man with white pancake makeup on all over his face and the backs of his hands, with a fake beard that was pulled halfway down his chin and an outfit that was obviously stuffed with toilet paper.  He looked like Insane Clown Serial Killer Santa.  Good times.

Anyway, the Santa at the mall isn't like that at all, and he apparently is such a nice, relaxing Santa that he puts Connor to sleep.  The little guy started drifting off about halfway through the photos.  When he wasn't nodding off, Connor was staring fixedly at the giant blue-lit snowflakes on one side of the set.  He paid zero attention to the photographer this year.  But the pictures still turned out pretty cute, and I'm glad we went.  In the evenings it's not crowded at all, and the photographer probably took thirty photos of the kids.

So other than Eden using her "super cheese" photo smile and Connor trying to nod off, the kids were pretty well behaved.  That ended the second we hit the parking lot.

Connor immediately started making that yelling, set-your-teeth-on-edge noise where he manages to hit two dissonant notes at once.  Eden, on a sugar-high from the complimentary candy canes and overexcited from her first successful Santa encounter, began yelling "jingle bell" over and over in an offkey, sing-song voice.  Don't ask me.  She stopped this only long enough to ask me what would happen if she cracked her head open in the parking lot and to tell me that when I peered at the pictures through the translucent bag I "look really old, like old lady."

I tried turning on the radio in the car to calm them both down, but unfortunately it was turned to Christmas music and the song that came on was "Jingle Bell Rock," which instantly encouraged them both. So my car sounded something like this:

Radio: Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock
Eden: JINGLEBELLJINGLEBELLJINGLEBELLJINGLEBELL
Connor: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Radio: Jingle bells swing and Jingle bells ring
Eden: JINGLEBELLJINGLEBELLKITTYCATJINGLEBELL
Connor: aaaAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA
Me: ....(beating my head against the steering wheel)

This is when I discovered a secret weapon.

See, it turns out that apparently in Thai Orphanages they don't play The Quiet Game.  So my daughter has yet to learn that this is not, in fact, a legitimate game and is instead a sneaky way to get peace and quiet for five minutes.  In addition, Eden has a serious competitive streak.  So when I suggested we play an exciting new game in which the first person to talk loses, she not only stopped jingle belling for the remainder of the car ride, but all the way through dinner preparation and halfway through the meal-- a good solid forty minutes of blissful silence.  And much to my surprise, Connor actually played along too-- he stopped yelling the second I said "Go" and didn't start up again until we arrived home and he got mad about how cold it was outside.

So I have apparently discovered the best parenting tool ever.  I just have to remember to use it sparingly so that the novelty doesn't wear off!

~Jess

In Which The Little Miss Shops Till I Drop

Today the kids and I went to the mall; Eden wanted to go shopping for me and her little brother.  So Connor and I were banished to the rest of the mall, while she shopped in Target.

For two hours.

I have no idea what she was doing in there; but I figure she probably spent at least half that time in the shoe aisle.  I have never met another human being who can window shop for shoes as long as this kid can.  I'm not a shopper, people, but I have a daughter that could happily live in the mall if they had pull-out beds in those park benches.  I spent about an hour walking around the extremely crowded mall, and the rest of the time on a bench, texting Jeremy to whine about how bored I was.

Connor spent the time carefully waving to every single person that walked by us, but after a while he got fed up with that and started yelling directly into my ear.  Someday my daughter will understand the depths of my love for her, because normally wild horses couldn't drag me out to the shopping mall on a Saturday, let alone the Saturday after the busiest shopping day of the year with Connor in tow.  Connor has a short attention span for shopping, and when he's finished he tends to let me know at top volume.

Anyway, I've informed Jer that next year, he gets to take Eden out Christmas shopping, because he loves shopping even more than I do.  And by loves, I mean hates with a fiery passion in the depths of his soul.  I figure it will give me time to do all of my own shopping, wrapping and decorating while they're out.  And if I'm feeling particularly evil that day, I'm going to tell her that what I really want for Christmas next year is shoes.  I'm not sure they'll ever come home.

~Jess

In Which We Find A Tree

Today the kiddos and I spent a leisurely morning together, and then after our respite care worker arrived Eden and I headed out to find ourselves a Christmas tree.  This will be her first Christmas home, and I wanted to do things right, so we headed out to one of the U-Cut places in town, grabbed a saw, a kneeling pad and a cart, and after a quick hay ride, trekked out into the lot to find ourselves a tree.

And we found a tree.  Boy howdy did we find a tree.

So we have twelve foot ceilings in our living room, and we needed something tall.  Eden fell in love with this gorgeous ten footer noble fir, which we both agreed was quite the best tree on the lot.  What I quickly discovered, however, as the hand saw bit into the trunk, was that the reason why this gorgeous tree was still standing so close to the beginning of the lot was that it was, to put it delicately, big boned.  It had a trunk that was probably eight inches thick, and I'm pretty sure had a heartwood of solid iron.

Half an hour later, I was drenched in sweat and had made it only about a third of the way through the trunk.  Eden was looking on in increasing concern and making helpful comments like "Mommy, you okay?  You face really red."  Finally after forty minutes or so of sawing away at this thing and getting nowhere I gave up and recruited one of the gentlemen who worked there, who took the tree down with a chainsaw in about forty seconds.  I admit I had a feeling of satisfaction when it keeled over, like the tree had been taunting me or something and had now gotten its just desserts.  I realize how petty and silly it is to want revenge on a tree, but logic has very little to do with many of my impulses.

Anyway, so we hauled it home and one of our neighbors was kind enough to help me get it through the door.  Unfortunately in the drama of getting this massive tree off the lot I'd forgotten to ask them to drill a hole in the bottom for our stand, which is one of the "pin" types often used for trees this size.  So our awesome neighbor came to the rescue again and we drilled our own hole.

So the tree is up now and it's really starting to feel like the holiday season in here.  The house smells wonderful.  But because the bottom of the tree wasn't cut straight across, while it's stable and isn't going anywhere it looks like our tree drank a bit too much eggnog and now has to lean against the wall for support.  This has the same effect that crooked picture frames have on me, and I'm convinced I will go slowly insane over the course of the month.  Oh well.  Eden had a blast, and Connor was enchanted the minute we strung the lights, so I'll be okay.  Given our eccentric family, it's not surprising we have a tree that's a bit eccentric too, right?

I have to go out and get another couple string of lights tomorrow, as four strings wouldn't cover it this year (told you this tree was big boned), and we need to string some more cranberries too, but we at least got the parts of the tree covered that need a ladder.  We'll save putting the ornaments on for when Jer gets home.  I was missing him a lot today; doing Christmas things inevitably makes me think about family, and it's just not the same without him here.

Also I bet he could have cut down the dang tree.

~Jess

In Which We Ponder Pomanders

So this morning I dropped Connor off and headed over to the shopping center that my doctor's office is located in, where I sat in a coffee shop for a bit to while away the time before my check-up.  I moseyed on over to the clinic half an hour ahead of the allotted time, only to discover that my appointment had been scheduled for yesterday instead of today.

Whoops.

So apparently while I am obsessed with getting to the childrens' various appointments on time to a point that is borderline unhealthy, I have no compunctions about completely missing my own appointments.  I rescheduled for Wednesday.  Hopefully I'll be able to remember to, you know, actually show up.  I'm sure the doctor and staff whose time I wasted yesterday would probably appreciate that.

Anyway, then I went out and picked up the last odds and ends I needed for Christmas decorating, which will be happening in our house on Friday.  Eden and I will be picking out a tree, stringing the lights on it and making cranberry garlands.  I'll put the house lights up if I have the time too, and we'll put out all our other decorations except for the Christmas tree ornaments.  We're going to wait until Jer's home to put those up, so we'll have something to do together as a family.

After the kids came home, Connor napped while Eden and I made pomanders.  For those of you not familiar with pomanders, basically you take an orange (or in our case, a clementine), poke it full of holes with a skewer and stab a clove into each hole.  Then if you choose to, you can roll it in other spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg.  Somehow the clove-and-spice mixture magically causes the orange to last 8,000 years and also to smell delicious.  I have no idea how this works.

Stabbing cloves into an orange is not only entertaining and strangely mesmerizing work, but it's also sneaky fine motor skills practice.  I'm a huge fan of Sneaky Therapy That We Don't Refer To As Therapy Because It Is Fun.  It was interesting enough work that Eden, the self-purported Hater of All Things Crafty, actually made four of them, and since I'd already made quite a few before she got home we now we have a big bowl of pomanders sitting on the dining room table.  If you buy the cloves in bulk at an Asian foods store this is actually a fairly inexpensive way to make your house smell ridiculously good.

After that it was off to drop Eden at swim practice.  Then Connor and I went out for some quality time at the local bookstore, where we shared a piece of lemon tart while snuggling and reading a book.  It was nice to get a bit of one-on-one time with both the kids today; that doesn't happen very often!

~Jess

In Which I Buy Tree Trimmings And Connor Runs Out Of Steam

I took the opportunity today while the kids were in school to go out and pick up some of my Christmas trimmings for this year.  This will be Eden's first Christmas home, and I want to do it right!  Of course, it made me want to put up all of my decorations now, and it's still too early.  This will be Eden's first Thanksgiving too, and I should probably wait until she's experienced all of the holidays before I start skipping over them.

Connor had a bit of a rough day; he didn't have any seizures, but he threw up all of his meals at school and at physical therapy he did an amazingly realistic impression of a sack of potatoes.  Not only did the kid not attempt to work on any of his normal exercises, but he was actively trying to lie down every time we sat him up.  He spent the entire trip back home alternating between signing "tired" and "sad," and when I gave in and put him down around five in the evening he was out in less than five minutes.  Part of it may just be the season; we're getting into the time when it's dark outside at a depressingly early hour, and goodness knows it always makes me want to hibernate.  I hope he's not coming down with something; maybe it was just one of those days.

Hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow!

~Jess

In Which It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas Already, Which Is Kind of Nuts

Today Connor and I had a bit of a slow start; after I gave him his morning meds I went back to bed and we both slept in a while.  It felt really strange not needing to get up and get the day started!  I finally dragged myself out of bed and woke Connor up, and we puttered around the house a bit before heading over to my parents' house for lunch.  I love having them so close by now; it's great to be able to spend so much time with them!

Then my mom and I went out and did a bit of what turned into early Christmas shopping, which wasn't our original intent.  Christmas definitely sneaked up on me this year; it doesn't seem like we should be anywhere close to December yet!  I'm totally not ready and I hadn't even started thinking about presents or decorations, but from the way the stores were decked out you'd think the holiday was next week.  What the heck happened to Thanksgiving in the retail world, anyway?  I'm pretty sure that stuff was all on the shelves before Halloween.  The mall had the 50 foot tall Christmas trees up already, which Connor was excited by, though he didn't demand we get them as presents for all our relatives this year.  I guess the kid is growing up and he's too cool to demand giant Christmas trees as presents.  I kind of miss it-- can't believe how big he's getting.  Can you believe he'll be eight next year?  That's crazy talk, people.


Eden spent the whole day out at her retreat and didn't get back until around nine in the evening.  She told me "I had a good time, but I really really happy to see my bed!"  She was in her pajamas fifteen minutes after she got home, and in bed five minutes after that-- I've never seen the kid get ready for sleeping so quickly or enthusiastically.  Evidently the retreat was fun but also exhausting.  She said she'd definitely like to go back sometime, which was great to hear.  I think they do a summer camp as well, so that might be a really good option for her next year.

I'm so glad she enjoyed herself, and I'm really proud of her for handling being away from home so well.  Trusting that we'll still be here when she returns is a huge step for her, and I think a hallmark of growing maturity and understanding that our family is not a temporary stop for her, but a permanent home.  Hooray for our girl!

~Jess

In Which It's Almost Christmas

Yesterday we had a very busy day!  In the morning, we went shopping for a winter coat for Ellen.  It's the coolest, driest month in Thailand currently and it's about 90 degrees here, so the weather in Washington state is going to be a bit of a shock for her.  It took us a while to find something, because our child is a serious tomboy.  She's got a major punk rock edge to her-- she likes to wear distressed jeans, graphic t-shirts, and black, black and more black.  In Thailand, where the majority of clothing for women seems to be super feminine, this was a tall order to fill.  But after a bit of searching we finally found a black sporty jacket with a hood that was warm enough and that she really liked. 

We also found her a Christmas present while we were out, since all of our presents for her are currently at home and completely inaccessible.  We had to do a bit of maneuvering to be in a position where we could get her a present without her finding out we were buying it and also to figure out what the heck we should get her, because really this is the most laid-back kid ever (except if you try to buy her things that are pink and frilly).  But we managed, and her present is now safely wrapped and waiting for tomorrow.

Then in the evening, we met some family friends who took us out on a dinner cruise down the Chayo Praya river.  I'd made the mistake of leaving my camera behind in the hotel room, and I was very sad I did because the views were absolutely breathtaking; all of the gilded roofs of the palaces and temples sparkled with thousands of reflected lights and the sheer size and beauty of the massive bridges we passed under left us breathless.  We ate an enormous amount of food-- including a whole fish sizzling over a miniature charcoal fire-- and enjoyed the lovely company.  We all had an absolutely marvelous time; I think it's one of the best things we've done here so far.

We came home fairly late and today was of course Christmas Eve, so we slept in and then took things fairly easy.  We did go out shopping this morning to find Ellen another pair of new shoes, as she has already worn down the toes on the first pair we got her.  She drags her feet when she walks, and on the badly broken pavement of Thailand's streets this means that her shoes take quite the beating.  So we found her a new, more sturdy pair (in black, of course) and then stopped into a music shop to find her a beginner's course for her ukulele.  After that we came home and spent pretty much the rest of the evening just enjoying each other's company. 

It was an odd Christmas Eve for us; here Christmas is pretty much just a commercial holiday and so it was business as usual for everyone else.  We have no stockings here in our hotel room and no Christmas tree.  Normally I would be reading Connor the Christmas story before kissing him goodnight, and then Jer and I would wait until the little guy was asleep, fix some hot apple cider, and fill the stockings.  Then we would set the table with our best china for our breakfast the next morning and leave a Christmas cracker at each place setting before heading off to bed. 

But instead we're celebrating Christmas with our family on two continents.  For me, Christmas has always been more than a religious holiday-- it's always been about family.  So it's very difficult knowing that we're so far away from not just Connor, but the rest of our loved ones too.

I'm sure we'll have another Christmas when we come home in a little less than a week.  And if we have to be so far away, I'm so glad that it's for the best possible reason.  And I think that spending Christmas in Thailand with Ellen will mean that she doesn't associate it with loss or the confusion of an overwhelming and potentially terrifying new place, but with the celebration of a new adventure.  We don't know what she'll think of America (though we suspect she'll plunge right in with her characteristic relish for life) but right now she's having a ball. 

So an early Merry Christmas to everyone.  Much love to you all!

~Jess

In Which Jer Arrives And There Is Much Rejoicing

Jer is here!  Hooray!

Ellen instantly took to him-- no hesitation at all.  They compared scars from surgery (Ellen has had a double tendon release) and decided Jer was the winner.  From then on they've been thick as thieves.

We spent quite a bit of time at the hotel today, which is where she's most comfortable.  I don't think she'd spent a lot of time out in the city before this, so the streets of Bangkok are pretty overwhelming for her.  But now that Jer's here she seems a bit more confident about trying new things. 

So this morning while the two of them bonded over Ellen's ukulele (I told you this kid was awesome), I ventured out to try and do some laundry.  Bangkok has this permeating smell that gets into your clothes very quickly, and so you really can't wear things more than once.  And also I had several pairs of my underwear stolen out of my checked bag on the flight over, so I was running a bit low.  I didn't want to have the laundry done at the hotel room as it's extremely expensive there, so a friend found us a laundry mat within walking distance and I set off to try and navigate my first transaction almost completely in Thai.  It actually wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be; I was surprised at just how much I understood.

Ellen has been a big help in boosting my Thai vocabulary; she's able to correct my pronunciation and help me out with what I'm trying to say.  She thinks Jer's attempts at Thai are hilarious.  Since he's been in school or studying about 70 hours a week, he hasn't been able to learn more than a couple of phrases.  He can say "Hello," "Thank you," and sort of count to ten-- we're still working on that.  His attempts to learn more have prompted a whole lot of giggling.  It's really great to see them getting along so well!

Tomorrow we're hopefully going to have Ellen's passport, and we'll be getting her medical testing done for her visa.  Keep your fingers crossed that we'll be able to get the results back in time to have her visa before Christmas!

~Jess

In Which All Of The Sudden It's Christmas

We put our Christmas tree up today!  A good friend brought his truck over, so we didn't have to try and strap the tree to the top of a car this time, which was very nice.

So Connor spent a good portion of the evening staring at the lights, when he wasn't protesting my musical choice for the event.  I was insisting we listen to Christmas music by Nat "King" Cole, and he demanded we listen to Les Misérables instead.  Because clearly we need more prostitutes dying of tuberculosis singing about their hallucinations to put us in the Christmas spirit about here. 

I vetoed his selection, so he pouted.  Oh well-- he got over it once I spent a few minutes blinking the lights on and off like his own personal disco to make him laugh.

It's looking a whole lot like Christmas around here!

~Jess

In Which We're Back Home

We finally got back to Puyallup late this afternoon, and while it was lovely to travel and see everyone it's good to be home!  I've got a ridiculous amount to do before it's time to board a plane for Thailand, and that's a mere twelve days away.  Doesn't seem like that's possible, but we're really down to the wire!

Connor did extremely well on the plane and the bus to our car; he's really a veteran traveler at this point and it doesn't seem to bother him at all.  He napped for a while en route, and so now of course he's determined to stay up forever.  I'm not surprised by that though; it usually takes him a few days to settle back in after a trip.

I'll be plunging right back into things; I have to put the finishing touches on Ellen's room, pick up the last things we need before we travel, put the house to rights, and if I have any extra time I'd like to try and decorate for Christmas before we go.  We'll be coming back two days before Christmas, so it would be nice to have everything set up and waiting when we get home. 

If we don't manage to finish decorating I can leave it for my parents and mother-in-law to do, but we'll at least have the tree.  If Connor didn't love the Christmas decorations so much I'd be tempted to keep things really low-key, but he gets so much joy out of our tree every year I can't let him down.  I'd like to keep things as normal as possible for the little guy since there will already be so many big changes happening with Ellen's arrival, and normal for him means a Christmas tree on Christmas.  Usually we pick one out the day after Thanksgiving, so we're already late this year.

I guess we should probably buy some Christmas presents too, come to think of it.  That might be a good idea.  So much to do!

~Jess

In Which We Hang Out With Family And Skip A Holiday

It's holiday time, and that means it's time to get together with family!  We'll be seeing various relatives over the next couple of weeks, and are really looking forward to getting together with everyone and catching up.

My mom, sister and I all went out Christmas shopping together today, which was a lot of fun.  Normally I wait and get all my shopping done at the last minute, but that won't fly this year since we leave exactly three weeks for Thailand and won't get back until two days before Christmas, when it will be a bit late to mail everybody packages.  So I'm trying to get as much done as I can now while it's easy to hand presents off, and then we'll probably order the rest online. 

Connor put up with the shopping surprisingly well because all of the stores had up their Christmas displays, which seem to happening earlier and earlier each year.  Christmas is by far his favorite holiday, since it involves lots of sparkly things, lights and music.  The only part he doesn't really care for is the presents; having new stuff he's expected to touch is not exactly his idea of fun. 

Judging from the stores, Thanksgiving doesn't even exist anymore.  Apparently we're just skipping that holiday entirely now, or maybe blending it in with Halloween or something.  Thanksween.  Yes.

But anyway, about Christmas.  I'm having a hard time restraining myself from buying All The Things for Ellen before she gets here, but goodness knows the kid is going to have enough new things to get used to.  You know, new family, new country, new house, etc.  So I got both her and Connor a Christmas ornament today and otherwise we're holding ourselves back.  Since her birthday is only three weeks after Christmas, if we're not careful she's going to think that America is The Land of Presents.  That's not really an impression we'd like to give her.

Seriously though- three weeks!  Tomorrow I'll officially be able to count the number of days before the trip on my fingers and toes.  As we get closer and closer it's becoming more difficult for me to talk about anything else, so sorry if you talk to me and I start sounding like a broken record. 

But seriously, three weeks people.  That's soon!

~Jess

In Which Connor Snoozes And I Pick Up A Needle

Connor didn't feel terribly well today, so we spent most of the day at home.  He snoozed on the couch while I did exciting things like organizing my collection of sequins, sorting seed beads and emptying out my card catalog so I could move it to the garage.  I've labeled the drawers by color and I'm storing my rolls of felt in it.  If Connor's up to it, I'm going to stop by the hardware store tomorrow so I can pick up some cedar moth balls.  I have quite a bit of 100% wool felt, and the last thing I need is to get my studio beautifully organized only to have moths eat all my supplies. 

I've gotten far enough into the studio project that I can start doing a bit of sewing again, so I figured it was past time I got back to work on my current Christmas stocking project.  It's a butterfly themed stocking, and I basically got as far as cutting out pieces when we moved all my stuff out of Ellen's room and it went into storage.  I spent some time experimenting with different ways to decorate the wings, in the end I decided to just go with the old standby and cover the whole mess with sequins.  My current motto seems to be "When in doubt, use more sparkly things."  Sequins solve all problems. 

Of course, I didn't end up working on the stocking in my exciting studio-to-be.  I worked on it on the couch while Connor napped and Loki tried to see just how close he could get to my sequin jars with a paw before I ran him off.  Oh well.

The design is pretty simple for this one, so unless I get carried away and add a bunch of crazy things it should be done in a couple of weeks.  Since I started on it, oh, last December, and it's actually for somebody instead of a random project, it might be nice if I actually got it done before Christmas. 

Me?  Procrastinate?  Never!

~Jess

In Which Connor Feels Much Better And We Find A Therapist

Connor is feeling so much better today!

His rash looks dramatically better, and he didn't throw up a single time today!  The Benedryl did keep him pretty zonked, but he seemed to be way more comfortable anyway.  Sleep is probably just what he needs to help him recover. 

The plan today was to take down the Christmas lights now that the snow is all melted (yes I know it's over a month after Christmas-- don't judge me) but it rained.  So instead I took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill and Jeremy made another dump run.  Apparently the line for the dump was out of the facility and down the street because everyone was dropping off the tree limbs that had during the ice storm; our dump takes yard waste for free and makes compost and wood chips out of it.  So we're going to hold off taking the one small tree branch that came down in our yard and our Christmas tree (don't judge!!) to the dump until Monday, when hopefully everyone will be at work and I won't have to wait for two hours to drop them off.

Other errands today included a trip to the bookstore-- which sadly takes over half an hour to get to now since the one near us shut down-- and a visit to the post office to restock my supply of boxes for Ellen's care packages.  Ellen's Christmas and birthday letters finally came back from translation, so I can put her care package in the mail first thing tomorrow morning!  I ultimately decided to whittle down and combine the two care packages rather than send her two separate boxes really close together.  We don't want to overwhelm her with stuff, and she'll be getting a February package in a few weeks.  Hopefully our adoption agency will be visiting her orphanage soon as well!

Speaking of Ellen, I made an exciting discovery last week!  I found a marriage and family therapist nearby who specializes in adolescence, has experience with adoptive families, lived in Thailand for a number of years and is fluent in Thai!  Ellen is an extremely resilient, intelligent and brave girl and she wants to be adopted, but any child who is adjusting to a new country, culture, language and family-- especially a teenager-- is likely to have a difficult time (who wouldn't?) and we want to have resources immediately available for her should she need them. 

I called and spoke with the therapist, and not only is she more than happy to see Ellen should she need a listening ear, but she'd also be willing to meet with us before we leave for Thailand to help us figure out the best way to ease our daughter's transition into our family.  I'm really thankful that we've found someone who Ellen wouldn't need a translator to communicate with and who is extremely familiar with Thai culture.

Can't wait to get our daughter home!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is Still Sick And I Play With Sidewalk Chalk

Connor continued to feel Not So Good today-- he was still running a fever and had six or seven little seizures.  He spent most of the day either curled up on the couch or snuggled up in Jer's lap.  I think his throat might be hurting again, because he had his fingers in his mouth pretty much all day and he was drooling a lot.  We think he might be working on losing another tooth too though, so it's hard to tell.  Either way he won't be in school tomorrow, though. 

Hopefully this is a simple bug and it will be done in a couple of days.  The last thing we need is another five week saga of Connor being sick.

We'd been planning to take the Christmas lights down today, but because since the little guy is feeling poorly we didn't have the chance to do it.  We couldn't take him outside, and it takes both of us to get them down since somebody needs to hold the ladder.  We did, however, get the Christmas tree taken down and the indoor decorations put away.  We moved the armchair back into place in the library and now whenever I walk by I do a double take because it looks weird.  I've gotten used to having the Christmas tree there, and I'm a little sad to see it go.

Jer got to play with power tools when he chopped it into pieces small enough for the garbage truck to manage though, so that was okay.

After we'd gotten the tree taken down and Jer went back to playing Watch The Sick Child Breathe, I swept the eight bajillion pine needles out of the garage and then spent a while playing with sidewalk chalk.  I wanted to figure out where the furniture would go in my craft space so I can figure out where to hang the shelves.  I've drawn it out on paper, but it's easier for me to see what the flow of the space will be if I actually mark everything out on the floor, and since the floor is concrete that's not a problem.  I drew all over the walls too for good measure, since we're painting them anyway. 

It was great to see how everything will be laid out, and after viewing the space I made some changes in how I'm going to arrange things.  Now I have to take down the old shelves and start the fun process of cleaning off the floors and walls.  They've got about ten years of grime on them-- I'm pretty sure generations upon generations of spiders have lived out their little spiderly lives in here completely unchallenged-- so I'm not exactly looking forward to it, but it needs to be done.  The sooner I get it cleaned up, the sooner I can start painting!

We'll see how much I get done tomorrow with the little guy home, though.  I'll probably spend most of the day as a human armchair. 

Oh well.  I sure hope he feels better soon.  It's never fun being sick!

~Jess

In Which We Take A Post-Holiday Field Trip

Connor finally crashed at 4:00am last night, but he's actually gone to bed on time tonight!  So this will be a short blog post because I intend to take full advantage of the chance to get some sleep.

Connor and I spent a quiet day together slowly putting the house back to rights after the glorious mess that was Christmas, and then as soon as Jer got home we piled into the van and drove to see the Fantasy Lights display at one of our local parks.  The Christmas lights are on display in the park until right before New Year's Day, and because we chose to wait to see them until after Christmas there was no wait time and there were only a few cars ahead of us on the path, which was pretty fantastic.  Connor brought his Gobo doll along to see the lights too.  He's more excited about that doll than I've seen him get about any of his toys for a while, so we like to encourage it when we can.  I'm going to need to figure out pretty quickly if Gobo is washable, though, because he is getting drooled and chewed on in a major way.  Oh well.

Anyway, Connor seemed to really enjoy the lights, which took us about half an hour to drive through.  There were plenty of displays that moved (fish jumped over the car, Santa shot presents out of a cannon, dragons breathed fire, etc.) and they captured his attention pretty well.  He was extremely quiet through most of the car ride, which is unusual for him, and then when we got to the end of the park he started making noise again.  I'm not sure what his expression looked like because I was driving so I couldn't really look back at him a lot, but Jer said he looked like he was pretty fascinated by the whole affair.  And Jer and I enjoyed ourselves too.

I think we'll make this a holiday tradition!

~Jess