Saturday, December 13, 2014

Tis the season...

The sun is streaming into our front picture windows so I've positioned my chair right in the path of the warm rays!  Jason and I were too eager to head out for a morning jog together (taking advantage of a "childless" morning), and didn't get around to starting a fire.  The sun will take over from here!

The girls are enjoying a sleepover with Aunt Emily and Uncle Jonas.  It was nice for Jason and I to have some concentrated time together again, as we were likely to go through complete withdraw after our luxurious Thanksgiving time away.  It was everything (and much more than) we could have hoped for.  We had planned to head to West Virginia on Wednesday but ended up going over Tuesday to beat the snow storm; an excellent decision!  We planned to spend the time with my parents but Mom had also reserved the family cabin down the road for Jason and I to slip away to as much as it made sense to do so and as much as the girls were comfortable with that plan.

Well, as it turns out, they were 100% comfortable with us being gone!  Kali was gracious and welcomed us back warmly each afternoon. Alida...not so much!  Anytime we would reappear, she would ask why we were there and made it quite clear that she liked it better with just Grandma, Grandpa and Kali.  It was nice to know she didn't "need" us, but I wouldn't have minded had she "wanted" us just a tad more!  In all honesty, though, it was a glorious feeling to know that we were having a wonderful time and so were the girls, and I think the grandparents enjoyed it too!  The snow added additional fun and beauty to our time in the mountains!
This was not staged - I actually picked these 7 letters during one of our many Upwords games!
Kali spent hours out in the snow and it seemed that Alida's favorite was sledding after dark!
On the last day I wondered out loud to Jason how long it would take for us to get tired of our WV schedule: wake up without an alarm, enjoy a hot drink and breakfast over a game of Upwords, do some yoga together or read out loud or to ourselves, beat Jason in another game of Upwords over lunch, hike back to Mom and Dad's together, spend the afternoon relaxing/playing games, eat supper with them and then do some more relaxing and games, and then head back to the cabin for the night.  Let's just put it this way - we weren't tired of it by Sunday when it was time to head back over the 4 mountains...

One of the surprising parts of our four full days there was that Alida nursed to sleep for her nap each afternoon. On the last day there, I had Jason come up and take some pictures once she had fallen asleep. Over the course of those days, I had the strong sense that we were coming to the end of an era.  Kali nursed until her 3rd birthday.  Alida is going on 3 3/4 years old and at our last family meeting noted that she might stop when she is 5.  I'm not sure the stars are going to align for that to be true.  In reality, she hardly ever asks to nurse anymore (she went about 4 days this week without even thinking about it until I mentioned it).  There isn't much there anymore to extract even if she was still good at it. And, on that last point, it seems that she is actually kind of losing the knowledge of how to nurse.  On one hand it is kind of humorous, on the other it's kind of uncomfortable.  At our family meeting, we talked about doing something special to mark the end of nursing, but she didn't seem very interested in that.  From what I can tell, it seems like it is just going to phase out peacefully without much attention given to the transition. Jason asked me the other day if I'm ready for the end.  I'm really not sure, but ready or not it seems to be fast approaching.

The girls helped Mom decorate for Christmas while we were there and so they were all practiced up for our return home!  Our first day back, Jason and the girls scouted out a tree on our property for our front room and we got our the Christmas tunes and danced and decorated!  While I find the lessening of daylight hours at this time of year difficult, I do enjoy the ritual of plugging in the Christmas lights, getting a fire going in the wood stove and playing Christmas music. We are also enjoying more games of Backgammon and Turkey Feet and have just started in on 2014 popcorn taste testing!  I also love the time of year where soup is about the right thing for every meal.  I'm thoroughly enjoying getting reacquainted with beans and squash and potatoes.

So, like every season of the year, there are things that I enjoy and look forward to and things that will make me welcome the next season when the time arrives.  For now, I'm about to get reacquainted with our kiddos, who are headed back our way...

No comments:

Post a Comment