Grandma Evie's birthday celebration (complete with Official Party Planner)

Yesterday was Grandma Evie's birthday party!

Earlier this week David and I reached a stalemate at Target about Grandma Evie's birthday party. I thought it should include some cute, colorful plates that said "Happy Birthday!" on them. David whined that they were "fancy," and he only likes "powerful" things. He insisted that any party he would be attending should only have "powerful" things and no "fancy" things. I just wasn't sure my mom would appreciate "powerful" Optimus Prime plates. And he was having a meltdown about the prospect of his mom buying something "fancy."

So we compromised and bought a pinata! And candy! The pinata was our big surprise. Grandma Evie would never suspect a pinata for her party. David was very good about keeping the secret all week.

The day of the party David was very helpful. He filled the pinata (and his mouth) with candy. The opening was small, so he could only drop in one piece of candy at a time. But he worked hard at it until the pinata was completely filled. (Mary pretended to help, but mostly she just ate candy. And held a flashlight for some reason.)

Then David helped me decorate. He worked very, very hard and hung all the ribbon on the chandelier. He also told me which color ribbon we needed next. Mary wasn't quite as helpful--but she did take advantage of the opportunity to dance on the table. (It's not often you get permission to stand on the dining room table!)

David took his work very seriously...
But Mary just clapped her hands and did a jig...
That evening the family enjoyed dinner together at Rosa's. David was excited to see dozens of pinatas hanging from the ceiling at the restaurant! (But he still kept the secret.)

Later that evening was the big reveal. David convinced everyone to hide under the table and jump out to surprise Grandma Evie. She was definitely surprised...
Next was time to open presents...
And David and Mary were on hand to help...

Finally, we busted open the pinata (which we really had managed to keep a secret from my mom all week). First David gave it a few good whacks...
and then Mary...
and then David again...
Grandma Evie then really whacked it good. And, finally, Uncle Daniel beat it to a pulp, and candy came raining down...
Sharing candy...
Finally, we had "cake." Actually, it was a very yummy chocolate pie. But David the Official Party Planner was insistent that you have CAKE at a birthday party. NOT PIE! So we started calling it cake (and he wasn't the wiser).
David might have been the planner, but Mary's job is to carefully lick all the candles. She takes her job very seriously...
The celebration ended with David directing a few rounds of hide'n'seek. ("You can't have a party without games!" is David's common refrain.)

We all had a fun time!

I know this post should be more about my mom and her birthday, but I have to point out what a fun kid David is. He loves parties, and he's very good at planning them. And he always provides the energy and enthusiasm that a good party needs. This is just one of a million reasons why it's such a blessing to have David in our family!

Now, to the point:

Happy Birthday, Grandma Evie!

Bird watchers

The other day I spied this scene...

They are bird watching, of course! From the comfort of Grandma Evie's lap.

(By the way, if you look carefully at the first two pictures, you will see the cat. Yes, the cat. The one my parents had to board while they were gone, lest some unfortunate "accident" befall him in their absence.)

It's my mom's birthday!

Today is my mom's birthday, but I'm not sure I am allowed to say that.

My mom thinks it should be illegal for anyone's birthday to be midweek, and she basically refuses to acknowledge birthdays, especially her own, that fall on inconvenient days like a Tuesday. (My mom is a very practical woman, and Tuesday birthdays are just plain impractical when it comes to celebration.) We are celebrating on Saturday, but in the mean time, I want to say that I am very grateful for my mom.

Not only does she wash my dinner dishes (and I am one of those people whose kitchen explodes into a total disaster area when cooking), throw the football around with David, and do puzzle after puzzle with Mary, but she gives me hope...

...hope that one day I, too, might have

enormous reserves of patience

strong core muscles

and a really big SUV.

Actually, I can do without the really big SUV. (For the record, my mom does not drive a really big SUV, but we like to tease her that she does, since she is morally opposed to really big SUVs. This is why we love that David refers to my mom's sensibly-sized SUV as "Grandma Evie's monster truck." See what my mom has to put up with?)

I, however, feel that I have little hope of ever overcoming

a love of chocolate and

a deep and abiding need to be in the mountains.

Hmmm. I wish I could share chocolate in the mountains with my mom for her birthday. That would be perfect! (But I suppose lunch at The Corner Bakery will have to do.)

The weird thing about living with my mom is that we talk less now than we used to. My kids have turned this house upside down, and we're always rushing around trying to keep some sense of order in this household (or we're each alone collapsed on our beds with a book, trying to catch our breath).

So, Mom, in case we don't bump into each other for a while, I want to say thank you. And I love you.

Museum pictures

Despite what I may tweet, I took some pictures, I uploaded them, and I waded through them, looking for the less crappy ones. Because how can my blog be my blog without pictures of my kids at museums?

Yesterday my dad, my brother Dave, my sister-in-law Ale, and I took the kids to the Dallas Museum of Nature & Science. Here are those pictures:

It was a fun Saturday afternoon outing!

(And now I'm going to await my husband's phone call and then go to bed early. Good night.)

Menagerie

This morning I woke up in bed with

a bear

a baby

a puppy

a lamb

an Elmo

a mouse

and Blue

Oh yeah, and Mary was there too.

Acceptance

This is probably the kind of thing I should scribble in my personal journal. But I don't write complete sentences in my journal. And I feel like writing in complete sentences today (except for the occasional stylish fragment), so here you go.......

I never imagined myself being a full-time stay-at-home mom. To be honest, I never spent much time imagining myself as a mother at all. But when I did, there was always something else in the picture too: like graduate school, teaching part-time, tutoring, writing professionally, anything. I could not wrap my mind around the concept of life without a paycheck, a report card, co-workers, or recognition. I could not imagine how motherhood could possibly fill all of my time. (For a while I was even "saving" graduate school for when we started having children, so I would have "something to do" with small children at home. Feel free to laugh! Fortunately, God nudged me to hurry up and start and finish before the arrival of my firstborn.) I also could not imagine that motherhood would be satisfying enough by itself--I would need my own accomplishments and contributions outside of my home, wouldn't I?

By the time our first baby was nearly arrived, I was well-positioned for a future of motherhood and meaningful part-time work. I had a few years of teaching high school on my resume, I was finishing up a master's degree in English, and I had taken a position at a community college. I looked forward to a life of leaving the kids a few times a week to teach a class or two at local community colleges or even universities. We were moving to Turkey, and I was delighted to learn that a University of Maryland extension program offered classes on the military base, including composition classes I would be qualified to teach! This was all going to work out perfectly...

And then David entered our lives.

I don't want this post to about how difficult my firstborn child was (is). That wouldn't be fair. As those of you who have been around him know, he is a sweet and charming and imaginative and good-natured boy. But he is also EXHAUSTING, as those of you who have been around him for very long know. For reasons I am not going to explain right now, David has been challenging from the very beginning.

I was so overwhelmed when David was a baby. (Did I mention he was a challenge from the beginning?) It was a struggle just to answer my email occasionally and make it to the gym a few times a week. There was no way I could handle the workload of a composition class. (All of those papers to grade!! I guess I should have chosen to teach a subject where the answers are all multiple-choice.) But my life was filled with friends and adventures and travel-galore. Life was not perfect, but it was good. It was full. Besides, I could always teach again in Ohio...

Soon after we moved to Ohio, Mary joined our family. So did post-partum depression (to eventually be replaced with a lovely anxiety disorder). I knew the local community college was always looking for composition instructors. But the thought of leaving my sweet baby girl to go explain what a comma slice is made my stomach turn. It was also during this time that I realized that I am not an energetic, dynamic, go-getting woman of action. I can handle a full plate. But I don't like an overflowing plate. And my plate is not very big to start with. I realized that I do not like to multi-task. I don't like a million different things going on in my life. I did not want my stacks of diapers getting mixed up with stacks of graded essays. Besides, having two kids had knocked me off my rocker--I was in no state to take on more responsibility. But just another year or two and I would be teaching again or back to researching Beckett, right?

When the opportunity presented itself for Greg to go get a PhD (which is what he'll be doing when he is finished with his assignment in Honduras), I thought, "This is it! My chance to return to the real world." We would be in an academic environment, at a big university, perhaps with "feeder" two-year colleges nearby. There would undoubtedly be opportunities to teach or study. Now, I knew Greg would be super busy completing an entire PhD program in three years. But even a super busy academic life can entail a more flexible schedule than an Air Force civil engineer's normal work life. I was feeling very optimistic that soon I would have something else meaningful in my life: That I would be able to take on some outside responsibilities, and that our family would be able to accommodate it.

But I recently realized that there has been a change happening inside me. A little miracle. Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly. My desire to teach has been fading away. (Or maybe it's that I can see reality more clearly: Teaching English well is a ton of work...with a measly paycheck...and with a family to care for too...well, the equation has definitely changed.) I've found myself less anxious about when I'll go back to work or how I might go back to school. Before, this was a constant underlying stress. I felt like I was in a hurry. That I had to be in a hurry. I couldn't let too many years pass! But now my Utah and Delaware teaching certificates have expired. My GRE scores are too old. And those who would write me letters of recommendation are getting farther and farther away in space and time. And I am (remarkably) okay with it.

Because my work right now is to mother my children.

I think I am okay with that. (That's the miracle part!) You see, the next few years of David's life are going to be really hard. David is an extraordinary boy. But his talents are not of the sort that lead to easy success in early elementary school. Recently God has been tutoring me in being David's mom. He has helped me understand how David's mind works. He has been teaching me about his strengths and weaknesses. He has finally helped me see and explain what that something is about David--that something that I couldn't pinpoint, but led us to early intervention programs and visits with a developmental pediatrician and lots and lots of worrying, despite David's natural ability to thrive. I knew there was something different about him, some explanation for how challenging and exhausting he was. Now I am finally understanding David better and appreciating him so much more. There is great peace that comes from the empathy with which God has blessed me. But I also see what the future holds, especially the next few years. David is special, and God has sent him to me. He is my responsibility, my work. Because of the struggles David is bound to have, he will need me to be there a hundred percent.

So my other plans I am setting aside. For years. Thirty-two isn't that old, right? I can trust that God will take care of me and provide me with other fulfilling opportunities when the time is right. For now, God has asked me to focus on my young children. It will not be easy. I will often fail to be the mother my children need. But God has entrusted me with this responsibility, so I can trust Him to help me.

I accept what God has asked me to do.

Phew.

This year is not an easy one

Photo: Wendolin Mercado

Inheritance

Part of my family celebrated Christmas together with my grandma in Idaho. We missed being there (but it sounds like they had plenty of excitement and chaos and noisy toys without us). Anyway, I miss my grandma. I have been thinking about her. She has been an enormously positive and supportive influence in my life.

Today I am going to list just ten of the things I have learned from her:

1. Be proud of your loved ones' accomplishments and tell them so
2. When in doubt, choose red
3. Love the temple
4. A little class goes a long way
5. A little attitude is a-okay
6. Telling people that you love them makes them feel good
7. Friends can be as important as family, so nurture those relationships
8. It's nice to relax and cuddle on the couch
9. Have a lifelong love affair with your spouse
10. Fill your refrigerator with plenty of Diet Coke

Needless to say, I am very grateful for my grandma.

[You can see a picture of me and my grandma here and a picture of Mary and her great-grandmother here.]

Fortune-telling will not be my new career

I have this silly little tradition of writing down predictions for the new year, shoving them in my stocking, and forgetting about them until we pull out the Christmas decorations at the end of the year. It's fun to see if you are right or not. (And it has nothing to do with goals or resolutions.) I've also started having our children do a version. Obviously, they can't make predictions. But it's fun to see how their ability to handle a crayon changes over a year.

Like I said, it's fun to see if you are right or not. One reason I like this little game is because I'm pretty good at it. (I did respectably well last year.) Those of you who know me very well have long known that I am Little Miss Know-It-All, and there is nothing Know-It-Alls loves more than being reminded that they do indeed know it all. Ah, how I love pulling that list out of my stocking and saying to myself, "Right again!"

Well, let's just say I didn't get that feeling of satisfaction this year. But I did get to laugh my head off at how unbelievably WRONG I was:

Alisa's Predictions for 2009:

Jan. 5, 2009

1. Greg will not deploy in 2009, but he will be getting ready (WRONG! The man is deployed to Honduras for a year!)
2. We will live in San Antonio (WRONG! I did get the state right though.)
3. We will have a baby girl in the fall--November (WRONG! Thank goodness. This would not have been a good November to welcome a baby into our home...rather, into my parents' home.)
4. We will own a house (WRONG! If only I'd written, "We will not rent," then I would be right!)
5. We will have a Toyota Sienna--white--and will have said good-bye to our Forester (WRONG! Where did this come from??? I guess it's related to #3. We did say good-bye to our Forester though. But only temporarily. It's in a vehicle storage facility in South Carolina until Greg gets back.)
6. David will learn to swim and ride his bike (WRONG! Well, maybe I was right because he did learn how to swim this summer...but then he forgot 2 weeks later. He also can ride his bike, but he doesn't know it. He definitely prefers the training wheels. Oh well.)
7. Mary will still be obsessed with food and accessories. (Right. FINALLY. Mary is the Queen Grazer, and you need only see her sporting her favorite Christmas presents to know that she still loves accessories.)
8. The move will be hard on David--but he'll easily play with new friends and will enjoy preschool. (Right, technically. The move was hard on him, no doubt. He has friends and likes school. But I know what I was picturing when it came to new friends and preschool...and his life doesn't quite fit the picture I had. But those are thoughts and reflections for another blogging day.)
9. Mary won't talk a lot but she'll be a signing machine (Wrong? I don't know if I'm right or wrong. She's certainly talking more, and she's been dropping the sign language accordingly. But she's definitely not as verbal as other children her age.)

Wow. I didn't do so hot this year. The year I predicted was our life through the door. But we went through the window. And at the time I wrote this I didn't know about the window. So here I am, the mother of two (not three) children, living with my parents, husband overseas, and still driving a station wagon (which I can report that I am very happy about).

So, I did redeem myself a little bit by writing the following at the bottom of my list of 2009 predictions:

What's crazy is that this list might be TOTALLY WRONG! Even the minivan thing [I must have really had minivans on the brain that day. NOT a normal occurrence for me, really]--I sense that everything we think about this year may turn out completely DIFFERENT...

Interesting. Maybe I still am Little Miss Know-It-All. I just didn't know I knew it all.

End of the season

Today marked the end of our holiday season.

We concluded our festivities with a cousin sleepover at Grammy's house. The three little musketeers (David and Mary and Cousin J) all slept together in the same room. Besides Mary's insistence on wearing her Crocs to bed and David's 3am complaints about J's loud breathing, the night passed relatively smoothly.

The cousins spent today playing police, chasing dinosaurs, building train tracks, hiding in clubhouses (closets), eating cereal, and taking naps. They had such a great time being together. It was hard to leave, especially since Aunt Le is taking her crew back home tomorrow. It's been so fun having them here! We will miss them. David and Mary gave big hugs all around.

Tonight Tio and Tia stopped by bearing gifts from Mexico. David and Mary were so excited to see them and show off their new toys. With everyone back together again, the very last of the Christmas presents were opened. So now it's officially all over. What a long and fun Christmas we have had.

Now it's time to look forward to the next year......

But right now David, Mary, and I are just looking forward to tomorrow: Back to school!