It was such a beautiful day and wedding, and oh, the food. They have a lot of friends that are into good, local food and cooking, and it was quite the feast. No catered event I’ve been to has ever compared. The boys had a blast dancing to the Irish music, and my mom was there as well.
A few months later, we went to my parents’ home, AKA “the Barn”, for Christmas. To everyone’s delight, my grandmother (Oma) came too, from Holland. We had a really nice visit together, four generations under one roof.
I confess that the kids were inside with Omie when Jo*el and i made this snowman. We had fun doing it!
That's my old sled No*ah is riding on.
Last summer, when we stayed in Holland, Oma gave us a few of her chickens’ eggs to have for breakfast, as you can see in this picture.
At Christmas, we gave everyone framed photos of the boys, and the boys brought her some of our eggs from Minneapolis.
(We brought them in a break-proof egg container designed for camping, in case you’re wondering how we pulled that off!) The boys still talk about Oma all the time, and are fascinated by the fact that she is sleeping while they are still awake.
Traveling with 3 year olds was SO much easier than any age before it. Jo*el and I read entire chapters out of our own books on the flight, the boys slept pretty well, and were generally just happy, adaptable little guys.
Some of you may not be aware that Meagan’s dad passed away a few weeks ago, as did Joel’s Aunt Karen, who lived in Hawaii. It’s been a sad winter in a lot of ways, with lots of loss and bad news. We hold everyone who loved Karen or Me*agan’s dad in our prayers as you go through the slow and often messy process of grief.
Those boys of ours are growing like weeds, both physically and otherwise. The last few months have been a bit trying, with a lot of drama and insecurity, mostly saved for mom and dad, one of those lovely “stages of disequilibrium” that our Early Childhood teachers have told us about. They’ve been a lot clingier, clumsier, and more easily frustrated than they were over the summer, holding it all together very well at school or church or wherever, and then falling apart with the safety of home and parents. The cold winter we’ve had hasn’t helped, and it can be difficult to give them enough opportunity to burn off energy. We see signs of hitting a smoother patch, though, and we love watching our almost-four boys learn and grow. They are very interested in maps and the earth right now, especially that if you kept going in one direction, you'd eventually get back around to where you started. They spend time talking about the boat/car combination they need to build to pull that off. Maybe I need to get them a decent globe..
They adore school, and are starting to really make friends—though they don’t seem to have quite the same need for it as non-twins do. They seem so darn smart lately, so full of intense and sophisticated questions. I can’t always answer them anymore.
The boys study one artist a month at preschool, learning about his/her life and art. The big painting by Ollie in this photo was from when they were studying Piet Mondrian. The boys told their teacher that they and their mama are Dutch too, and that they've even been to Holland.
Both boys have had the same singular obsession for months now: the color pink. I don’t know if it’s the fact that we have little of it around or what, but they’ve been asking for pink anything and everything since summer. They have a single pink boa, a pink turtleneck, and a pink tye-dye t-shirt, and these are about the only things they consistently fight over. Fine by me, but older kids tend to have a thing or two to say about that. Oli*ver tells them, “some people don’t know that boys can have pink, but I do!”
While we were in New York for Christmas, Joel’s parents gave the boys a very generous gift: they painted the whole upstairs! Pink. Well, kind of a lavender-pink. It looks light and cheerful, and the whole space is so easy to organize and manage. The boys sleep upstairs together, and that's going really well.
Ollie's is above and No*ah's below. There is a door between them, but it's basically one big attic space.
They both have new down comforters from IKEA too, and they match the quilts that the Sundseth women made for them perfectly. I used their toddler bed comforter covers to make curtains, and we were all set. The boys adore their new "pink room", and will gladly show you around if you come by.
The boys rarely nap anymore, but occasionally, "quiet time" turns into slumber. Unfortunately, that usually means bedtime is full of shenanigans. Still, is there anything more beautiful than a sleeping child?
All the best to you and yours!
