Heiss Holiday Humbug 2017

I actually finished this on our anniversary (which we celebrated with a bowl of ice cream and staying in; newborns will do that to you) and started sending it out to people. I know I haven't sent it out to half the people I've been meaning to. But I'm sure it will get there...

You can download the full size here or read the text below the jump. Enjoy!

Sing, Sing, Sing!

Rachel and Miriam had their Christmas choir concert on December 11th. Andrew was out of town and Grandma wasn't feeling well, but Grandpa helped me walk all the kids to the school and Naanii, Uncle Patrick, and Auntie Josie met us there.

They had a good repertoire between their two choirs. The boy show choir sang the Animaniacs' Noël, which was quite entertaining. I don't think any of the kids singing it knew it came from an old a perfectly-reasonably-aged cartoon.

Neither of my girls are huge fans of doing silly actions while they sing, which is patently clear from watching them. If only they understood that by not doing the actions with everyone else they are the ones who end up looking silly. I totally get it though because I'm a little bit that way myself.

But I got over it, see exhibition A:

Christmas talent show in Cairo, 2009

Alexander at two months

Alexander's check up went well. He's now 10 lbs. 11 oz., which is quite a bit smaller than any of his sisters were at two months, but quite a bit bigger than his brother. It's hard to count Benjamin in on any sort of comparison because he was such an anomaly, but the girls were all 12+ pounds by two months. My kids tend to explode in the weight department for the first few months and then taper off. Alexander is still pretty small, but he's growing well.

Wahoo!

Penny Patrol (Disbanded)

On Saturday morning, Zoë did a lovely number two and Andrew volunteered to probe it for that silly penny. We were beginning to give up hope by this point. From our research online, the penny should have made its appearance by day four, so on Friday at Alexander's check up I casually asked the doctor how long we should wait and what we should do if that penny never showed up. He asked if there was a chance we could have missed a bowel movement—and admittedly there was. Andrew was on penny patrol for the first couple of days, but then he went out of town so that meant I was on penny patrol. And then he came back from being out of town and I was still on penny patrol because, as it turns out, she tends to poop during business hours. 

I'm kind of losing my everliving mind with five children to worry about so, yeah, there is a chance that she may have pooped that penny out completely unnoticed. 

But I was also being hyper vigilant about her pooping habits so...I was pretty sure I caught them all. 

The doctor suggested we bring her in for an x-ray by the end of this week if we still hadn't seen a penny, just to be sure it wasn't lodged somewhere that might be problematic. But we got the okay to give her a few more days—even several more days—to let things work themselves out (things being pennies).

This brings us back to Saturday when we heard Andrew's jubilant cry from the bathroom, "We have a penny!"

There was much rejoicing.

"I pooped my penny out!" Zoë squealed with delight.

Here she is holding her slightly-corroded, scrubbed-to-death penny:

Christmas preview

We had Andrew's siblings over for FHE tonight (or at least half of them (one is up in Idaho and the other...bahahaha...there's a long backstory there, to say the least)) since Reid and Karen leave for Mexico tomorrow and will be gone through Christmas. It was fun to get to see them and get the cousins together.

Andrew barbecued some smash burgers for everyone (in the freezing cold) and then we gathered around the Christmas tree for some music. Miriam and Rachel both played a piece they'd been working on. 

Snow, snow, snow

This afternoon the kids and I went out to deliver some Christmas goodies to the neighbours and it started snowing the most beautiful snowfall in the world! The flakes were big and beautiful and perfect. The clouds weren't dropping huge globs of flakes or showering us with ice pellets. The snowflakes were just the right size for us to admire their beauty and uniqueness before melting away. 

It was a magical snowfall. 

Sweetest stocking stuffers

It was overambitious of me to decide that I'd make stockings for our newly minted family before I'd even begun making babies. In all honesty, making stockings is a whole lot easier than making babies, but I've ended up making babies faster than I can make stockings for them. 

Babies, as it turns out, require quite a lot of time and attention. Go figure.

Eight years ago, I whipped up a stocking for Miriam and we shoved her inside because when you have a tiny baby at Christmastime you need a picture of the baby in a stocking (I think there's a rule about that somewhere).

This year I stuffed Alexander into Benjamin's not-quite-finished stocking (because Alexander doesn't have a stocking yet (and why would he? Zoë doesn't have one yet either)):

I still have to add Benjamin's name and the little hanger thing on his stocking. And I think I will try to knit one up really quick for Zoë this year as well because we only have one extra one (that Grandma Sharon made, and which we've always used for our babies when I've been too slow to make a stocking for them by Christmas, which has happened 3/5 times).

I think, judging from the size of the stockings (which should be about the same size since they follow the same pattern) and the sizes of the babies stuffed into them, that Alexander isn't quite as chubby as Miriam managed to be by this age.

 But he sure is a sweet little stocking stuffer!

O Christmas Tree

We decorated the Christmas tree...on December 3rd. We gave our tree away before we moved back to Utah so Grandma set up her tree for us. We used our own ornaments, however, because Grandma's ornaments are lovely, while our ornaments are got-a-handful-of-children worthy.

This picture didn't quite turn out, but here's Alexander smiling up at Daddy:

Thanksgiving'd

I've been meaning to write about Thanksgiving for quite some time, obviously, and probably would have had more to say had I written about it in a more timely manner. But I'm so far behind I hardly know where to begin. To borrow the words of my friend Lindsay, "You know in the movies when a rider falls from their galloping horse but their foot gets stuck in the bootstrap? Maybe that's happened to you, I don't know, but that's kind of how I feel right now. I'm the rider being bounced and dragged along against my will, and December is the horse."

Because it's seriously the middle of December already, which is just crazy!

At least Thanksgiving morning was pretty relaxed. We had little to do but play because we (Andrew and I) were in charge of pie and did our baking the day before. It sure was fun to have so many little cousins around to play with!

Here are the Benjamin, Gavin, Zoë and Maren enjoying some bubbles and chalk:

Why shouldn't my goose sing as well as thy goose?

Here's a sampler of Alexander's breathing...

Here he is shortly after falling asleep for a nap:



Here he is, fast asleep in the dead of night:



Here he is that same night after changing position (creating a slight tune change):



And here he is attempting a conversation this morning after his bath:



Sometimes he breathes so quietly he almost sounds normal. Other times he's so loud I could swear there was a flock of geese flying over the house. We love him no matter how he breathes.