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
* * * * *
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.
