I love writing my Christmas letter, and clearly do it for my, myself, and I, as well as my children’s future enjoyment.  But I like to force others to read it as well. 

 

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December 14-19, 2013

Dear Loved Ones,

If you are looking forward to a cheerful Christmas letter chockfull of darling children and heart-warming family moments, well, my friend, start a fire with this and move on to the next on your pile.  It’s not anything particular about 2013; it’s more that it’s Year Seven of being a stay-at-home, which is probably two years longer than I should have signed up for.  However, with the help of a voodoo doctor, a few revelations, and a little Peace & Quiet, this year has shaped up just fine. 

My mother says that I’ll forget about all the trouble Wesley causes someday. I reply, “Blog.” And then we both laugh, because his antics made good copy but lousy daily life. Perhaps you remember my failed attempts to sell Wesley when he was two. He was off the market for most of his third year, but recently I’ve considered putting him back up.  In a physically affectionate family, he is the most snuggly and huggly; he can also throw the biggest, loudest, longest, and least provoked tantrums (and this is with Piper as his competition!).  As I scratch my head to find something nice to write about the kid who has given me lots of writing material, I can at least brag that he learned to ride a two-wheeled bike last spring, totally rocked a Mohawk this summer (like Daddy!), and he is excited to learn to read (I think he wants to learn bomb-making on the internet).  He turns four in a month and will spend next year in as many preschools as I can schedule. 

Piper added to her childhood legend by choosing to spend her first day of kindergarten sitting in the office instead of cooperating in class. (Day 2 was much better.)  She still doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of her, and if she wants something, she figures out pretty ingenious ways of accomplishing her objective.  Piper is not so much manipulative as she simply doesn’t recognize obstacles.  “Obstacle? What obstacle?  I don’t see any obstacles,” she says as she trods all over them. She is going to make an awesome and effective adult, I keep reminding myself as I try to help us both survive her childhood.  Her passion is animals and babies, and she loves being the keeper of our two new kittens.  She spent much of her 5th year watching babies—of all species—being born through the wonders of youtube.com.  I can’t even predict what she’ll pursue as a six-year-old.

Kyla, now seven, has been through the biggest changes this year.  She had some really challenging behaviors that, coming from Kyla and not her siblings, raised some red flags.  We ended up at a nutritionist (aka voodoo doctor) and found she had a sensitivity to wheat, corn, and nightshade vegetables—basically all the common GMO foods. (And just as I perfected my bread recipe!) Then she went from acing Kindergarten to really struggling by the end of the year.  Turns out she is dyslexic, something I didn’t know very much about even though I have a BA in Education/English, a MA in Special Education, and have mostly finished my Reading Specialist endorsement.  Kyla has been my best course work yet and I provide her private tutoring in addition to her regular schooling. 

Dyslexia does some odd things.  Primarily, it means that the super-highway Piper and I (and most likely you, dear reader) have between the parts in our brain that connect letters to sounds and sounds to words is, for Kyla, more like a bunch of back country roads she has to build herself.  This lack of a super-highway actually has some compensations. The right hemisphere of a dyslexic is about 10% bigger than a non-dyslexic and they are often unconventional thinkers.   For me, bibliophile that I am, it has meant embracing “ear-reading” as just as valid as “eye-reading”.  The books that Kyla can eye-read are pretty tedious, so she spends hours a day devouring audio books that I didn’t read until I was much, much older.  So now she’s this odd mix of being a really well-read 1st grader who can barely read; her vocabulary is off the charts and her spelling is atrocious. After weeks of daily practice, she still often misspells “of”, but she can rattle off the causes and effects of the Great Stock Market Crash (thank you, American Girl books!).   School is going to be quite the adventure for many, many years.

Dwayne is continually and inexplicably charmed by all of our children.  A much more generous person would see that as a positive sign of parental love; I prefer to think that he doesn’t spend enough time with them.  (Seven years, my friends!)   While he wants them to stay this age forever, he can see advantages of them all being big enough to help him build The Great Walls of N.  Every pharaoh needs a slave force, but I suspect that since every block he uses weighs more than any of our children, he may have a long wait.  I am still understandably charmed by my husband, and his conversation and cooking abilities are only part of his appeal. Oh, yes, Dwayne is still happily at Microsoft and is looking forward to Santa bringing him an XBOX One.  I’m hoping Santa brings him one as well, because the stores are sold out. 

Me?  Once I got over the shock that my child—my child—has a reading disability, I became zealous about learning everything I could about, well, everything related to literacy. We’ll see if I open up my own charter school someday.  I’m realizing that my theme this year has been turning from frustration into fascination.  Kyla’s issues were very, very frustrating to me until we got a better grasp on them, and since, I’ve been fascinated with dyslexia and now desire to be an agent of change up to the state legislative level.  I’ve become awed by Piper’s capabilities and potential, and I have some hope that even Wesley may become less aggravating.  Eventually.

The kittens?  Well, this house already has enough “cute” in it that I certainly didn’t need any more.  But, as we’ve already established, Dwayne seems to be enchanted by Cute Things That Poop. So we have two kittens now that are going to be tossed out on their adorable, stinky bottoms as soon as they are big enough to outrun raccoons.

My happy place this year, besides anywhere Quiet, is the cabin, christened “Heartsease”. The kids are old enough to not drown when we play for hours at the beach, so I can read between uttering, “But we just had lunch” to each kid. I am taking a few more graduate courses, volunteering heaps, and will begin tutoring again in the new year. I’ve read more than fifty books this year, most surprisingly intellectual (someone recommend some good smut, STAT!). I actually clean the kitchen far more often than I read, but I don’t like to dwell on that.

We have a Bethlehem Star on our back porch, brightening the dark street below us. I don’t want to imply in any way that the Christ Child lives here, per se, but our prayer is that you, too, find what you seek.

Love,

Denise, for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and Wes

I love to write about myself, so once a year, I sit down to write our  Christmas letter.   I sent it out a month ago, but I forgot to post it here.  This is for Sheryl, who made my day by confessing she still reads my blog even though we haven’t seen each other for dog years. 

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Dear Friends,
If the soul of wit is brevity, prepare yourself for something, at best, half-witted. Because I’ve got three kids, a husband, and one cabin to tell you about. But the real theme of 2012 for us has been walls—building them, tearing them down, inside and out. Having a degree in English, you may think I’m being figurative. But I’m pretty shallow emotionally, so Need walls are literal, not metaphorical.
Last winter, Dwayne began making plans for us to go to Hawaii (sans kids). I was on Cloud 9 for about 24 hours before I realized that I’d rather remodel our kitchen than relax for a week. If you can’t understand that reasoning, then I won’t be able to explain it. But my parents took all three kids for a week and a half, while we helped a contractor tear down walls, rip up carpet, and raise ceilings. I now have a great room that feels more spacious with easy-to-clean floors and good lighting. And unlike Hawaii, I get to enjoy it for decades.
Dwayne went looking for the property of his dreams this last year and ended up buying me the cabin of my dreams instead. Our imagined ten acre chalet turned into a real log cabin on ¼ acre on Whidbey Island. We’ve had it for three months and have already built a few interior walls (to gain a bedroom and hallway) and have comfortably appointed it. My goal has been to furnish it exclusively with used items (I’m a fan of http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com), and excepting the obvious of building materials, fire extinguishers, and mattresses, we’ve used thrift stores and Craigslist to outfit the cabin. We love to share it almost as much as we love being there ourselves.
When Dwayne wasn’t searching for his 10 acre kingdom this year, he built some exterior walls that nearly put to shame his past nine years of empire building our two acres. It was both impressive and maddening to the wife who wants to just garden without the literal ton of bricks in my way. Or, more likely, on my flowers! Grumble, grumble. Dwayne started a new group at Microsoft this spring, hoping to just program until he got his bearings. So his first week, they made him a lead again and already he’s got more than a full team of reports. A lot of things about this new group have not gone according to plan, but this man always lands on his feet and now there are lots of new people who are now discovering just how darn likeable he is.
Kyla, now six, started half-day Kindergarten this year. She loves it almost as much as I do! [I get to volunteer in her class once in a while and it really gives me the itch to teach again. There are more similarities than you’d think between teaching Kindergarten and alternative Junior High.] Kyla is a bit of mystery to me because I think she is most like me. Yeah, I get the irony. She needs time alone daily and her greatest pleasure is listening to long books on CD. She spends a good part of the year outside doing her own sort of projects. And she has a temper, which I had no idea I had until I had kids. And we are both infatuated with Dwayne.
Piper. Piper. She’ll be five in two months. She probably won’t be ruling the world for a few more decades, and it’s too early to tell if she will be saving it or destroying it. This summer, I took off her training wheels and she didn’t care for that. So she went to the garage, got out the tools and put the training wheels back on herself. A few weeks later, she took them off and taught herself to ride a two-wheeler in less than 15 minutes. Stand in the way of this child at your own peril, whether she is trying to eat her body weight in stolen chocolate or surprising me by sweeping the entire upstairs “so you don’t have to do so much work, Mama!”
I spent the better part of 2012 trying to sell Wesley. Sure, it was his first time being two, but he’s my third two-year-old in just a few years. I’m kinda tired of cleaning up after a kid who learns how to open the sealed soy milk and then pours four cartons of it over my carpet. Or who sweetly asks for a glass of milk, and throws himself—howling–on the floor when I don’t bring him water. Or who tears his waffle in two then refuses to eat it, hungry as he is, because it isn’t whole. (You see why I couldn’t get anyone to buy him?) Sure, he’s got dimples and the there’s-nothing-I-can’t-do personality that I inexplicably prefer over good manners, but his in utero nickname wasn’t “Omega” for nothing! I remind myself that if Darlene survived raising Dwayne (sure, she sent him to boarding school—twice–but who wouldn’t?), then I can see this boy to adulthood and know that he could make someone as happy as Dwayne makes me.
I am still a half-time stay-at-mom: 12 hours of parenting a day, followed immediately by 12 “on call” hours. If you think that hasn’t gotten to me after six years, you have an inflated sense of my sanity. I continue to be an introvert who surrounds herself with unreasonable children all day long. My therapy is projects—remodeling, gardening, painting, improving, designing, anything that makes me filthy and possibly more organized. I started the year doing a polar bear jump in a bikini (‘cause I’m not getting younger or more toned) and a resolution to read at least one nonfiction book a month. I’ve read 56 books thus far this year and 26 were nonfiction. A few books from this list actually have tweaked my life—many of my actions and giving now must pass through the “does this contribute in a Christ-like way to alleviating local and global poverty, especially in terms of opportunities for girls and women?” filter. This is subject that goes far beyond the scope this half-witted letter, but I will be addressing this more in my blog (http://www.needopedia.blogspot.com) in 2013. This will be in-between deep thoughts about play dough removal and dinner menus. And, apropos to nothing, my most surprising accomplishment—at least to me—is perfecting my bread recipe and making all my own bread.
Our family sends you our love and prayers for a meaningful Christmas, a time when every child is a reminder of the Christ child. Even Wesley….
Love,
Denise, for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and Wes