two Christmases

I arrived back in Seattle yesterday. Part of me feels guilty for leaving, since I'm sure that I could still be helpful. At the same time though, there are various reasons why it is good for me to be back home. I plan on going back to Utah and helping out again when my siblings are on Spring Break; I may go out even before then, if I am needed.

Sam was a big hit on the trip; he made his rounds and got to spend time with everyone. My sister L absolutely loved being around him and helping out with everything (although her help with changing dirty diapers was sometimes counter-productive). She loved to sing "You Are My Sunshine" to Sam, and pretty much sang it incessantly for a few days. I must have really been affected (or annoyed?) by all of the singing; last night J said that I was talking in my sleep, telling L to be quiet!

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the trip:

Sam as Rudolph

Sam didn't mind that he didn't have presents to open Christmas morning - he was more interested in the ribbons decorating the packages than in the presents themselves.

L showing off her newly-painted fingernails

Since Sam and I left Seattle before we could even open our presents, we had a mini-Christmas last night. Here's Sam's big present:


J and I always have made fun of "themed" baby toys that have loud colors and designs. What baby is going to care about whether its toys have a rainforest theme, a jungle theme, or a safari theme? Honestly, such busy and loud decorations make me feel kinda stressed out. However, this exersaucer decorated with farm animals was infinitely cheaper than any of the other ones, and it isn't as busy as some of the other ones out there. So, we broke down and got it. Sam likes it so much that I think it will be a stress reliever for me, despite the bright colors.

Some things J and I got for Christmas:

- A book on Caravaggio (me).
- A book on Bernini (me).
- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (me).
- The Dark Knight Batman film (J).
- iTouch iPod (J).

It was kind of fun to have two Christmases. Maybe we'll have to do that again another year, provided that J and I don't have to be apart again!

asking for prayers

I don't tend to write extremely personal things on my blog, and I suppose that even the following excerpt from an email doesn't really delve into my own emotions at this time. I feel too emotionally drained and physically exhausted to even try to express any of that right now. I did, however, want to let people know about what is going on in my life right now. Here is an excerpt of an email I just wrote:

As you may have heard, I rushed to Utah on Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with my family after hearing very sad news about my mom. We found out on the 23rd that my mom has colon cancer - and the cancer has spread to her pelvis and liver. It appears that a large tumor in her ovary slightly shifted last week; it was the pain from that slight shift that caused my mom to go to the hospital and get checked out. We are at least glad about that - if my mom hadn't felt that pain, we might have not found out about the cancer until it was too late.

It appears that my mom has had cancer for years and years. It is listed as Stage IV, which is the highest level of classification in regards to cancer progression. She will likely start chemotherapy on Wednesday, although my mom and dad are still busy trying to consult with other doctors to get second opinions regarding the option of surgery. I'm not sure if the doctors have given my mom a time frame (I don't know if she would tell us if she did get one), but I do know they have recommended that she write her will. She has received several priesthood blessings, and the one last night blessed her with the gift of healing, although we know that this blessing must also be in accordance with God's will. We all have felt comfort by the Spirit though, which is helping us at this time. We are also exercising our faith and not giving up hope.

I am glad I've been able to be with the family and help out. Sam has cheered everyone up and I know he has been a happy distraction for my mom. My mom told V that this past Christmas was the best one our family has ever had - she felt like we were all unified and connected as a family unit.

I don't know how long I'll be in Utah; I assume I will be here until the end of this week. Please keep my mom and family in your prayers. I will send an update on my mom's situation when I have another free moment.

My second cousin is setting up a blog which will give people updates on my mom's condition. Once that gets set-up, I'll pass along the link and information.

Merry Christmas

We are definitely going to have a white Christmas this year. In fact, J didn't have to go to work on Thursday because of the snow (which was a really fortunate thing, since he accidentally overslept by two hours that morning!). It's still snowing right now. We're hoping that J won't have to go to work tomorrow as well.

This is a view of our deck this morning. I love the little snow caps on the potted plants.

Happy Holidays!

room #1

The change between Sam's new room and what it was a week and a half ago is quite drastic. I should have taken a picture to show what J's old room was like. To give you an idea, it was decorated with black and white plaid wallpaper with additional wallpaper strips of suns (suns with human faces on them - my mom calls them "New Age" suns) and stars. Very cool wallpaper for a middle schooler in the '90s. Not-so-cool wallpaper for a six month old in the 2000s.

In recent years, J's bedroom was nicknamed a "museum" by members of his family. Essentially, J hadn't changed or cleaned out his room since he left for college. And on top of that, his room became the storage area for extra guitars and recording equipment. It was starting to get difficult to walk around. It took us several days to wade through all of J's old stuff and decide what needed to be thrown away and donated to charity.

Finally, though, we're done! After this MASSIVE cleanup and new paint job, I give you Sam's new room:


I really have to give credit to my friend Ixoj for the green paint idea. A day or two before I moved she mentioned seeing an "awesome!" paint job that was done in kelly green. Although this isn't quite kelly green, I became fixated on using green in Sam's room because of that conversation. Thanks for the inspiration, friend!

Phew. This battle is over. One room down, three to go.

the battlefield

This week has been a week of battles. My main battleground has been J's old room (which will be Sam's new room). Hopefully we'll have this room painted and finished by tomorrow. So far, I've fought through two layers of wallpaper; I'm still attacking the vestiges of wallpaper glue on the walls. In the process of stripping the walls, I've learned two things. First, I've decided that wallpaper is a big commitment. If you want wallpaper in your house, you need to be really, REALLY sure. It's hard to get back to stripped, clean walls. I've also learned that it is a BAD idea to apply wallpaper glue with any amount of enthusiasm. Enthusiastic applications of wallpaper adhesive = hours and hours of scraping.

Once we finish Sam's new room, it will be time to do a reconnaissance of our other rooms in the house. I'm not sure what we'll do in those rooms, but I'm pretty sure we'll strip the wallpaper and/or repaint. Maybe after all of these battles, we'll be able to get really moved-in and settled. I'm getting tired of living in a war zone with strewn boxes everywhere.

We've also had some battles with Sam this week. He's getting too big to be swaddled anymore, so we've been trying to teach him how to relax without being wrapped. This week, we've been just wrapping one arm. At the beginning of the week we had some rough nights, but I think (hope!) he's starting to get the hang of it. I don't know if I'm ready to start a second attack by unwrapping his other arm. Maybe we'll leave that for next week?

And does anyone have any suggestions on how to teach a baby how to soothe himself to sleep (without leaving him in his crib to hysterically scream for an hour)? It's time to break Sam of his rocking + roaring white noise + bouncing + bottle + ssh-ing routine. We feel like he big enough that he should be able to start relaxing on his own. Any ideas? I wish that he would take a pacifier to help him calm down and sleep - that would make my life easier.

Oh, and I guess I need to tackle Christmas shopping sometime soon too. I keep forgetting that it is the holiday season...

mesmerized

We didn't get television at our old house. We had a TV, but you could only watch movies on it; there was no cable. Now that we do have cable, it will be interesting to see if we succumb to television watching.

From what my husband tells me, it is not uncommon for some members of his family (the men in particular) to get mesmerized in front of a television, regardless of what is being shown. I think J is right, mostly because I've seen how entranced he can get by something as mundane as a Comfort Inn commercial (although, granted, some of those commercials can be pretty funny - have you seen the one where the lady says "Beautiful!" after she gets caught picking her neighbor's rose? Anytime J or I say "Beautiful!" we have to say it in that woman's nasal voice; if one of us says it, than the other one inevitably ends up saying "Beautiful!" too).

Anyhow, it looks like Sam might follow in the path of his mesmerized forefathers. About a week ago we sat him down for his first television experience, watching an episode of "Baby Einstein." And instantly, he was mesmerized for about fifteen minutes (which is a record for such a wiggly-piggly boy).

Who knew that learning about the atmosphere could be so captivating?

the S family language

My family has a pretty distinct way of speaking and communicating, especially the kids. We all have similar inflections in our voice patterns, and we also have our own little grammatical system. I think the older kids (me, V, and A) picked up on silly grammatical things that the younger siblings did when they were smaller, which eventually developed into the S family language. My sister L, the youngest child, continues to influence the family language inflections with her little nasal-ey voice. We also continue to add her little phrases into the family vocabulary, although we have resisted to include L's difficulty with irregular past participles into the family grammatical system.

We have many different aspects to our family language. It is common to speak with a hyperbolic/superlative-y twist, adding "the most ever" or "the bestest ever" to a sentence. One distinct characteristic of the S family grammar is the use of the pronoun "it." Really, "it" doesn't quite function as a pronoun, because it is used in sentences that also include the noun which "it" as a pronoun is supposed to replace. For example, if we were speaking normal English and wanted to discuss how much we love a toy, we could say, "We love it" (with "it" meaning the toy). However, in S-ian grammar, we would also have to include "the toy" in the sentence: "We love it the toy."

"We love it the dog."
"We love it our house."
"We love it the car."

If you want to be especially clever, you can actually use "it" in the proper English fashion, but also include a S-ian "it" in the sentence:

"We love it it."
(Obviously, this second "it" can refer to anything - you have to contextually deduce what we are talking about - aren't we sneaky!)

The S family "it" also has another variation, "itch." So, one can say, "I love itch the dog." Or, one can ask, "Did you love itch the movie?"

Ah, family silliness. It's great. Our vocabulary also has been influenced by younger children over the years. "Li-berry" = library. "Jennifer Conference" = General Conference. "Sam-witch" = sandwich.

What about you and your family? Do you have distinct vocabulary or grammatical structures that would require explanation to an outsider?