Belated Christmas Thoughts

I start today with the current center of our Universe:  Caleb James Garcia.  He was about 21 months old when we had the "official" Christmas at our Florida home.  He is enamored of animals--especially any he can hold or touch.  Even though he is still very young, he is able to intuit how and when to interact with our two cats.  

Caleb, being cool while opening presets, Christmas 2016.

He approaches one of them when they are laying down on the arm or back of a family room chair and begins to croon "soff, soff, soff" until he has gotten close to Valley or Gypsy.  Then he lays his head gently on her side--as if her were trying to hear her heartbeat.  He then smiles blissfully:  "Caaa."  After a moment or two communing with the cat and the world around the both of them, he pick up his head and begins to touch Valley or Gypsy on the top of her head.  This time his soft, sing-song voice starts: "Pat, pat, pat."  After a few more moments, he turns away and hops off to do a puzzle or read a book with mom, dad, Papa (Brent)--or he will return to me with one of his plastic animals he wants to discuss.  

Caleb is amazing at finding ways to interact with all of us.  He will stand in front of his mother, who is sitting on the couch looking for new ideas of things to make for Caleb or make for him to learn.  He will fix her with his eyes, as soon as she looks up, he will begin opening and closing his fingers ("popping popcorn") and hopping up and down.  She will ask, "Do you want to sing the Popcorn Song?"  "Yes! Yes!" he replies.  From there they sing songs that he knows from Library Story Time, Nursery, and from Lauren.  They go through each one multiple times.  "Ninn!  Ninn!" (Again! Again!) is his chant when he wants to repeat something.  

Right now, Caleb and Robert are playing together--Robert watching while Caleb practices making baskets with any of his two dozen different balls.  When Brent gets home tonight, Caleb will follow him into our bedroom while he changes into comfortable clothes.  Then he will patiently trail him until Brent sits down in "Grandpa's Chair."  At that point, Caleb throws himself into Brent's arms and the two of them giggle and laugh together.  The wonderful thing is that, while Caleb is choosy about when and with whom he cuddles--after their play together, Caleb will settle down into the crook of Brent's right arm and lay his head on Brent's chest . . . a testament to the sweet bond between them.

To him, I am Nana or Ga'ma.  Different enough to allow Lauren the luxury of knowing that she has  whole claim to "Momma."  In a land where she has to share just about everything in this house with everyone else, it is nice to have something that is hers alone.  

While Robert has been in firefighter, and EMT training, their little family has been relegated to the guest apartment on the other side of the pool.  They spend their days--when they are not gone--in the "big" house with Brent, Nathan and me.  She has been doing the cooking for us almost every night.  They both clean the floors and bathrooms once a week for me.  For a time it was their only income--and I know that it must have been hard for them.  It was hard for me when we lived with my parents the summer between graduating from BYU and starting Drake University.  

Lauren and Robert--Don't know what La is looking at, but apparently she is pleased.

Brent showing off Lauren's artwork.

Me--one of the few good photos of me I have from 2016.  Fitting it should have been taken on Christmas Day.

Nathan--the ever-present, ever-patient, cat-charmer.  

It is now the last day of January 2017.  Lauren just put away the last of the Christmas decoration a few days ago.  Sad that I do not get "into the Spirit" of the Season by putting up fake evergreen boughs and having Nathan put the Lego train around the bottom of a tall, REAL Christmas tree--Lauren makes up for my disinterest.  

Truth be told--it is good to have someone in the house who actually CELEBRATES each of the traditional seasons by changing the way things look around the house.  I am just too distracted to want to keep up with the constant change.  

I have come to the conclusion that energy--desire to struggle forward--is also allotted to each of us.  Unlike time, which seems to have ben given to each of us in equal amounts, the spark that drives mortals to become MORE, BETTER is a fixed number of tablespoons that spreads itself like peanut butter over a piece of bread.  Some get a generous portion, others, not so much.  It is difficult for some to look around them and wonder why they do not find joy in every hour when those closest to them admit freely that they feel as though they abound in it.  

The inequity is easy to philosophize about to myself--harder to comfort some around me who I love dearly, but find joy and happiness, at least right now, in short supply.

Merry Christmas 2016!

always care

Happy Mother's Day!? A Short Report on Our Family.

Lauren makes these kinds of flowers herself, but these are on the Mother's Day card that Robert gave to Lauren.  Caleb found it and decided to bring it to me while we were waiting for dinner to cook.

Today was quiet.  During the Church block, the second hour of Primary was taken over by the Priesthood.  Young Women and Young Men manned the kitchen.  Even the Nursery leaders were pushed out of the room and the dads took over so that the three of us could be present at a luncheon and short program for the Relief Society sisters.  The food was so-so, but I got to sit with Lauren and so that made it very nice.

Nathan has braved the unknown and is taking an art class with me on Tuesday nights.

Nathan busy being an uncle to Caleb.

Megan, Jon, Gloria and Kate in a calm moment at home.

Dad and Cindy visited and posed with Gloria.  

Most recent photo of Jon, Megan, Anton, Gloria and Kate, the Rytting family all together.  This was taken on the day that Dad and Cindy visited.

Meg ties Gloria to her with a long, thin blanket while she and I have a piano lesson.  Meg asked me to be her piano teacher this year and so once a week we FaceTime and Meg shows me what she's practice.  Years ago I took piano lessons from Mom--and now I get to do that with Meg.  It feels strange--like when I look in the mirror and see Mom's face looking back at me--but nice.  

On Caleb's first birthday, we took family pictures.  This one is one of my favorite.

Lauren and Robert Garcia.  The Garcias are living with us while Robert goes back to school full time.  He just finished his EMT training (while still working full time as a manager for a automobile parts store).  He will be taking anatomy and physiology this summer in prep for Paramedic training that starts at the end of August.  When he finishes that--he will be ready to start the fireman's academy.  His ultimate goal is to become a full time fire fighter.  He is an amazingly dedicated husband to Lauren and father to Caleb.  He spends hours and hours studying for his classes.  He is originally from Peru and so English is his second language ... I could not even comprehend a way for me to go through these kinds of classes in Spanish.

I am also busy being a grandma.  Caleb is a fish at heart.

Our house is full.  My heart is full.  We are all doing well.

Peter's Obituary

Murphy--a rescue who delights in bumping his toys about his space.

Oops! was added to our family to keep Peter company . . . which Peter hated because he saw Oops! as competition.   He shows his displeasure at late dinners by filling his empty food bowl with toys.

Peter, this blog's namesake, has been dead for a few years.  I think about his earnest demands for attention--and how irritated he would become when I would try to get him to do a trick over and over again.  I have a few pictures of him.  My favorite photograph is a bit out of focus:  it shows Peter, burrowed between my knees, as I sit on the kitchen floor rubbing his head and body.  The photo doesn't show it, but Peter is completely still.  He is adsorbed in the joy of that moment--I am paying attention only to him.  I am focused on only him.

I don't think that I have ever been so loved by an animal.  I have had uncountable numbers of pets over the years--but have never felt so completely necessary for a small, fuzzy being's contentment.

I would write at this moment about how much Peter meant to me; how he came into our home; how he enlarged the scope of my life.  

The term for this is an "obituary."  But I could never begin to express my feelings about Peter in one of those: a dozen lines to pay final homage to the small being that inspired this blog's series of essays.  

Obituaries seem so cold and formal to me.  It is as if the deceased's spirit has gone, leaving only the husk of a body behind--and so all that was lively and real about him/her is also sucked out of anything written about them.  That is one of the reason I love the book Tuesdays With Morrie, written by Mitch Albom.  

Morrie Schwartz, a university professor who loves to eat and to dance, is slowly being debilitated by ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Mitch, one of Morrie's students, is reunited with this teacher twenty years after graduation.  Morrie wasn't just an instructor--Mitch details how he learned to write from Morrie . . . giving Mitch the tools he needed to become what he is: a sports writer.

During the last years of Morrie's life, the two of them meet once a week--as they did when Mitch was a student--and Mitch chronicles their conversations:  bit by bit, "line upon line" (Moses 1:35, Book of Mormon) the wisdom that Mitch had ignored in his struggle to become a commercially successful writer.  Through his words, we also are able to observe the painfully unrelenting process as Morrie's mind becomes incarcerated by his body.  

Though entirely different beings, Peter was also betrayed by his body.  His teeth grew to the right side of his mouth--by the time I understood the symptoms, major surgery was necessary.  (I know.  I know.  I go on and on about how people spend thousands of dollars keeping old pets with cancer alive--making them suffer needlessly.  But Peter was mine.)  He survived the surgery--but I could not get him to drink water--even from a dropper.  Baby food did not tempt him to eat.  

Three days later, I took him back into the vet and had them put Peter to sleep.

Originally there was just Peter--then Oops! to keep him company when I had to be gone.  Then I adopted two rescues.  For a few years there were 4 rabbits at our house.  

After 11 years at this house only Oops! and one of the rescues (Murphy) are still here.  Oops! enjoys being cuddled, but not very much.  Murphy endures being picked up, but prefers to huddle in the back of the enclosure and to have me reach in and rub his face and ears.  They both love treats--but don't like to interact with me as Peter did.  

I suppose that these lines about Peter--who was actually named after Beatrix Potter's character because he looked so much like her illustration of him--are more about me than him.  

But that is right.  Grieving over any thing or any one is mostly a matter of some one missing them--and the story of what will happen without them in our lives.  I am sad for myself--that Peter is gone.  I am also feeling guilty about all that I could have done; the time I could have spent; the places I could have taken him--while he was alive.

And now I begin to think about the death of my mother--19 years ago this August.  Thoughts too private to share right now.

Whatever you are doing Peter, please know that I am thinking about you.  I am grateful that I got to have you in my life--and for the bits of wisdom about love, impatience, and endurance that I learned by having you here with me.

Oops! understands that you are gone.  Murphy sheds much more than you did.  And every afternoon, as I clean their cages, I remember you and am glad you were "mine" for a few years.

Never Free

My photo, Greenbelt, MD, Dec 2015.
I made Meg and La each a bunny bag (Nate got one with a train engine on it) one year to collect Halloween treats.  When they got old enough, each of them would fill these bag with snacks, books to read and other things to do.  They brought them whenever I took them with me in the car:  for when mom "wasn't-lost-but-wasn't-in-the-place-she-wanted-to-be."
Megan now uses hers to store her Peter Rabbit series of DVDs.

All through high school, the message was "prepare yourself to leave home."  Going to college was to "prepare to make a living."  I turned 18 the day after I graduated from high school--and was expected to have a summer full-time job to earn money for college that Fall.  The whole of my focus was on separating myself from my family, my parents, my brothers and sisters--to leave my old life behind and set out to discover a new and independent one.

With that assumption came the idea that I was leaving my old self behind--the one that was weak and afraid and rude and selfish.  I was to "go forth" and craft a personality that embraced service and charity and confidence and selflessness.  When I set off for my first semester at college, I didn't bring any pictures of my family, any mementos of all the things I'd accomplished in my past 18 years.  Even though I played the piano and sang, I didn't even bring any music with me.  I played the flute, but left it home.  I don't know what I expected--but for some reason I assumed that I was to leave everything I was and everything that had surrounded me--because NOW I was in college.  Now I was grown up.  Now I was a new person.

I compare that with what my own children took to college with them.  They took old scrapbooks, dolls and comforters.  They took art and craft supplies and favorite books.  While all my baggage was contained in one small cardboard trunk and three small suitcases--each of my children arrived, ready to set up housekeeping with a cell phone, computer and printer, towels, kitchen utensils, pictures to hang on the walls--enough stuff to fill a small U-Haul trailer.  I wanted, more than anything, for them to feel that their rooms were places of refuge and safety.  

Brent or I went with them to set up their rooms, buy textbooks,  find class buildings, grocery stores, cafeterias--and I regularly sent packages from home:  cake mixes, new socks and sweaters, treats and things that would make their academic life easier.  They each had a credit card--and their job was to be a student, rather than working to support themselves and pay for school at the same time.  All of our children came away from college with Bachelors' degrees--free of school debt.

Looking back, that approach worked well with two of our children--not so well with another.  I tried to stay away or come to visit as often as requested.  Sometimes that meant that the only time I got a call was when money ran out--other times it meant that I talked for hours a day with someone when they worked on homework or when they felt alone.  

Money was in short supply when I was in college--I was the first of 5 children to leave for college.  I felt the burden of my university expenses, but also resented that constant imp on my shoulder, sniggering into my ear that I was wasting my father's money and that I was always spending too much . . . no matter what I saved or bought.  I felt alone, too.  I did so many things--but never learned where or how to expend the effort to learn how to develop friendships.  

I resented that my younger siblings were later sent to college with cars and credit cards and had family ski trips for Christmas.  That was weighted against my honest conviction that my parents were doing as much as they could--and as much as they though was best.

But, getting back to my first idea--that college was a time and place to begin a new identity--I never expected to keep finding bits of my old self pop out unexpectedly.  I didn't bring music--but still played piano for church and special numbers--and sang solos for Sacrament Meeting.  

In high school, I amassed hundreds of pages of hand written journal entries--details about how I felt and what I wanted to feel.  In college, I was saved by the reams of paper that I filled with my journal scribblings--where I went to hide from the world and try and sort out everything I was seeing and feeling.

In one of my journal entries, I wrote about a young man (whom I really wanted to ask me out) who loved another girl.  We were in the same college English class.   One day I, as we waited for our turn to enter the classroom, we stood near each other, next to a wall-sized window on the face of the building.  We looked down from the second story window at the sea of hat-and-coat-and-scarf-bundled people making their way to class.  I just saw people, but he saw her.  He wrote a poem about her--about how much a red beret mattered.  When he watched from above, he could see that spot of red and follow her progress as she walked among hundreds of other people.  Her mere existence made his world mean more.

Another time I wrote about a young man who sang with a band and wrote songs--and, for a few moments, thought that I was "the one."  I was overwhelmed by his musical confidence--and crushed (for the first of many times in my life)--when a single action on my part turned his regard to repugnance.

I didn't leave my awkward adolescence behind when I went away to college.  I only opened myself up to a myriad of new places where I could be revealed as the neophyte that I was.  I watched boys that I liked as they pursued other girls.  

I watched girls in the restroom flash their diamond engagement rings for everyone to admire.  

I sought for private corners of the library to read and study and research my academic efforts.  I fell short of some professors' expectations and greatly exceeded those of other educators.  

And all along, I found bits of flotsam and jetsam from my previous life surfacing in my essays, my conversations, my relationships with roommates and my ineffectual tries at becoming important to various boys who didn't know I was alive.  

Since that first semester, my life has begun and blossomed.  I survived my first year and transferred colleges.  I met people that I had gotten to know from the myriad of places where my family lived as I grew up.  I remembered what I learned from my father about standing up for myself.  I still mooned after boys I knew didn't even know I was there--but I used it as a coping mechanism.  

When I was so full of emotion I didn't know what to do, I'd look around and find someone whom I crossed paths with several times a week--and focus on him.  It was pitiful, but it worked.  I would remember that some day I would be the girl in the red beret.   

My photo, Jan 2016.

I went on my mission and brought my flute and music to play.  I memorized a simple song (One Small Child), and performed it for dozens of different audiences.  I got sick and I got better.  My Spanish improved.  I got home and I realized that there were as many reason why people needed to go on missions as there were missionaries.  

I discovered young men from my past who had cared deeply for me--but because I was too much wrapped up in my own world--I treated badly.  I had young men write poems and another compose a song for me.  I made choices that have blessed and challenged me--and others that I still regret.

I have also seen how I growing up in our family is an inexorably part of my children's adult lives.  

My photo, Jan 2016.

The way that Meg cleans the lint off the dryer lint trap is the same way I do it--a method I learned from my own mother.  

Copied from an internet site.

La sings a cheeseburger song to her young son that she learned from a video she watched Saturday afternoons when she was in elementary school.   I collected about a hundred books from the Eyewitness series and Nate devoured them.  

Copied from an internet site.

Knowledge turned out to be a dangerous thing:  he caught some flack from teachers whom he corrected as they taught high school classes.  

My photo, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.

My photo, Jupiter, FL.

My photo, mulberry bush in our yard, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.

My children love insects, lizards, snakes and frogs.  An affinity they learned from me--which I (again) learned from my mother and her fascination with creatures who lived outdoors.  

My photo, Jan 2016.

My photo, Jan 2016.
La sculpts these incredibly intricate animals, out of felt, from her imagination.  She presents them to me as gifts--each a replica of one of the animals I have learned to love.  We have had half a dozen rabbits as pets over her lifetime--and I have fallen deeply in love with the sloth--especially because of the opportunity I have to see them close up on YouTube--and at the zoo.  If you are lucky (and if the sloth is "in the mood" for company), for a few hundred dollars, the Palm Beach Zoo allows you to invest in a "Sloth Experience".  Nate and I met Wilbur the Sloth--a girl.  When sloths are born, sex is tricky to determine--so they have a 50/50 chance of getting a boy name for a boy or a girl name for a girl.  Wilbur was one of the 50% whose caregivers guessed wrong.

When Nathan was injured during his early Scouting experiences and needed stitches, he insisted on watching the doctor sew him up.  In part, I think but am not sure, because I passed on the wonder that my mom felt when she cut her hand and exposed the joint of one of her knuckles.  She called me over to her and showed me how it flexed and contracted as she moved her hand.  

When my dad got home he immediately (exasperated and upset that she had not gone earlier) took her to the emergency room to get stitches.  

Copy from internet site.
Picture of Mariel from the original cover Megan knew.

Copied from internet site.
This is a later image, from a reprinted paperback.

Megan named her first sugar glider after a character  in the Redwood series of books that I read aloud to her and her brother and sister at night as they lay in bed, just before sleep.

Mariel, pencil sketch by Megan for a class at CCAD (Columbus College of Art and Design) in Ohio.

The Gunny Bag, Calvin and Hobbs, Care Bears, the Smurfs, the 13 Articles of Faith, the Sound of Music and spoon, fork and knife family fractions--are all things that I have heard Meg, La and Nate talk about, sing about, and tell others about.

My graphic, Jan 2016.

My children know, first hand, how to care for cats, dogs, snakes, mice, ground hogs, hedgehogs, horses, hamsters and houseplants.  They know how to sew, to draw, to play the piano (a little bit), do laundry, identify an allergic rash, follow a recipe and rub a knot out of a strained muscle.  

Having left home at 18 to go to college, I took much more with me than I would have ever imagined.  The material things I brought were few.  There were other things though--talents, memories, mistakes, expectations, memories of books I'd read, and horses I'd ridden, loving to learn (some things), reluctance to admit (others)--and a unique ability to easily adsorb information in a traditional education system--that I could never be free of.

I have often dreamed a dream (or a nightmare--hard to tell sometimes) where I am suddenly in a position where I could stand before all the world.  What I always end up asking first is the forgiveness of all those I've neglected or treated rudely.  I can still--it is past 2:30 am on a Monday night in January--see the faces of so many people I would thank for their part in all that I've gathered during my 55 years on earth.  The education that I gained at the expense of others, I would try to explain, has been some of the most poignant and searing.  The love that has been given so openly, the prayers that have literally saved my life, the forgiveness that has already been silently offered--these are the things for which I would express gratitude.  

My children will never be free of all that I have, of all that I am.  Mom used to tell Susan, M, Nathan, Rob and me that we were better than she was--that we HAD to be better.  If we were not progressing, then we were falling back.  If we were not better and brighter than she was, then the eternities would be lost.  She considered our spirits to be older and wiser than hers--having had twenty or more years with the Lord before being born as her child. 

My own children bear those same burdens--to learn more, to give more, to pray more earnestly, to listen more keenly.  

We talk of binding the generations together through temple covenants of obedience to the Lord.  The promises that we make seal me to my mother and my children to me.  

Growing up, I asked my mother why I needed to practice the piano, learn to sew and grow a garden.  Why did I need to sing and to visit my neighbors?  Her answer was always the same:  "Because you are a Wagstaff; and that is what Wagstaff children do."

I'm not sure how to finish this off tonight.  I began by writing about my first semesters in college--yet I still review my Calculus text books and do the practice problems I've done two or three times already over the past five years.  I love doing it--I will never be "done" trying to solve the problems over and over.  Doing so reveals places in my mind that I'd forgotten about--and reveals new chinks where I can store extra bits of cool new stuff that I glean while reviewing the old.  I suppose that's the reason for re-reading the Scriptures over and over again--for praying repeatedly for the same sorts of things.

The image of a butterfly breaking free of its chrysalis is suppose to embody freedom--breaking free of the earth to fly above the dust and the constraints of gravity.  

I don't know.  I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be free of--and what I want to be free to do.  Stay with me--someday I hope to get a glimpse of the answers. 

Phenomenal Return on Familial Investments

I'm beginning my entry tonight with my

favorite photograph of Gloria and me.

She is tiny and new--and the look in her eyes

mirrors the love and wonder that Heavenly 

Father's eyes must have shown as He bid her

spirit "good bye" so that she could come to 

live her earthly life as a member of Meg's 

family.

In this last year two new people have been added to my immediate family.  This, considering the dearth of the previous three years, is a phenomenal return on my familial investments.  

There is Lauren with her Caleb.  If you follow La on Facebook, you are wildly aware of his captivating charms.  He is 10 months old, 27 pounds--and half my height.  He is as big as most 2 year olds--and bigger than the majority I have seen lately.

Meg, on the other hand, is determinedly  NOT on Facebook.  She also doesn't text--or have a phone on which the two of us can FaceTime. 

During my December sojourn in Maryland, Brent FaceTimed me three or four times a day.  Of course, now that I am back in Florida, he calls me a few times a day--I guess he gets enough of my face when he is home.

December is a busy birthday time for Meg's family.  Gloria was born on the 12th; Jon was also born in December (Yes, I'm very embarrassed that I can't remember the day--but it IS in December.) and (a little after December but in the same vicinity) Anton's birthday is January 3rd.   Kate is the 18th of May and dear Megan was born on October 8th.  

Just for the record:  there are probably places in our family records that list Meg's birthday as October 2nd because that was her due date.  Then Lauren came along with her birthday on May 2nd and so my Swiss cheese memory had Meg's birthday 6 days earlier than it really was for way too many years.

Enough of birthdays.  Meg's family on the day I arrived:  Kate, Jon, Meg and Anton.  

Kate, 4 and 1/2 years old, draws a portrait of her sock monkey.  Megan is impressed by the detail that she includes.  She is quiet and studious here--very focused on her work.

Jon, almost 7 years old, shows me two of the Lego mini figs he created.  He describes their faces, their hats, and their weapons.  Each element has its own story--and Jon earnestly tells me everything.  Everything. 

Megan pushes Jon on the swing.  I am still not flavor of the day and only mom's pushes are requested.

Kate eventually allows me to push her on the baby swings--because Meg can't lift her up and into the seat any longer.  Here:  a triumphant first ride down the big slide.

Kate starts from the bottom to
climb up the leaf step.
Jon comes from the top down
before going from the
ground up.

Megan and Anton in a rare, quiet moment together in Megan's office/studio.  In a few days the family of 4 will become a family of 5.

Anton and Meg just as they are on their way out of the house to go to the birthing center.  It is about 9 pm.  Megan wanted to get there in plenty of time because she wanted to be able to use the hot tub before the baby came.  I guess last time Kate came too quickly. 

The morning after Gloria is born.  She came home from the hospital wearing this outfit and stocking hat.  From the very first, she spends more and more time just looking around--studying the images she can make out. Brent saw the photos I took of Meg and the baby and warned me to look out for signs of post-partum depression.  I reminded him that she had just given birth a few hours earlier and that she was very tired--happy, but tired. 

Born at 11:37 pm on December 12, I took this picture the next morning.  Anton decided to use it in his announcement email to friends and family.
She is named Gloria Louisa Jane.

The first official family portrait.  Jon is all smiles, Kate has to be persuaded to join the group.  Only the fact that she wouldn't be in the photograph if she didn't sit on the couch got her to overcome her ambivalence at Gloria's arrival and sit next to Meg.

Kate holds her sister next.

Jon holds Gloria for the first time. 

I'm afraid that Gloria is handed to Anton by default at this point.  She has been home for a few days, everyone else is cooking supper, setting the table--getting ready for dinner to be served.
Gloria has her eyes wide--Meg calls it her "looking around time."

Christmas morning.  Everyone is sorting through their stockings--Santa did a good job.

Jon got a new camera to do stop motion movies of his Legos and to take pictures of the things he considers interesting.  Megan told him that it was a new tool for him to use in recording his work--for his Legos and for school.

Kate's big gift from Santa was a whole set of clothes just the right size for dressing up her "plushies"--Meg made them out of some of Kate's favorite clothes that she'd outgrown.  The outfit that I saw her use the most had been made from a pair of black and white striped leggings.  

When Kate's bear had the hat (with eyes and two small ears) that worked as a mask, a shirt and a pair of pants . . . he was transformed into a zebra.  She, herself, has a black and white striped shirt and pants.  Thus, when all the laundry was cleaned and put away, both Kate and her bear could be zebras together!

I didn't get a picture of it, but one of Kate's favorite games was to spread a small, knitted blue and white blanket (made by Aunt Lauren at Meg's request) on the floor--carefully straightening out the corners.  Then she took a clothes basket, lined with a small quilt, and placed it in the center of the "water where people can swim or splash or just walk on the beach."  She usually had her "zebra" bear with her on these voyages.

Another Christmas day treat.

Two things here:  Santa (me) brought Kate some spiffy new panda headphones.  For some reason, Kate has become very sensitive to the sound of other people chewing their food.  Meg had gotten an adult sized pair of headphones to dampen the noise--but I found these on-line.  Specifically designed for children with sensory issues--they made them kid-sized with spiffy bear or panda faces.

The other:  Kate and Jon wanted to build a gingerbread house for Christmas--and then eat it.  Meg found a kit at Trader Joes . . . hoping that it would be edible.  It was fun to make, but tasted, ah, terrible.  She had me pick up graham crackers, sprinkles and small candies at the store.  I found some incredibly cute sprinkles in the shapes of green evergreen trees and red Christmas stockings. They were smaller than the candies, but big enough that they could be picked up one by one and placed individually to decorate cookies or a gingerbread house. From melted dark chocolate chips and cream, Meg made a ganache to hold the sides together and the roof on top--and as mortar to hold the decorations onto the graham cracker surface.  Quick, Kate and Jon both to make their own, and delicious--Kate and Jon both devoured their creations a few minutes after finishing them.
Jon wouldn't let me take a picture of his creation--his grand plans did not turn out as he wanted.  He didn't like how it looked, but he definitely liked how it tasted.

LESSON:  Failure can still be delicious.

Kate and I as we set out for our afternoon together.

This is one of my favorite portraits of Jon.  He has so much inside of him that he often doesn't know how to let it out ... except where Legos are concerned.  His Lego creations are as unscripted as the rest of his life is exact.  His favorite way to interact with me (and most other people I saw) was to bring his latest model, show it to me, take it apart and lay the pieces carefully and beautifully out on the floor, and then narrate as he reconstructed the model before your eyes.  I was very much an audience for him ... as I suppose I also was for Kate.

The official family portrait that Anton sent out with the family Christmas cards.  I love being able to capture such images.

One of the last two pictures I took just before I left to return home to Florida.

The other photo.

Three generations.

The final image for tonight.