bellybuttons

I took the boys to the zoo this morning, and we had a really wonderful time. They walked around holding hands, the bathroom breaks were easy, and they were full of smiles. N kept saying, "This is my brother!" to anyone who made eye contact with him. It is amazing how different one week from the next can be at this age. Last week, and the week before that, the boys were quite moody and difficult a lot of the time, though N more than O. Both J and I were kind of pulling our hair out, and it was very nice for us that Omie was around during part of that. This week, they've been just great: really happy, playing well on their own and together, fairly cooperative, excited about Christmas. This week the boys started giving their evaluation of things more regularly, saying things like, "I like the zoo a lot!", or, "I really like this food!" N continues to take me more literally than I intend. I joked that I was unbuttoning his flannel shirt all the way down to his bellybutton, and he backed away and said, "Mama! Don't unbutton my bellybutton! My smoothie will come out and fall aaaaalll over the rug!"


Some people ask if they fight much. About 6 months ago they fought a lot more than they do now. They have a bad day together every now and then, and can occasionally hurt each other's feelings, but they really don't fight much at all. Their tendency to get each other wound up is a MUCH bigger problem than fighting is. N has a tendency to be a bit bossy with O, and we try to help O out by giving him some words he can use to stick up for himself, but often they just work that out best on their own. It takes two to tango, as they say, and I think that O sometimes kind of prefers that N is in charge of some of the decision-making. N seems to care much more about making choices than O does right now. He's more concerned with doing things in the exact way and order he prefers.


Earlier this week, the boys and I went to Tar*get to buy daddy's Christmas present (they picked it out, with a little guidance). Today, Jo*el took N to buy one for me, and O and I played at a coffee shop (note to my Dutch readers: they actually serve mostly coffee in our coffee shops) for a bit. Then we went home, lit a fire, spread a table cloth on the floor, and had a picnic dinner in the living room. (Myra: see how we're putting the keepsake boxes to good use?)

O now has a twice daily appointment with the nebulizer, and we're continuing to see a big difference in him. We have somewhat mixed emotions about this development. When we agreed to this course of treatment, we just hoped that a preventative medication would keep him off the harsher drugs and avoid the visits to Urgent Care and future overnight hospital stays.

Since O was about 15 months old, I’ve had a nagging feeling about his gross motor skills. He walked soon enough, but awkwardly, and his balance wasn’t great even for a toddler, though he could scale playground equipment (and anything else) with an agility and determinedness that scares me even now. His skills seemed so uneven to me. He didn’t really quite run until he was over two, and even then, it seemed to be with great effort at actually lifting all the appropriate limbs in the air at once. He was evaluated for a gross motor delay at 22 months, and he passed, but not by much, and all the things he scores low on were the kinds of things that required sustained stamina to master. I've tried really hard not to worry, and I really don't care all that much if the boys are great at sports, but as I watched O’s uneven skills develop, watched him struggle to run and ask to sit a while as we went for hikes and his brother ran in impatient circles around him, I have continued to worry.

He’s been on the new meds for a little over a month, and the cough that lingered far too long is gone. A few weeks ago, I also started to notice other changes, a lightness in his body that I’ve never seen before. He’s really running, and getting real air underneath him as he moves, his face full of the joy of movement for the first time. He’s got more sustained energy, the kind with stamina and not just physical strength. His newly official diagnosis of asthma has been with him more severely and for longer than we’d known. All those things that worried me are sorting themselves out before our eyes, as air rushes in and comes right back out in the fairly effortless rhythm it ought to be. Asthma can be tough to diagnose in toddlers, and there isn't really anything anyone could have done differently. It makes me sad that he's clearly not been breathing as well as he could for some time now, but mostly, I am happy the kid can finally breathe, and we are still hopeful that he’ll grow out of it yet. J and I are filled with joy when we see him running down the sidewalk neck-and-neck with his brother, and I think I've already got everything I could ever want for Christmas.

fingerlings

Tonight, we ate potatoes, green beans, and salmon for dinner, and as I loaded up everyone's plates, I mentioned that these were "fingerling potatoes". N looked up at me with his big blue eyes wide open and a scared look on his face. He said, "These are somebody's fingers?"

I was able to reassure him, but he insisted on picking off the skins, and he looked nervous again when I referred to them as skins. I talked about different vegetables having skins and said "The skins taste good, and they're healthy". N tried them and said, "Actually*, they taste like very fancy paper!"

O said, "They taste like socks."

*his latest favorite turn of phrase, along with "Oh! But I thought....." and "I never seen that before!"

Omie was here!

As I mentioned earlier, my mom was just here for a nice visit. The week before she came, O said, "Jesus is coming and Omie is coming, but they are not coming together!"



Here she is sharing her cappuccino foam with the boys. I took N to this same coffeeshop a week later, and he said, "I am missing Omie a little bit." I got a steamed almond milk with froth to make him feel better.


The four of us got a Christmas tree that same morning at Mother Ea*rth Gardens, my favorite nursery. It was bitterly cold, but the boys don't seem to mind cold weather much this year, which has been nice.



Eating popcorn while we trim the tree. It's tied to the wall and we have mostly very inexpensive and non-glass ornaments on it this year, but it's been just fine, and after a Christmas in the hospital followed by 2 years of tabletop trees, we love having a real tree again. We even used the fireplace yesterday.



My mom showed up with some Dutch treats. My own Oma sent along a traditional Dutch apron for me and 2 traditional shirts and scarves for the boys. the boys received some very cute Sinterklaas puppets from a family friend, and J received "clog" slippers made out of foam that look just like the real thing from a short distance. Thank you, Maril*ou, Omie and Oma!



Omie also gave the boys the Christmas present from she and Opa. It was nice that they got it closer to Sinterklaas (Dutch St. Nickolas Day) so they won't be as overwhelmed with gifts then. They received two additions to their train table. I found N sleeping in bed with one of them the other day. the next night, I checked on him at about 11PM and found him sleeping inside his toy chest on top of about 10 stuffed animals.





I'm still behind on lots of things after the challenging month we had, so I'll be lucky if we get out a New Year's card this year, but I'm fairly at peace with that. I think this is our year of the simple Christmas, simple as in not spending so much, not saying yes to everything, not rushing around, and not feeling guilty about not running ourselves ragged in order to celebrate the birth of Christ. Quite honestly, so far this Advent season feels much closer to just right than it has in years.