Thanks in Thanksgiving

Like my friend Aubri over here, we Olsons had a nice, relaxed Thanksgiving. It sure is a gift to learn some things over time, like: this is only one day. If the meat and at least one side is done, we'll survive. Kids like to help with special days (even if sometimes it feels like anything but help, like when they're juggling the fine china). A clean kitchen is a great joy. And a perennial favorite: eating is fuuuuun.

I also greatly benefitted from advance planning (I won't talk at length about my Wednesday meltdown which primarily involved a cranky, overtired pregnant momma who spent too much time standing and insisting on unrealistic execution. But I digress). The bread dough and pie were finished yesterday, so the sugar-high cinnamon rolls this morning were a breeze and a hoot--the kids wanted to try using cookie cutters on the dough until I explained that the cinnamon had to have a roll to make it happy. Papa dressed the turkey--the boys debated whether it should get underwear, a ski hat, or PJs to wear--as usual, which is a huge relief for me. He also cleaned and prepped and boiled the white and sweet potatoes. He's a dream, I know!

Because he did that, I could make the Schnitzel Beans (bacon, onions, green beans and other top secret ingredients), the Scalloped Corn, prep the dinner rolls from the dough, and make eggs for a late brunch. I also did two loads of laundry and put away three weeks' worth of clean clothes in our room, which was completely tangential to the meal but made me feel fan-tad-tic (look! Our dresser has a top!). Taking a shower probably helped my state of mind, too. And washing dishes by hand and running the dishwasher twice. Then I made the (box) stuffing and creamy mashed potatoes (cream cheese, check) while Papa carved the bird and made the melt-in-your-mouth sweet potatoes. Oh, and I opened up the can of cranberry sauce that Jon and the kids love.

At four we six and a half sat down to a great meal. We talked about things and people we're thankful for, in between preventing spills, reminders to use utensils, and refilling plates (you never have to ask Small Dude twice if he wants more. He invariably says "Puh-puh," or "please!"). Then I laid on the couch for an hour while Papa cleaned up. Bliss.

Yeah, the kids watched the parade this morning (fun to converse with them about it. When asked about the Rockettes' kick line, the Little Professor said, "It looks like a combine." Why, yes, yes it does. There's a deeper social analysis in that comparison, but the literal one was enjoyable enough). They played spaceship and trucks and who knows what else for much of the day. And I find myself near sleep and realizing how few thanks I gave today, how much I took for granted.

I know better. I wrote about gratitude this very week. I said prayers and read psalms and thought about God's gifts, but these are such small tokens. Like a pastor friend wrote on Facebook today, maybe that's the point--that God is pleased to receive our tiny thanks is another indication of His unsurpassable generosity to His children. We deserve nothing and get everything, and He smiles upon us when we give thanks to Him. I can and should do better, yes, in rendering thanks and praise to my Savior. Yet He forgives even my selfishness and inward focus on this day. For His great mercy I give Him my gratitude, my whispered words. And He gives again, and will so tomorrow and until the end.

Three years is long, fast time

Just about three years ago...

 

Now, our little boys are our "big" boys!

A Little Peek at a Small Dude

Today we mark the one month face time arrival of our newest blessing, our son Daniel Luke Michael. He arrived on Saturday, September 28, a week ahead of his due date, and managed to give us all enough of a heads-up to get his siblings some awesome care and for Papa to make it to both services on Sunday. He weighed in at a solid seven pounds, fifteen ounces, and measured twenty inches long (and by six days post-partum, he'd shot up to eight and a half pounds. Good eater, this one). We were surprised but pleased to see his full head of blond hair--no bald baby this time! I'll share more about his watery births--physical and spiritual--later, but suffice it to say God is merciful and we are very grateful for our son. Say hello, Small Dude!

I'd say more, but the little manny is hungry, and I still haven't figured out how to breastfeed and blog at the same time. Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers! Our cup runs over.

Oh, and happy belated October, all, and Go Cardinals!

Snips and Snails*

Other than my own suffocatingly slow reflexes when it comes to blogging lately (that's a really lame excuse for an apology for my absence here), we've been moving slower here generally in the Olson household. The temperature outside finally rose above freezing, so we've been lounging and soaking up the sun outside. We've also been sleeping like rocks at night due to all the fresh air time. Last Thursday, I sprained my ankle when I missed a step. I am very thankful that I sustained only a few scrapes, bruises, and a minor sprain, and I'm already moving much faster than I was a few days ago (does sitting on the couch for hours qualify as movement? Please say yes). Baby's complied by kicking me more since Thursday than I've felt yet in this pregnancy.

Anyway, beyond some physical snail-ness (excepting Baby), we've been waiting with patience for today's prenatal ultrasound. Because we found out today that Baby...is...a....

You didn't think I'd just spit it out like that, did you? Patience, patience!

All of us went for the appointment this morning. I asked the sonographer if she would only tell us the gender if she was really sure. I explained we know some recent instances of people finding out their child's gender, only to find out on birth-day that--oops!--Baby isn't a girl but a boy. Or vice-versa. She said she only shares what she's absolutely sure of (don't they all say that?). Then she said she knew what sex our Baby is. At that point I'd been lying on the table with the gel on my belly and Baby's picture up on the monitor for about five seconds. So Papa and I were a bit surprised that she said that. Then we both thought the same thing: that must mean...

Sorry for all these ellipses! At the same time the sonographer continued with her normal measurements and picture-taking (Brain! Heart! Stomach! A-maz-ing!), and we explained to the kids what we could see. "There's Baby's face! Do you see the heart beating? Look at Baby's kicks!" Superman said, "There's the eyes!" while we looked at the brain. We obviously haven't covered any biology yet. Then he said, "It's dark in here. Can we turn up the lights?" I was laughing at all of their comments so much Baby looked like an earthquake was happening. It was awesome.

So the boys were impressed to see Baby. Pearly Girl was impressed by the swivel stool in the room. After a few minutes, Little Professor abruptly told us that he thought Baby was a boy. He's been telling us for months--months!--that Baby was a girl. Surprised, Papa and I talked to him about it for a little bit, and then he or Superman asked the sonographer what she was doing now. She said, "I'm writing that your new baby is a boy." And she did. And he is!

Did you like how I snuck that in there?

Papa and I have been thinking for awhile that Baby is a boy. To have that hunch confirmed was still surprising--I suppose the difference between thinking about winning the lottery and actually winning it. I admit I felt a momentary let-down. We'd both hoped that Pearly Girl would get a sister. But then we both got really excited. A son! A son! Three sons! The sonographer then said, "And he's not shy at all." Boy, was she right. While Pearly Girl was modest to the point of us almost not finding out that she was girl until her birthday, Baby hid nothing in that all-important department. I'll refrain from including a tell-all picture here, but suffice it to say, we saw a little, er, "snip" that told all. :)

The little man was more shy when we saw him in the 3D. But we still got a peek at his face!

When we realized Baby is a boy, we celebrated. Little Professor said he was excited. Papa and I grinned at each other and expressed our joy. Pearly Girl smiled because we all were. But Superman got upset. "I don't want a boy," he kept saying. "I want a girl." He even put his head in his little hands and leaned against the table where I lay. We had to talk to him about how much fun a little brother will be, but he was still pretty despondent. I was surprised because he's never expressed a strong opinion on the subject (while LP stuck with his "sister" guess, Superman would change his mind every day), and his dejection was unexpected. He's a thoughtful one, our S. I don't know if he saw another brother as a competitor or really wanted a little sister so Pearly Girl would have a buddy. I suspect the latter. Superman is very aware of other people and shows an acute conscientiousness for his age (asking open ended questions to adults with no prompting, for example. Then again, he also yells at his brother and pushes his sister on a regular basis). My guess is that over time, Superman will come to love having a younger brother. And before he went to bed tonight, he told us, smiling, that he was excited about his little brother. So he's recovered somewhat.

And we have, too. Every life is a gift, as we've been reminded so clearly in the last day since the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. Whether we expect what we get or not--and truly, who actually gets exactly what they expect?--God knows what is ultimately good. We give Him thanks for His gifts of life and salvation, comfort and steadfastness, and for our Baby Son.

*The phrase "snips and snails" is taken from an old nursery rhyme entitled "What are Little Boys Made of?" So no real sneaking going on here!

So Long, Turkeys

After an awesome Thanksgiving (over three weeks, we enjoyed four amazing Thanksgiving dinners and innumerable fantastic people! Our church family is great!), we're taking down the Thanksgiving and harvest decorations now. So sadly, our little turkeys are going into hiding for the next year. Thanks to Aunt Rachel for the foresight to send these guys our way in time for Turkey Day (the boys LOVED gluing on the feathers!). Though Mama helped with the writing--and, okay, a little bit with the thankful things--the boys ultimately decided what went on 'em. And where they went.

May your heart always be thankful for Jesus, fruit snacks, and monster trucks! (And your family, too.)

S's turkey. He let me help with placement.

P's turkey. He loves his family--and gluing by himself!

Pheasant Invasion

The boys--Papa and the two little guys--went to a gun show at the Armory on Saturday morning. I'll say that again: gun show at the Armory. Yeah. Roll that around in your mouth for awhile. Almost makes us sound rugged-Western-cowboy cool, doesn't it?

Anyway, the boys saw lots of, well, guns and other objects that could significantly impair one's ability to survive, jump, or add single digits. They also got lots of candy--hey, those gun people know a good bribe!--and something else meant just for kids. See below (and laugh away. Don't worry--we did!).

My Awesome Brother

He's pretty great, that guy. Growing up, I always wanted an older brother, but now that I'm grown, I realize that my brother has the qualities I wanted in my imaginary male sib (and my younger brother has an awesome wife, too!): thoughtfulness, humor, protectiveness (he's got an adorable baby girl now!), steadfastness, faith, imagination, vision. I'm uber-proud of him. And just wanted you all to know it.

And P still remembers the important stuff, like he told me tonight: "Uncle C likes sardines."

New Teeth

See 'em?! Aren't they cute?! And C of course, too. :)

For my first blog post in months (yes, that's with an "s"--yikes), I contemplated an array of topics.

Basement flooding and floor redo? No way. Too depressing and practical. Plus, it all got taken care of pretty quickly, thanks to Papa and insurance and Pipestone Interiors, so the entire post would have been just about as long as these sentences.

Graduations of friends and church members?  Better, but not quite right.

A 30th birthday college friend reunion at our house? Super duper with a cherry on top! But that's a post to come, so not quite yet.

S and P's birthdays (two and four, respectively)? Awesome, but now other events have crowded in. Those will come, too.


A log of the travel Papa has done without us and I have done without him and we have done together, including our most recent trip to see Papa's parents and grandpa and to throw my sister's bridal shower? Well, that's not all that interesting as a list. Maybe when I go through some of the pictures...

The head-injury-prone S, the feverish P, and the newly toothie C, all post-vacation. And they're still smiling!

I guess the truth is that I'm still figuring out what this blog is for. I mean, it's for us--for family and friends, for people near and far who want to keep up with our goings-on. But it's certainly not a play-by-play of what happens here every day. I can't, and frankly don't, want it to be that way. It's too much work and too guilt-inducing (as in I can always be thinking, "Oh, I should have blogged about that! And because I didn't, I've failed as a mother."). I think that way enough as it is about a thousand other things that happen (or don't) every day.

So this is more of a "I'll-blog-when-I-can" blog, a "when-I-think-of-something-worthwhile-to-say" blog, and most important, a "when-my-time-doing-it-isn't-outrageously-cutting-into-my-real-life" blog. And cutting here segues nice and beautifully into the "actual" blog topic here: new teeth. (And really, what can compete with a cute baby?)

I can't fully empathize with teething children, despite having gone through it myself. Frankly, the whole process looks, feels, and often sounds like a big mess. During our first leg of our official summer travels last week, as we sweated under one-hundred-plus temperatures with three kids just-barely-four and under through four states, C's first two teeth decided to make their appearance. This is an embarrassing Mom admission, but I didn't even notice that the first had broken through until a saleslady at a store pointed it out to my mother-in-law. Um, thanks, Eddie Bauer lady! You're obviously more plugged into details than I am.

After we marveled over that little white wonder, then the temperature spiked across mid-America and the floodgates of C's salivary glands went into overdrive. I've seen a lot of saliva in my time, but I personally think C broke records. She even put on a really impressive projectile show at a nicer-than-average eatery in Edwardsville, which is a first for any Olson kid. Luckily the recipient of most of her theatrics was me and the floor, both of which are washable (thank goodness!). And C felt a lot better after channeling her inner sicky-diva. Toughie that she is, she made it through the rest of the trip, and so did we, and now we'll all recover--extra teeth and all--in the next weeks before Mil and Chris's big wedding coming up at the end of the month. Too really overkill the metaphor here, every new transition requires a little bit of pain, right? Just hopefully not so much slobber.

Teething wears out a girl.

A New Coat for Anna

Sometimes our library visits unearth surprising gems.

Awhile back, in an effort to stem the tide of Cars and cars and other tricked-out-merchandising paper collections otherwise labeled as "children's books" (I can't pretend to call them children's literature) that our sons our oldest son inevitably gravitates toward, I grabbed A New Coat for Anna, written by Harriet Ziefert and illustrated by Anita Lobel, from the Winter bin. It contained a few more words than the average books I read to them, but I thought--on the drive-by snag--that it "looked good." Well. I had no idea. P ended up loving this book, and because he loved it, so did S. In the two weeks we had it checked out, P practically memorized it, and even S knew all the steps.

The book is based on a true story about a little girl living with her mother in post-World War II Europe who needs a winter coat. There's no money or supplies, so Mom gets really creative and tenacious and they end up figuring out how to get a new coat in stages using barter to provide payment. A farmer's sheep provides the wool, and he gets Grandfather's watch. A spinner who spins the wool with an old spinning wheel gets a lamp. They dye the wool red themselves with lingonberries they pick in the depth of summer, and then a weaver weaves the red wool into cloth and gets a garnet necklace. Then Anna and her mother visit the tailor, who measures her for her coat, works his magic, and produces a lovely red coat in exchange for a teapot. Then Anna and her mother invite the farmer, spinner, weaver, and tailor over for a Christmas party--the happiest one they've had in years. And at the end, Anna goes to visit the sheep to thank them for their wool.

Simple story, this; not so simple lessons (beyond the hypnotic step process that seems to enthrall all young children). Lobel's frontispiece illustration is of a war-torn city. P wondered why it looked the way it looked, and I had to explain to a three-year-old, in the simplest way I could, what war is and what happens during war. I think I told him that wars happen when groups of people fight over places or people or things and ideas, and lots of people get hurt and places get destroyed. It's ugly. Sometimes it's necessary, but always it's ugly. And this is why I found myself loving this story--because even though war is ugly, and the aftermath can be brutally difficult--not that we Americans generally know anything about this, but I digress--people can band together for simple  moments of joy and thanks for life even after losing practically everything, including loved ones. A wool coat, and the people who help make it for a little girl, can inspire hope.

When Anna's first waiting for the sheep to grow their wool so it can be sheared in the springtime, she and her mother go to visit them almost every Sunday. At that first Christmas, she adorns their simple heads with paper chains and sings carols to them. At the end of the book, when she's wearing her red coat and visiting the sheep again, P started saying that Anna must have sung "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" to them. He was more right than he knew. "Peace on Earth and Mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled." What a fitting reminder.

Brothers, Together

It's been so fun in the last few weeks to see how P and S have grown and changed toward each other. They've always played well together (other than the typical "You take my toy when I want it and I'll sit on you"); now that S is learning new words every day, though, their relationship has progressed to actual conversations between them. Few things are as heart-warming for Mommy to hear than P going down the hall saying, "Do you want to play with this truck, S?" and S saying, "Yes. Tanks." :) I tried to capture one of their exchanges here, and it didn't quite work (you can hear P say, "Can I come in?" and S say, "Yeah," which is about it), but you might get a feel for what we increasingly hear every day.

And in other S linguistic news: his latest amazing comment has been "Christmas tree. Fall down. Naughty." You can probably guess why he's said that.

P.S. FYI: These videos seem to only work in Safari or Google Chrome, and not in Internet Explorer.

Apple-Picking in the Fall

I know, I know--the world is already into Christmas mode now that we've passed Turkey Day. And I'm so behind I almost considered not posting these pictures. But as a last hurrah to fall and to the quick passage of time, here's some pictures from our visits to a local apple orchard last fall (2010) and this fall. It's neat to see how much the boys have changed! I think this will be a family tradition come late September/early October. We love it! (Especially eating the apples that we accidentally dropped. Yes, accidentally.) Few things taste as good as apples eaten in the orchard where they've grown! And next year, God willing, we'll have three little pickers to take along. :)

2010 Stonegate Orchard Visit 

2011 Stonegate Orchard Visit

 

Will the boys be able to handle it...?

Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (That's code for We Ate Horrendous, Horrendous amounts of food.)

YUUUMMM!

 What a terrific Thanksgiving we Olson's had! Early to rise (but later than normal); I made the rolls and fed the boys breakfast while Papa prepped the turkey for the roaster and got 'er started. Then he magnanimously offered told me he'd make everything else. Since I made the pie yesterday, I said I'd make the green bean casserole--one of my favorites--and, okay, he could make the rest. :) So before 10:15 a.m. he'd made the mashed potatoes, the stuffing, the glazed sweet potatoes; prepped the corn and the gravy to make later; set the table; and washed all the dishes. I KNOW--he's amazing!

Then, after I got the boys and myself dressed between reading stories and watching some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (isn't that a tradition?), we all piled into the car and drove to Good Sam, where Papa led the residents in a short Thanksgiving Day service. It was terrific. Everyone was very kind, and the boys behaved wonderfully. We were glad to see some shut-ins from our church and talk to other residents, too. We enjoyed it so much, we hope to do this every year if it works out.

Then we headed home to EAT. And eat we did! Everything miraculously turned out--there's always some snafus that make us think something isn't going to taste right--and all of us, even the little guys, spent the first ten minutes after the prayer stuffing our faces and not saying anything. Which, if you know us at all, almost never happens. So the roughly four hours of prep paid off in the roughly ten to fifteen minutes of eating. The return doesn't seem great, but with enough leftovers to last us a week (and mighty good leftovers, too!), we'll take it. Especially since Mama did so little work. :)

P: Did someone say "TURKEY"?! S: Gimme some milk.

Ready to dig in!

The Menu:

Roast Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Glazed Sweet Potatoes
Lydia's Schnitzel Beans
Buttered Corn
Cranberry Relish (from the can, per Papa's favs)
Beth's Best Buns
Milk
Pumpkin Pie (not pictured)

Papa, a.k.a. The Chef, spooning up. No, that's not his plate.

 

Then I cleaned up most of the remnants while Papa took the boys downstairs to start watching the DVR'd Packer/Lions game. The little guys went down for naps after a bit, and so did Mama, while Papa spent an enjoyable few hours watching the Pack beat on the hapless helpless hopeless downtrodden Lions. (He then spent the rest of the day telling me how great of a game it was. It really made his Thanksgiving!) Then we drove over the the Smidt Family Thanksgiving and saw and visited with lots of lovely people while we ate dessert. They invited us last year, so this is becoming somewhat of a tradition, too--what a blessing!

It reached almost sixty degrees, which has to be near a record. At any rate, it was gorgeous out, so we all played at a nearby park before we headed home and started getting out the Christmas decorations. I've put my Christmas dishes in the hutch--one of my favorite seasonal activities is to switch out dishes and flowers; nerdy and old-school, but I can't help myself--and after some shopping yesterday, we rearranged the living room furniture (hey--I helped push the couch a few inches--once), which always precludes the annual Christmas Tree Decorating Extravaganza. I love this time of year!

We're so thankful to God for all of His gifts. And, as S said on Thursday, "Happy Thanks" to you all.