2019 Christmas Letter

December 3-10, 2019

D

ear Friends and Family,

For 355 days, writing this letter is one of my favorite things to do in a year. The other ten days I am actually. Writing. This. Letter. Yesterday, Kyla surreptitiously timed how long I could go without being interrupted while I worked on this, and she couldn’t reach 5 minutes without having to reset the stopwatch.  Hopefully, it will take you less time to read the inanity. 

Dwayne has conquered a few “firsts” this year, and I can’t decide which I’m more excited about. In the first time since he started working at Microsoft almost 23 years ago, Dwayne has used all his annual vacation! And instead of losing days this year, he lost almost 50 pounds and he feels (and looks) terrific.  We’ve been together 20 years, and this is the fittest I’ve known him—good thing, since he has to keep up with a rigorous regiment of tickling and bedtime stalling for all three kids.  Over Spring Break, he and Wes tried axe-throwing, and you can already guess what they built in our side yard last summer. Dwayne also has been trying to teach all four of us programming; his next project will be to build a brick wall next to the axe target so that he can conveniently bang his head as needed.  It will be less trouble.

We have a teenager now!  Kyla-my-Kyla, who has been grown up for years, turned 13 in September. She is a minimalist with everything but her digital audiobooks.  Steve Jobs-esque, she has a uniform she has adopted for ease of life—black pants and red or purple shirt. Being already zen-content, her stocking is a struggle to fill, or so Santa informs me. At school, she’s enjoying a more challenging curriculum, but isn’t minding that in March, she will be a middle school drop-out as we start our world adventure.  Kyla has forgotten to read the Attitude Book for American Teenagers and keeps our family together with her “okay, breathe, we can do this” approach to life.  Dragons are her spirit animal and the great outdoors is her happy place.  

The toddler who discovered how to steal rum balls from the top of the fridge now is the official Christmas cookie maker of the Need household.  So far, Piper has made toffee, spritz, and rum balls, bourbon balls, and, ahem, more rum balls.  She also cleans up after herself and starts dinner while I’m at meetings or driving her siblings around. Now that we’ve settled our differences about homework expectations (cough, cough, it’s not optional), our household is rather pleasant. I have learned to distinguish ‘furious silence’ from ‘hateful hush’ and can now understand Pipernese, a pidgin of English, waterfowl, wombat, and feline.  She also has made heaps of knitted stuffed animals this year by creating her own patterns, and a friend taught her to crochet. “Dear Santa, Please bring me yarn” was the opening of her annual letter.  I was most proud when she allowed me to assist her in taking apart the microwave to fix the plate that stopped rotating.  And by bedtime, it was working again. Not bad for an 11 year old. 

Wesley is certainly my superlative child.  Not only has he been chiefly responsible for many “Worst Day of the Year” awards and “Most Dramatic Response” meltdowns, but this year he handily won “Most Terrifying Event” in my parenting life when he disappeared for an hour or so on a Croatian beach. I’m almost over it, but Dwayne is currently researching GPS options before our Round the World adventure. Fortunately, Wes’s ability to not die is strong, as he figured out how to jump off our (ahem, lower) roof safely last spring and quickly picks up new ways of defying gravity with his hoverboard and balance ball.  Staying alive has been an extra-useful skill now that he is home schooled and we spend … a lot … of time together. He also has taught himself to use my tools (though not to put them away) and between the drill, duct tape, and the woodpile, he has happily made himself a multitude of weapons and tools.

The cats have been on the losing end of my wrath (and by extension, Dwayne, because, well, cats) when they smeared a maggot-filled mouse carcass in Wesley’s bedroom this fall. Maggot Day is not nearly as fun as a Snow Day for an impromptu school holiday. I was also not pleased when I opened my oven drawer to find five pinkies cozied up to their mama among stolen insulation in a muffin tin.  Homes with two cats puking in various corners should not also have mice. And do I really need to hear, “Moooooom, Timmy is having sexual relations with my blanket again!”? This is the year I realized I’d rather have a fourth child than another pet.  

On my end, I learned how to love camping again when “Me & 3” went south for a week so Kyla could do an Oregon Trail living history camp. I read a book a day, the youngers reveled in the dirt, river, and Minecraft, and Kyla rocked the 1850s. 2019 brought my first traffic ticket in 29 years of driving, and I’m determined not to wait so long next time. I spent my birthday weekend at the IDA Dyslexia Conference in Portland, and the highlight was having a hotel room to myself (I know!) for three nights. This year looks different for me than the past seven as I disentangled myself from almost all my volunteer and work commitments as we prepare to go abroad in March, bringing only carry-ons and my mother/teacher/adventurer hats. There will be blogging!

Also to prepare us for 16 weeks of travel, Dwayne had the brilliant idea of doing some “practice trips” this year.  We found ourselves flying to Costa Rica in February and Croatia in August. We threw in Canada during Spring Break to round out our “Countries that Begin with C” bingo card.  I can’t imagine enjoying anything more than wandering ancient Roman structures before jumping in the Adriatic Sea, but we all loved the animals and beaches in Costa Rica.  Kyla came up with the FAM (Family Adventure Motto) on our second day in Costa Rica: With Glee! That pretty much summed up our attitude while tromping through Central America and Europe.  

That is also our frame of mind as we are in the midst of the Christmas season, as we merrily eat cookies, light up the tree, count down to Winter Break, and finally, finally, finally end this letter…  

                                                                      …with love to each of you.

                                                                                    Denise, for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and Wes

2018 Christmas Letter

Ornaments broken, books overdue,
Me: “But did you mean NOT to?”
Salads uneaten, you get the gist.
Oops! We’re all on the naughty list.

December 4-12, 2018 seriously

Dear Friends and Family,

I spent an embarrassing amount of time and creative effort on that poem, and I’m afraid I have nothing left but unjustified optimism that that I can pull off the annual epistle.

This year has been especially enjoyable for me, though I should hesitate to speak for the (oh, crap—Kyla just got lost on the ferry, and I had to engage the crew to find her. Back safely now). Restart. You know, “enjoyable” is probably inversely proportional—for me—on how many brains I need to be the motherboard for at a time. I can picture the faces of those nodding in agreement.

Wesley, being youngest, is the one most plugged into the motherboard. The youngers often must get themselves to school, and he’s the one most likely to cheerfully ride his bike to school, helmet on, sometimes even with a backpack and lunch! He has much freedom to make mistakes, and we’re waiting for the “and learn from them” to kick in. To be fair, he only blew up one coin in a light socket this year so maybe learning is happening. Or maybe the key to learning is administering electrical shocks. It’s difficult to discern the correct lesson here. One of my best moments this year was comfortably reading in my garden hammock chair when I was startled by a noise—Wesley wearing roller blades and a look of pure elation, zooming by riding the gas-powered leaf blower like a quidditch broomstick.

Being 70% cat, Piper should be practicing much better hygiene; though to give her credit, she doesn’t randomly vomit on the stairs. Drat—as soon as I read that line to her, she quacked. Pick a species, Pipes! She has a small menagerie that, surprise, she cares for more than she takes care of (said parents of any child, ever). Piper had a breakthrough this year with sibling relationships when, after another tedious tantrum, I dropped her off at Dwayne’s work while I took her siblings to the cabin for a few days. Piper is not one to show weakness, and she gave no indication that going to management meetings was anything but her preferred choice, but we’ve had a significantly more peaceful household since that episode. She still helps my dad bottle wine whenever she can, and it was on her birthday that we all saw Hamilton in Seattle. One of her recent highlights is that she entered a Scholastic name-the-5^th-grade-reading-buddy contest and won! Both Piper and her teacher got their own book box and each classmate got a gecko stuffy as long as your arm. Piper is shy, and most people don’t get to know her well, but if you’ll believe her mother, she’s sugar and spice and with a shot of rum, like her favorite Christmas cookies.

When I grow up, I need to be more like Kyla is at twelve, who really may not need her mother very much, other than ferry finding. I’m still drooling into my pillow when she wakes herself up and gets ready for the school day, packing herself a healthy lunch and gathering her homework, then reminds me to take her to the bus on time. Things that have come out of her mouth this year: “Sorry, Mom, I’m still working on my homework and I don’t want to leave for the cabin until it’s all done so I can enjoy my weekend.” “I’ll clean the kitchen tonight. Dad did the cooking, and Mom already worked enough today.” “Wesley can come snuggle with me when I’m done reading.” Creepy, huh? If the Stepfords had children, this one landed in my nest. She does have plenty of faults—now that she’s grown almost to my height, we can share clothes, and while she’s not really into fashion, she does love socks and my favorites usually end up in her drawer (if they aren’t strewn over the house like stinky breadcrumbs). She rocked a week-long survival camp this summer, and then took a weekend to makeover her bedroom into her own teenage taste, which for her is bold colors and minimalism. This is where Kyla inspires me—she really owns only the things she loves and finds necessary. Her room is relaxing in its simplicity and when I’m ready to declutter, I bring her in to consult.

Dwayne is significantly less the man that he was last year. In the last few months, he has made a full effort to lose weight through healthy eating and exercise, and is on track to soon be the thinnest I have ever known him. Before he lost the weight, he must have lost some brain cells, because he thought it was a good idea for us to spend two July weeks at the cabin building another huge retaining wall—something we last did ten years ago. If he does this to me in our fifties, we’re skipping divorce and going straight to husbandcide. Of course, as all his bright ideas do, it turned out even better than he envisioned, and we’ve since built a whole garden/pergola area within it. We’re still a synergetic team, but I’m calling dibs on the next project.

Dwayne and I both drastically changed our diets this fall, and to those who think I was already slender probably also think I am still blonde and clever. Past tense, my friends, past tense. My biggest brag this year, besides getting down to the weight on my driver’s license, is that when our washing machine broke, I dragged out the tool box and, with YouTube’s assistance, fixed the blasted thing myself. It now makes a terrible racket that it never made before, but it cleans the clothes, so I’ll call it a victory. When I’m not fix-breaking things, I work 4 jobs—substituting, tutoring, librarying (yay!), and keeping Heartsease Properties, LLC out of bankruptcy. Probably the most fun I have in a week is coaching the 5^th grade Math Team (which Piper is loudly and proudly NOT a part of) and collapsing on the couch while Dwayne puts the kids to bed.

As a family, we’re catching the traveling bug. We spent Spring Break running around Idaho in a rented motor home, enjoying both the spring snowfall and natural hot springs. In August, we toured the Olympic Peninsula, tromping through wet beaches and dry rain forests. Weekend trips now mean leaving kids at the hotel with pizza and Netflix while Dwayne and I go bistro hunting, which means we now all enjoy ourselves. We’re trying our first international trip this February when we fly to Costa Rica, and we can’t wait to do some ecotourism! We’ll see if Piper Doolittle can actually talk to animals, if Kyla can avoid getting seriously lost, and if Wesley will survive a week without Minecraft.

We wish you blessings of every kind, the heart to recognize them, and the hands to pass them on.

Lovingly,

Denise for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, & Wesley

Christmas Letter, 2017

He ate the last rum ball She swears at the ?#$#@$ tax overhaul. Not one kid will flush the potty. Yeah, we’ve all been a little bit naughty.

Dear Loved Ones,

I should not have announced my intention to start my annual letter, because almost immediately, 1) the toilet overflowed, 2) the TV stopped working, and 3) the toaster set off the smoke alarm. Daily, I question my life choices.

The kids continue to age exponentially faster than Dwayne and me. Kyla received her acceptance to Hogwarts on her 11^th birthday. Thinking I was writing a letter to Santa, she advocated that she had been really good this year. I started to scoff, but realized that she was speaking truth. She works hard to love Piper and initiates compliments to everyone. She does her chores quickly so she can get back to her audiobooks, and is the estate’s head gardener. She’s prepping for middle school next year and wants to take lots of math and chemistry, and last summer, attended a living history camp to experience 1880.

Wesley is ridiculously cheerful and charming, and even when he was stung by ten yellow jackets (he wanted to make sure you knew that), he was brave and even somewhat philosophical. Contrarily, his grip on reality is a bit tenuous, as at last count, he’s had over a hundred “worst day of my life” whines, usually as he’s served something he doesn’t love for dinner. A casual observer would note that this almost-8-year-old is an inventor—of course, the casual observer is not usually getting her stuff broken. My favorite retractable hose became his personal bungee cable for daring stunts, and no rubber band, cardboard box, or even innocent coat hanger is safe from Wesley’s, ahem, creativity.

Piper is finding a niche for herself in the family through music—she’s started piano and violin this year. Not quite ten, she hasn’t fully tilted toward “human” yet, and has been caught in pouncing stance on the stairs, ready to hiss and growl at any passerby. After months of saving, she is now the proud mama of a leopard gecko and declares him “cuddly”. When that girl decides something, she’s all in. She taught herself to type this year and really took to snowboarding in a few lessons. She conquered the bunny slope, on a day that ended with me snapping, “Everyone stop crying. Get in the car and start eating cookies. Eat lots of cookies NOW.” That may have been my parenting apex.

Dwayne, who has been faithful to one phone for 6 years, managed to hilariously go through 4 phones in 2 weeks.[1] If I die first, I grin to think what would happen to women when he starts dating. His work building is being gutted and so his whole team is working in Bellevue now, adding a lot of time to his commute. Dwayne has failed National Swearing Day—the day we get our Christmas tree—for a few years now. He’s thinking he needs a new challenge, something that actually makes him swear. I’m encouraging him to try parenting more than a few hours at a time.

I work as a substitute teacher just a day or two a week—enough to justify a cleaning lady and premade dinners. Denise-ing includes PTA-ing, volunteering, and serving in a few capacities at the district level, both as part of our schools’ foundation and a special education advocate. I haven’t run Heartsease Properties into the ground yet; in fact, we may have made too much money on the cabin this year. But since I do a lousy job of bookkeeping until Dec. 31, I can’t be sure.

Our biggest excitement this year was a brand-new kitchen. In a nutshell, we went from 1975 cheap bid to 2017 mid-grade, which is practically a new universe. The kitchen was only out of commission for a little over two weeks, but I will confess that with a fridge and microwave, my family didn’t eat much differently than usual. Basically what I’m saying is that when you call me “goddess”, you shouldn’t prefix it with “domestic”. And if I didn’t make it clear, the contractor did 100% of the work, which is why it was done early and mostly on budget. Dwayne and I can’t fathom that sort of professionalism.

The star of 2017 may be the dented, filthy, crusted minivan, that took us to San Diego and back this summer to spend time with family on both sides of the tree. We did our first amusement park together as we spent a spectacular day at Lego Land, and loved playing on SoCal’s beaches with family. Besides many adventures with loved ones, our best takeaway on this vacation was the invention of “ice cream o’clock”—a summer hit no matter where we were.

Fun family news: I’ll be an auntie again when Brian and Sandi’s second daughter is born late winter. The anticipation of that birth, as well as the Christ, is hard to ignore and my children’s excitement is more contagious than their colds.

May your traditions, family, and friends bring you both joy and peace this season!

With heaps of love,

Denise for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, & Wesley

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[1] Wesley pipes up that after all that, Wes himself got Daddy’s original phone to work again.

Christmas Letter 2016

Dear Loved Ones,

Merry Christmas, friends! It’s taken me 5 days to write this annual letter, and I’ve hidden clues throughout as to why. [You’ll figure it out.]

I was trying to come up with a unifying theme for 2016 and “pestilence” is the only thing that came to mind. Sure, we had lice, flea, and pantry moth infestations this year—and I’ll take lice any day over the other two—but it seemed an unkind implication of my youngers.

Kyla finished 3^rd grade as a homeschooler and returned to 4^th grade at the local school, reading at grade level! That kid is willing to work hard. All the kids did a rock climbing camp during the summer, and Kyla turned that into weekly lessons [Mama, um, Mama] until it became too much to get her homework done and go to climbing--seriously, she’s ridiculously responsible. Kyla spent hours building and playing at the stream at the bottom of our ravine, and even without being familiar with Thoreau, longs to go “to the woods because I wish to live deliberately.” However, she can’t go too long without her audiobooks, so I’m always sure she’ll be back by bedtime. Next year [Mama!], she hopes to receive her acceptance letter to Hogwarts when she turns eleven. I could make an argument for her to be sorted into any of the houses, but I probably won’t send her to boarding school, for Wesley would be heartsick (and have to sleep by himself).

Wesley, aka “I’m why we can’t have nice things”, spent 2016 honing his ability to destroy, usually beginning with my sanity and then quickly moving to furniture, though this year he advanced to larger structures when he used scissors to tunnel a way to Kyla’s room. He has lots of curiosity and no concept of consequences, and has actively ruined the kitchen table 3 different times and my wall repairs a handful of times. I have gotten to the point of sending him to Dwayne after an “incident”, as after almost 7 years of this, I am the parent [Mama, Mama, Mama] more likely to wring his neck. Earlier today, we had a conversation that engraving “I love you” on the furniture conversely relays the opposite message. Wesley does have other talents beside destruction. He can get from one level of our split story home to another without using any stairs. In related news, he’s now in weekly parkour class and he likes to play baby dragons at recess.

Some people want gender reassignment, but I think we can safely start saving for Piper’s species reassignment surgery. In Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, every human has an animal daemon, and children’s daemons pop and transform into many different animals until maturity [Mama, um, Mama?], when they settle into one. Likewise, Piper is still continually transfiguring between species, though dragons, dogs, cats, and chinchillas are the most common. However, instead of a separate entity, she is her own daemon…and you can take that anyway you like. This year, Piper turned down all sports opportunities to take more art classes, and Cartooniversity struck a sweet chord for her. All of us WA Needs are unrepentant snugglers, but Piper is the only one who rejects humans, finds a cat, hugs it under her chin, and buries them both in blankets for the night. This year, Piper also became Grandpa’s Chief Assistant. My dad has made wine and beer for decades now, and he has finally found an 8-year old who shares his interest. He and Piper have Saturday bottling dates—she gets to truly be useful, and, temporarily, be an only child. Her true obsession is Hamilton, and the lyrics have expanded her vocabulary; not only “revelation” and “intransigent” but several 4-letter words as well. I’m oddly pleased that she learned them at home.

Dwayne won husband of the year award this year again when he surprised me with tickets to Hamilton for our 14^th anniversary. We left the kids with my parents, and madly sauntered around Manhattan for a week. Hamilton was the trip’s highlight, but we loved the museums and parks almost as much. I don’t think a year goes by without him [Mama?] impressing me with some new structure. This year, it was his remodel of the cabin bathroom and a new trellis in the front yard, eventually to be the home of the best grapes grown on our street. Currently, no one else is growing grapes, so I’m entering the contest quite confidently. In January, Dwayne will celebrate twenty years at Microsoft. That is, he would be, but last year, Microsoft did away with 20 year bashes. Stock is doing well, so I’m sure we’ll get over it.

Last year, I wrote “[If all goes] well, I can finally have my well-deserved year of reading banned books, eating bonbons, and finding new places to hide dust bunnies in between spa treatments. I have a few more schemes up my sleeve, none of which involve housework.” 41-year-old Denise is kind of an idiot [Mama!], though she was certainly right about the housework. Generally, my life is interesting only to me; honestly, I’m pretty excited when the hamburger buns I have out for dinner aren’t moldy. I sub a few days a week, rule a few kingdoms nobody else wants, and, uncharacteristically, do something I’m lousy at. Dwayne and I are now business partners, after creating Heartsease Properties, LLC, which is just a fancy way of saying we started renting our cabin on Airbnb and put it into an LLC. My job is to dot every legal “I” and cross every “t”, which must stand for “taxes”. If it wasn’t for the lawyer and accounting fees this year, the cabin may have paid for its operating costs. Anyway, owning a small business [um, Mama?] pretty much exploits my every weakness. I’ve also turned down some amazing (to me) opportunities this year, simply because I have genuinely accepted that I cannot do it all…and for free, as Dwayne points out. Personal growth, indeed!

The sad news in our family this year is that my Aunt Janet, Mom’s twin, had a stroke in September. Her recovery has been excruciatingly slow, especially for Janet herself, but there is hope for recovery next year. It has put a bit of a pall over the holidays, though the anticipation of Advent is hard to ignore and my children’s excitement is more contagious than their colds.

May your traditions, family, and friends bring you both joy and peace this season!

With love,

Denise [Mama!], for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, & Wesley, 2 cats, fish, and (-2) hamsters

Christmas Letter, 2015

December 6-8, 2015

Dear Friends,

I keep waiting for just the right moment—a quiet household, a burst of creativity, and flash of inspiration—to write our annual Christmas letter. And this is why I will never actually get around to writing anything publishable. But I should have thought of that before I decided to homeschool. Or have Wesley. Or get out of bed. However, I do have some ready material so let’s see what that and a glass of limoncello will do as a stand in for the muse.

It’s lucky I can write this at all. Last spring, the cats brought their first snake into the house. The fortunate part was that I ran to the neighbor who disposed of it for me instead of the neighbor (ahem, Kelsey), who would have advised me to burn down the house and start again. And I probably would have done it. So, thanks, Mark, you saved Christmas.

2015 was memorable, as we did one of our first family vacations together, which was not a disaster (at least, not after the first bit). We rented a motorhome and meandered around Oregon for two weeks. A few notes about RV rentals. Cons: the previous renters may be days late returning the vehicle, leading to a chaos and loss of beach reservations. Pros: the 16 things that stopped working on the RV while we had it are not our problem. But if motorhomes weren’t so expensive and inconvenient to store, I could totally go for a moving tent with indoor plumping, microwave and a lockable door between adults and children. We liked going down the road, reading books aloud and dumping out toys everywhere, just like at home.

Dwayne spent his first summer as a homeowner not building any stone walls. Instead, he managed to aggravate[1] me much more efficiently than his usual brick building spree. We had some alders taken down at the cabin, and rather than pay $700 to grind down the stumps, Dwayne was determined to dig them out himself. After weekends that turned into months, and an amount of money > $700, those stumps found themselves at the dump. A pyrrhic victory, and lesson learned. He’s on year 18 at Microsoft, and has made me happy for about 13.1 years of our 13.4 years of marriage. Yep, should have ground down those stumps, Babe.

After spending the last few years trying to tutor Kyla after school, this year I decided to tutor Kyla instead of school. It’s working out much better than most of my schemes. We had a breakthrough a few weeks ago when Kyla asked to keep her light on so she could read more Harry Potter. (The chance I’d say no is similar to me refusing to buy overpriced kale at the farmer’s market when the kids beg for some.) At nine, she’s old enough to leave at home with some work while I volunteer in the other kids’ classrooms, and her worst crime is to play hooky and listen to another book. Well, her worst crime is more destructive than that. She’s probably not the sole responsible party for breaking furniture, ripping cushions, scratching floors, bending curtain rods, and hiding contraband where I’d like to store the dust bunnies, but she’s the first I ask. Kyla is the kid Dwayne and I will probably have fitted with a GPS microchip as our little explorer doesn’t even realize when she’s wandered a mile away from us at the beach, and loses track of the time when she’s playing out in the woods down by the stream—the same backyard where we have had our first bear and bobcat sightings this year. But she’s also the kid I can take to art lectures and science talks and she can wax pedantically all the way home…if she doesn’t get lost on the way back to the car.

Piper must be trying to impress Santa, because I’ve never witnessed her so cooperative, responsible, and helpful as these last few weeks. This last summer, I read aloud the nonfiction How to Scratch a Wombat. It became an instant guide to understanding Piper. If, instead of regarding her as human, you think of her as an Australian marsupial in mismatched children’s clothes, she’s much easier to figure out. She recently described to our babysitter that wombats are like angry tanks. In fact, when she’s rampaging we give out the Mad Wombat! alert, and it not only gives fair warning to innocent bystanders, it cheers her up considerably. Piper still loves Mama, animals, and art (not necessarily in that order) and she has begun the tradition of making me omelets on Saturday mornings. And they are good—with no amendment needed “for a seven-year old”. She’s also the one local Need who is a morning person, a concept Dwayne and I can recognize but not grasp. She uses this unusual power to cheerfully and quietly do her morning chores, so it’s possible early risers are not spawns of Satan.

 

I was never going to put Wesley in school full-day until 1^st grade, just like his sisters. But you know by now what happens to the best laid plans of mice and moms. So this year, he’s in full-day kindergarten and is doing much better than I ever imagined. Statistically, he has even odds of being dyslexic, and it’s difficult to pull him away from playing Power Ranger-Robot-Castle-Storming-Lightsabor-Duelist-Puppy to figure out if he has all his pre-reading ducks in a row, but I think he’s going to be fine, and perhaps even a wonderfully average kid. He has lost two teeth from unnatural causes, refuses to sleep alone (which is why Kyla and Piper have an extra bed in their rooms), still sucks his fingers, and is my one child who loves to play board games with me. He also was the full instigator of the worst day our household had in the last 365 days, just before he turned 5, but I blogged that out of my system ages ago.

I hesitate to put it in writing, but if homeschooling continues to go well, Kyla will return to school for 4^th grade, so I can finally have my well-deserved year of reading fantasy novels, eating bonbons, and finding new places to hide dust bunnies in between spa treatments. I have a few schemes up my sleeve, none of which involve housework. The overarching goal is to not let everything I've learned about literacy and struggling learners only be useful to Kyla. I'd like to start a charter school for dyslexic learners someday, but currently I'm struggling with the motivation to start dinner, so I’ll settle for helping other families navigate learning challenges.

Finally, for those who found the font on the photo card a bit small, I will do my first 2^nd edition:

Pine needles scattered, presents all shred,

Feral children not nestled in bed.

All through the house, not one inch undamaged,

As we all sigh at last, “Mischief Managed!”

We wish you a very Happy Christmas and a tolerable election year.

Love, love, love,

Denise & Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and Wesley

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[1] This was edited for language in the final draft.

2014 Christmas Letter

December 13-15, 2014

Dear Loved Ones*,

2014 has been fantastic—I haven’t been personally responsible for a $4000 water leak this year, and I’ve increased my “winning” streak of buying non-working appliance to 5 in a row. I’m calling Guinness when I get to six. Dwayne and I both celebrated fortieth birthdays this year--a good excuse for the gray we both sport. My cellulite has hungrily attacked all my “give-a-damn” cells, which is an especially fine trade off. The kids make good case studies and writing material, and the place in my head is a diverting spot to be.

Do you remember the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin and Susie get into a terrorist-level snowball fight, and the last panel leaves Calvin soggy, groggy, and convinced that Santa “is going to skip this block for years”? He was also in his element and seemingly content with his lot in life. I’m pretty sure at least half the Need household is getting coal this year, but maybe on the whole, it was worth it.

Kyla could be one of those rigorously scheduled kids with practices and clubs every day. Except substitute extracurricular activities for vision therapy and reading tutoring and that pretty much fills up her days. Kyla’s school career has added far more to my résumé than all my post-grad work combined. I didn’t know a kid with 20/20 eyesight wouldn’t have the visual acuity to read. But vision screening just measures how well you can see something 20 feet away, not if you can focus on the page 12 inches from you…as she and I have learned. She’s still quite dyslexic, but her eyes are getting strong enough to sustain a reading lesson. With her persistence and confidence, she’s the right kid to have such learning disabilities, even when my heart aches for her struggles. She’s been fortunate to have a teacher who not only reads kid writing and spelling, but can actually read Kyla writing and spelling. It is a true super power!

Of course, Kyla is far more than a kid with dyslexia. She sounds like a book when she speaks. Correction, she sounds like a long book when she speaks. Most recently, she’s started to refer to herself in the third person. I’m always hearing what a sweet girl she is. I often think so, but with Piper and Wesley as her foils, it’s hard to be objective. But her wheat-free diet really seems to have helped and she’s back to being a darling who wants to do her part to contribute to her family and the world. I love that she (ear-) reads more than I do and that she fiercely loves her ragdoll, her little brother and even Piper, against Piper’s objections.

Thanks to BBC’s Sherlock, we all know the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. Fortunately, Piper is merely the latter. Piper desperately wants to be an only child. Instead of spending her nearly 7 years on Earth acclimating to being a second-born, she seems to be actively maladjusting. She draws family pictures that “don’t have enough room on the paper” for Kyla and Wesley. She’s plenty bright, and occasionally uses her literacy skills to write hate mail to her siblings, which thankfully they can’t yet read. But I have spies and she has been caught holding Kyla’s hand as they walk home from school together and she sometimes reads Marvel comics to Wesley instead of hitting him. When a cat goes streaking from a forbidden part of the house wearing a pink doll skirt, I know to shout “PIIIIIIIIII-PER”. But I can’t fully write off a child who stays up way too late reading books after lights-out, much like her own mother used to do and still does. Her fierce streak of independence suits my style of parenting. I don’t waste too much time banging my head against the brick wall she likes to climb, and we’re both happier for it.

As threatened, I enrolled Wesley in as many preschools as I could schedule. The promised land is still a year and a half away, when Wesley is in school full time. I often forget that he’s a good looking kid, which may have to be his future meal ticket, since he has no brains to speak of. This year’s acronym, NOB, was inspired by our son, who usually wins the daily “Not Our Brightest” award. When Kyla began vision therapy last spring, we gave Wesley some of the same exercises, and he immediately covered his eyes and hid. Now he, too, is in therapy. The good news is that he will complete the program before he starts Kindergarten. Last year, he rocked the two wheel bike. This year, as a 4 year old, he taught himself to roller blade, ice skate, skate board and pogo stick, sometimes simultaneously. I’m just waiting for him to add knife-throwing to the mix. He wears shorts every day that is technically above freezing (Mama’s rule) and is becoming a fairly innovative superhero. He found 6 long sticks, changed into a long-sleeve shirt (on purpose!) and stuck 3 into each sleeve for Wolverine claws. The kid makes me wheeze from laughter, but not always in the moment.

Dwayne’s exciting news is that he has been granted an 8 week sabbatical at work. Stay tuned in about five years for when we actually take advantage of it. Dwayne also handily wins Lover of the Year award for surprising me with a river cruise on the Danube from Germany through Austria to Hungary this summer. (The inspiration for a year abroad…it’s for the children, I swear!) The kids stayed with my parents while we ran around palaces and cathedrals. There were several times I wished Kyla had been there knowing she would love the history and artifacts as much as I did, but I did spent more time writing that one week than I have all autumn.

I continue my usual recommended therapy of dark chocolate and projects. The day before school started, Dwayne and I took a sledge hammer to Kyla’s room and began a quick remodel that lasted into October. I caught my breath and then started converting part of the garage into a mudroom, which ironically, is now one of the nicer rooms in the house. Then a quick master bedroom update. But my stay-at-home status should be updated to stay-at-school since that’s where I spend most of the school days doing everything I can to be on staff without the paycheck…or the responsibilities.

The cookies are calling, so I’m going to break a personal rule and conclude in the same way I did last year.

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.

With heaps of love,

Denise, for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and Wes

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*I told myself I can eat all the rum balls I want as soon as I finish our Christmas letter. To make this fair, perhaps you should read this with a plateful of cookies. Or a shot of rum. [Dwayne: Why it is always either/or for you? “And” is a conjunction, too!]

Christmas Letter

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

Christmas Letter

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

Annual Christmas Letter

December 12-14 , 2011

Dear Friends,
Merry Christmas! I hope this letter finds you in good cheer in this jolliest of seasons. In our home, the magic of Christmas still comes with spilled milk, soiled diapers, stinky laundry, and spotted carpets, but somehow it all looks a little better under Christmas lights.
L.M. Montgomery wrote, and I paraphrase, that “every baby is a new chance for perfection.” My babies were all such perfect newborns and remained so for about a year. Now we are all one year further away from that earlier perfection. Kyla, at five, has almost four years of accumulated flaws (but Dwayne and I have 37 years, so she’s looks good in comparison). Piper is a bit of an overachiever and, at 3 ¾, is trying to get as many flaws as Kyla. Wesley is very verbal almost-two year old who was trying to keep up with his sisters, but now has branched out into creating original flaws. His latest is being able to get into the goodies we hide on top of the refrigerator. I’ve returned to the kitchen to find Wesley with powdered sugar on his shirt and funny breath. The kid ATE MY RUMBALLS! Seriously flawed indeed, you will agree.
But being a Christmas letter, I am supposed to brag a bit more about my family. Let’s see what I can come up with.
Kyla spent most of 2011 as Kylasaurus (a misunderstanding of ankylosaurus). Unfortunately, a kylasaurus is a plant eater and frequently comes under attack by Daddisaurus, a notorious carnivore. This year, she achieved a lifelong dream by catching her first fish. Not only that, but Kyla learned to ride a two-wheel bike and swim unassisted, though neither completely without danger to herself or others! My favorite quotation of hers this year is, “I must be a really brave girl to have all those owies!” I’ve said it before— I swear my kids have to start off brilliant because the best we can hope for is that by the time they are school age, they will be down to normal intelligence. As it is, at preschool, our, um, future valedictorian likes recess and snack best. During our daily reading lessons—because I can’t help myself—she’d rather sit on her head than her bottom—because she can’t help herself. She makes me laugh a lot, though usually a day or so afterward.
I used to think that Piper never whines, but I listened closely one day and realized that, yes, Piper can also be whiney. It’s just often drowned out by her sister’s impossible-to-miss wails. Piper embraces all things animal. There is a kids’ show called “Diego” that is about a young boy who is an animal rescue ranger. Every time she watches it, she comes up and says, “I am a baby [anaconda, okapi, chinchilla, armadillo] and you are my mama.” Tonight, her entire dinner was protein sap, broccoli sap, and noodle sap because marmosets eat, well, I bet you can guess. Last year, I wrote that Piper is basically unpunishable. That is still true, but is seems more that she really just has her own agenda and is unaffected by others’ attempts to have a different agenda. It is a cliché, but she is her own drummer and she might be using lollipops instead of drumsticks. She is the kid that I wish I had been. . . and my mother is probably thanking God that I was not.
Wesley, who will be two in January, doesn’t know how much he is messing with my up-to-date and researched ideas on gender differences. My old theory is that thoughtful parenting should all but neutralize culturally and commercially construed biases. My new theory is that Wesley is a boy. My tomboys’ first words were “uh-oh.” Wesley’s was “ball”. His second was “my ball”. He seemed to instinctively know the rules for sword-fighting with other boys. Rule 1: Hit swords, not people. Rule 2: Almost anything can be a sword. As you can see from our card, he is still a habitual finger-sucker (and hand-holder). He’s as physical as his sisters and was able to do pretty amazing things on the trampoline before he was ever weaned. That’s a bit of a family joke, because everything he can do now is something he’s done before being weaned. When he comes up with those big blue eyes and quite clearly says, “Mama, nurse,” he’s not asking for medical attention. I keep telling myself that I am going to nurse him out of his asthma. (He’s our only one with wheezing problems, but with the Need-Kruger genes, we’re lucky we only have one!) But my real reason for having a nursing baby is that Dwayne hasn’t taken me away to a tropical locale for a week sans children. We hope to remedy that in 2012. (Anyone want to join us? We are thinking late February.)
Dwayne has had an up and down year at work. Ten years ago, he began work for a project called WPF. Dwayne’s position increased as the size of the team decreased and he began this year as the head of the 14 person team. That team is now at four and one more is being reassigned soon. WPF is not going to be around much longer so Dwayne, after much consideration, will be starting a new team at Microsoft this January. I was hoping he would accept the X-Box offer, because when people ask me what he does, I could tell them with some authority. Alas, he is taking a position on the Systems Center team, and if you want to know what that is, you will have to ask him yourself. But, as frustrating as work was at times, Dwayne continually cheered himself by building more walls and stair sets in our backyard. As he still has pallets of building block left from his paternity leave when Piper was born (2008), I suspect he will spend plenty more May-Octobers quite cheerfully.
I am still working hard on my thesis “No Good Parenting Goes Unpunished”, coming out sometime 2025. Field research includes baking with my children, teaching them to clean up after themselves, and cooking them healthy meals. This is my fourth year volunteering to read to kids in a shelter a few nights a month. I’m in a book club, and our playgroup has slowly morphed into a moms’ night out drinking club. We started off with coffee, but have moved to wine now that the kids are older. [What will we be drinking when they are teens?] I spent hundreds of hours in our front yard moving rocks, cleaning them, then moving them back again. Few things made me happier, but that is a subject for a longer letter.
It was when I ran out of rocks that I discovered the true secret to happiness: afternoon preschool. I didn’t realize how quickly my grasp on sanity was slipping, having all three kids for ten hours a day, until September came. Kyla and Piper started Montessori preschool four afternoons a week. Wesley, God bless him, falls asleep in the car after we drop off the girls and naps until it is time to pick his sisters up again. I can tell you how much happiness costs—preschool tuition for two. It’s about the same as therapy and I can clean my house!
Whenever life seems to be getting a little too easy (defined as just under control), I habitually throw another ball into the air. We’ve had housemates for most of the year, including of friend of mine who had shared custody of a daughter who is about Kyla’s age, so we have a good sense of what having a fourth child would be like. We also babysat overnight for a few kids, sometimes temporarily bringing our household up to six kids under six. Good practice for getting our foster license again. In fact, we’ve submitted all the paperwork, which means we are about a tenth of the way there. We started this so that we could do respite (temporary overnight care) for some friends of ours who are currently fostering. We will probably have the license the day after they are no longer foster parents.
In other news, even though we don’t have any new kids, I do have a new sister! Brian married a practically perfect young lady in April. Though neither practical nor perfect myself, I adore Sandi and appreciate how happy she has made my brother. Keith and Julie have their darling young boy, my nephew Parker. He clearly has no Need genes, which is why at 15 months, he is still perfect himself. As our kids all get older, it will be fun to tease out the differences in genetics between cousins.
Our kids may not look like him, but they all got the “never boring” gene that may be Dwayne’s only dominate one. It was that trait that made this year’s family vacation even more enjoyable. We met up with Dwayne’s parents and oldest brother’s family in Sunriver, OR. The twelve of us shared a cabin—and lives—for a week in July. All week, we biked, caroused, and ate together. I was a little wary of how great a vacation with young kids—who sleep best in their own beds at home—would be, but I’m now a believer and loved the quantity of quality time with loved ones.
Speaking of quantity, it seems I’ve gone a little overboard in this year’s letter. Since it would take me another full night to pare it down to a page, you are just going to get the whole thing. Think of it as coal in your stocking….or an extra gift under the tree, depending upon how much it entertained you.
Dwayne and I send you our love and prayers for a meaningful Christmas, a time when every baby is a small remembrance of the Christ child.
Love,
Denise, for Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and Wesley

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You can email Denise at duckneed@juno.com or follow our family blog at http://needopedia.blogspot.com. Or you can choose not to and likely still have a fulfilling life.

Christmas Letter and Family Picture

[This year’s Christmas Letter, sent earlier, but now I’m just trying to catch up on most of a month’s worth of posts.]

Dear friends,
I’ve written bits and pieces of this letter in my head over the past month. Now that I am sitting down to write this, I don’t remember any of it. I just look forward to finishing this letter so I can find out what happened in our lives this past year.
I’m still oddly surprised that we’re a full decade into the 21st century. The good news is that our kids are miraculously aging far more quickly than Dwayne and I. Kyla is four now, but we’ve stayed about the same age as when we had her.
Yep, Kyla is a full-fledged four year old who still can’t find anything she’s afraid of, except perhaps of wearing too many clothes. She likes gymnastics (the jumping, tumbling, and climbing parts—not the listening parts), wearing her clothes backwards, pretending to be a bird, and composing completely tuneless songs. We have to admit that in spite of our best efforts, she’s basically a well-adjusted child who is happy being a Kyla.
It’s a temptation to compare Kyla and Piper, but they’re not really identical or opposites. They’re just plain different. Though they are both very good at completely exasperating me.
Piper is 2 ½ now, and I can’t quite separate out what is being 2 and what is simply Piper. She is the most heart-meltingly sweet, thoughtful, giving soul right before she turns into a determined Neanderthal. Our issue with Piper is that, if there is a consequence that she responds to, Dwayne and I haven’t found it. (Jelly beans could be the one exception.) I once heard a great sermon about Apostle Paul’s effectiveness—there was nothing that could be done to Paul that would scare the Jesus out of him. Jail him? He’d preach there. Let him go? He’d preach more. Beat him? He’d use it as an object lesson. Kill him? Great, he could finally go to heaven. Paul was unpunishable. Piper has different goals than Paul, but is completely unpunishable in her own way. She will be a force to reckon with when she is older.
The biggest news of 2010 is that Dwayne got a promotion/raise and I got a housekeeper. Okay, actually the biggest news is that we had our third child this year. Wesley Scott Need was born January 18th. But his birth eventually necessitated help keeping up the house. It was 3 against 1 (Dwayne is neutral) in the fight to keep the house clean. I surrendered last September. It’s now 3 against 2 and the shower scum is cowering.
But even more than cleanliness, I love my baby boy. He shows all the signs of being as timid and sour-tempered as his sisters and father), which is to say, not at all. When not sucking his two fingers, Wesley spends his day making sure gravity continues to work and that anything on tables or shelves is safely thrown on the ground.
Wesley came on MLK Jr. Day after almost 2 hours of labor. I don’t do pregnancy very well, but I think I could win an Olympic Delivery event. Less than 13 hours of labor total for 3 kids, no drugs (no time), and I don’t believe I ever cursed Dwayne. That’s got to get me a silver medal at least! It’s too bad my best event is the shortest, because I’m probably not going to win any lifetime parenting awards. As the child-rearer in a Christian household, I feel our important rules should incorporate the Ten Commandments or Paul’s admonitions or at least a proverb or two. Instead the only real rule I have is “Don’t make more work for Mama”.
For me, this means forgoing Facebook, Twitter, potty-training, snaps and laces (instead of zippers and Velcro), crossword puzzles, and meals that take more than 15 minutes preparation. For the kids, it means refraining from asking me to do something they can do themselves, not doing permanent damage to inanimate objects, and preventing illness to the best of their ability. The rule is broken numerous times daily, by me and my beloveds, but I think overall, it leads to a more sane mother. There are so few contributions to my personal sanity that I take what I can get.
Outside of a few camping trips (each which completely shattered the One Rule in our house), we didn’t do many family trips this year. Exotic vacations weren’t even on the wish list. But Dwayne and I did get to continue our hunt for a church this year. Just last month we finally committed to a great church just a few minutes from our house. It’s an Alliance church, which meant nothing to me until recently, but it quickly has felt like “our” church and a place where we can raise our family as well as grow and serve ourselves.
A few other bits of news, in no particular order. My brother, Keith, and his wife, Julie, had baby boy Parker in August. I love that Wesley and Parker, just 7 months apart, will grow up together. It makes it easier that Wesley is our last baby to have a sweet nephew close by.
Our one remaining cat is in permanent exile after a peeing spree in Piper’s bed. We’re at a bit of impasse, as I’m furious at Smokey for breaking the Rule, and she’s furious with me for throwing her out in the garage. She’s so mad that the one time she was able to get into the house, she went upstairs and peed in Piper’s bed. I almost rubbed her down in raw meat and whistled for the raccoons. We’ve “compromised”. She stays in the garage and pretends that she may have a premature death and I make sure she has food, water, and a warm box to sleep in.
And then there’s the kitchen floor. I hated my kitchen floor—completely stripped wood that would take any food particle and hold onto it for dear life. Drop a blueberry? See it for months. Grape juice? Hope you like purple! So my parents took the girls for a few days and I sanded, stained, and varnished, and now I have a lovely kitchen floor that actively repels stains. That floor is obeying the Rule so well that we practically have a relationship that borders on romantic.
Dwayne and I also have a relationship that borders on romantic. Romance these days is cleaning the kitchen together, playing footsie while we each work (or blog) in the evenings, and laughing as I try not to wet myself while jumping on the trampoline (thank, kids!). Phew, at least there’s no shred of dignity left to embarrass me.
And lastly, here are the two cartoons that are on our fridge.
And this is about as true as life is. I don’t feel like I have a lot of spare time, but somehow I have stronger, deeper friendships now in my life than I’ve ever had. Thank you for being part of our lives where the line between friend and family is blurred, as are my eyes as I think about how much you mean in our lives.
How’s that for sappy endings?
Love,
Denise, Dwayne, Kyla, Piper, and introducing Wesley