2009 In Pictures

Time again for the annual year-in-review in pictures. Hard to believe 2009 is already at an end!! It's been a wonderful year, one I will look back on with joy as one of the happiest years I can remember. Not every year is like that; but this one was.

January: My whole body was taken up with the imminent arrival of Baby Nora and my heart swollen to bursting with love for both the girl outside and the girl inside.

February: Nora Kathryn comes into the world!

I chose this picture instead of all the much better professional ones we had taken a few days later because this is my first memory of Nora's precious face, just minutes old, all squnched up and yet so full of extravagant beauty, straight from the hand of God. There are only a few moments in life as precious as the ones spent holding your child for the very first time, and falling into a love so deep, so complete that nothing could ever challenge it, nothing could ever threaten it. A love as real and as natural as the heart beating inside your chest.

February needs two pictures because there were two things that would qualify as some of the most precious experiences of my life: meeting baby Nora myself, and introducing her to the other precious daughter in my life. It was a very special moment seeing the sisters meet for the first time.

March: Carolyn adjusts to being the Big Sister in the house... and becomes quite the little Mommy! ;)

April: Nora truly is our little "Peanut." So tiny and sweet; we loved watching her sleep and eat and grow and she just took over our hearts with her preciousness.

May: went to visit Uncle Doug and Aunt Katy and Emily and new baby cousin Jake. Had a great time catching up with family that we see far too infrequently!

June: the culmination of five years of hard work in internship and residency: Graduation! Brad becomes an official "Attending Physician!" I was so proud to stand beside him as he graduated and entered a whole new world of practice.

Also June: our little Carolyn turns three years old! We've had our moments, but overall, Three has been GREAT. We have just loved watching the little person she has grown into.

July: We took a celebratory trip to California, where we visited dear friends, saw the Pacific Ocean, and spent a memorable day at Disneyland.

August: We crossed over to the "dark side" and became Mac people. :) We still keep a PC around for some functions, but overall, we just really love our Macs! :)

September: a bit of a surprise/whirlwind trip to Seattle; Brad attended a conference and I soaked up some quality time with Chandra, my dear friend and roommate from Hope, and Andrew, her wonderful husband and also our friend. :) Bonus: we love Seattle and the amazing things to do and see and EAT! :)

October: unseasonably cool much of the time, but with some of the finest fall colors in recent memory. We loved doing all the "fall stuff" as a family of four this year!

November: gets three pictures because we had so much to be thankful for. First the faces that surround us daily at the dinnertable. What a blessing to have each of these wonderful people in my life.

We were able to spend several days in Florida with the Irving connection.

Then we came home to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Barton side. We are so blessed to have each of these precious people in our family!!

December: it's soo hard to pick, but I think the very best thing about Christmas this year was seeing it all come alive for Carolyn as her comprehension this year is so much more advanced than last year. Watching her "catch" the wonder and amazement and mystery of the Incarnation was so precious.

And just because I can't end a post with a picture of only one of my children, December gets two pictures. The other most wonderful part of Christmas this year was just stepping back and seeing how rich we are in love and life and relationship. It gives my mommy's heart so much pleasure to see my girls just bathed in love as they are by both the family that's close in miles and the family that's far in miles but close in heart (and on Skype).

2009 was a wonderful year filled with memories to cherish for a lifetime. Thanks be to God for his abundant provision and extravagant blessing on our family! Welcome 2010!! :)

Christmas 2009

I have concluded that I am just never going to "catch up" the way I want to, so although there are hundreds of pictures from the week, here are the top 20. If you want to see more, become my friend on Facebook. :)

Carolyn met "Santy Claus." She was very excited to sit on his lap, though he was less than excited that her cheapskate mom didn't want to buy any pictures but brought her own camera. :) He could have been a little more jolly, but it did the trick; Carolyn told him that she wanted a pink sparkly flashlight and "rings." (he brought both earrings and finger rings just to be sure :)) I laughed a little when we left Santa because Carolyn seemed genuinely confused that the presents weren't forthcoming. She said, "But he didn't give me anything!"

Each night of December, Carolyn got to take a figure from the advent calendar and put it up on the board- gradually we got the entire Christmas story up there- Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus (on the last day), shepherds, wise men, angels, stars, gold, frankincense, myrrh, and lots and lots of animals. Carolyn's favorite parts of the Christmas story were the "Babe" and the myrrh. :) Next year it will be fun because Nora will be big enough to take part in the story, too! :)

She's been having fun of her own though. She enjoyed watching big sister and her friend playing in the snow from the comfort of a cozy snowsuit and a blanket-lined wagon.

And anytime we wonder where she is, the bathroom is always the first place we check. This child LOVES the bathroom! I think she hopes if she goes in there enough times, one time the bathtub will magically turn on. And if all else fails, she might get to fish around in the toilet, and that would be fun of its own...

The Saturday before Christmas, my sister Laura came with us to the Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb of God concert. It was amazing; a wonderful celebration of the true meaning of Christmas; and the best part is that all the people involved in the concert are such Real People; they patiently stood around talking to all their fans after the concert; it was really cool to talk to Andrew and all the other people on tour with him.

We even got to meet Brandon Heath, an up and coming Christian artist who was a guest on the tour. Super cool guy!

Had a little oven scare two days before Christmas and learned that when the oven is broken, the broiler is not an effective means of baking cookies. That night wasn't much fun, knowing the whole family was coming for Christmas and that the oven might not be working- but we realized afresh that Christmas is not dependent on all the trappings, and it would have come just the same, even without the turkey and dressing and cookies and pies... but in the end the oven was able to be repaired and we had a sumptuous feast that was truly delicious!

Christmas Eve we made cookies for Santa and for fun.

It's an Irving family tradition we hope to keep alive each year, even though Nana and Papa don't live close by anymore and we missed them as we painted the cookies!

Nora wasn't big enough to paint but she made a big enough mess drooling all over her own cookie!

Christmas Eve was icy and they canceled our church service, so we improvised with one of our own, with each of us playing several parts. Brad was Joseph (with piggy bank for taxes), a shepherd, and a camel, I was a shepherd, wiseman, and narrator, and Carolyn was Mary, the angel of the Lord, and a wise man. Laura helped narrate and played a wiseman, though we didn't get any pictures... Carolyn especially liked being Mary with the Babe in her belly- she didn't like having to switch parts and our "pageant" ended in a massive meltdown that surely wasn't recorded in Scripture! :)

Christmas morning I woke up before the kids and enjoyed a few quiet moments just staring at the beauty of the tree and feeling thankful for all the bounty the Lord has blessed us with.

I think Carolyn was pleased with what Santa brought for her. :) She especially enjoyed the long-coveted pink sparkly flashlight and the surprise Finding Nemo figure set he brought. :)

Mommy and Daddy got a special present for the whole family: this super cool wooden dollhouse! Carolyn was so excited about it she spent over an hour just taking the people up and down the stairs and playing with all the little accessories her Uncle Doug and Aunt Katy got for the dollhouse.

Things got a little dicey for awhile in the midst of the Christmas chaos and both girls had to take a break for rest/nap time before resuming the present opening with renewed vigor (and happier attitudes!)

Later on Christmas day my mom and dad came and we enjoyed dinner (and baby snuggles) together.

Light, fluffy snow fell on Sunday and I loved watching Carolyn try to catch the flakes on her tongue.

We all went outside to play in the snow, and Bryan and Brad invented a "snowboarding" game on sleds on our little hill; I played around with the shutter speed on my camera and got some fun pictures- until the light went down too much for pictures...

Carolyn made her first snow angel before deciding she was cold and retreating inside for hot chocolate with Ammy.

Without a doubt, one of the best things about this Christmas was sharing it with my sisters (and mom, too). It is so wonderful to see how as we have grown and shared the joy and pain that all life brings, we have become such close friends as well as sisters (and mother). I could not hope for more for Nora and Carolyn than that they would one day value and support each other the way my sisters and I do.

In sum, a wonderful Christmas, much to be thankful for, and NOW IT IS BLOGGED! :) Hurrah!

The Worst of Me

The holidays. They are the best of times. They are the worst of times. The best reason in the world to celebrate seems to bring out the worst in a lot of those of us celebrating. It's certainly true of me. Every year I look forward to those precious weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas with great anticipation and excitement. My mind starts whirring with ideas and plans and thoughts of amazing things I could do- gifts I could buy, delicious things to bake in the kitchen, the yearly Christmas letter to write. The often-stifled creativity that lies deep within my soul seems to come alive as the first snowflakes fall and sleigh bells begin to be heard on the radio stations. Suddenly I am alive with possibility.

I think I have a greater sense of my own untapped potentiality at Christmas than at any other time of the year. And because I'm a person who more easily sees what MIGHT be than what CAN be, I end up with a gigantic collection of ideas that couldn't be realized unless I could somehow clone myself about five times, and about 65 started, but uncompleted projects... My husband will tell you that the one sure family event of the Christmas season is my annual meltdown! This year I think I have had two or three.

My email doesn't help. Every morning for the past few weeks, I've opened the computer and over the 8 or so hours since the last time I looked at it, there are about 19 new emails, and of those 16 begin with a header something like "HURRY!" or "LAST CHANCE!" or "SHOP NOW!" or "ONLY THREE DAYS LEFT!" I've always been a person who works to deadlines. Maybe it's because I start so many things that I only manage to complete whatever is screaming the loudest for completion! There's something about feeling like there's only a limited amount of time left to accomplish something that helps me generate my best creative work. In order to really be creative, I have always had to do "it" (whatever "it" is), when it is ready to come- and deadlines seem to provoke an ability in me to accomplish what I could not without that added pressure.

Maybe that's why Christmas is my most creative time of the year. But as each year has brought more (wonderful) responsibility into my life, I find that there is less and less of "me" to go around and the tiny part of me that's available for self-expression seems to shrink as the years go by, leaving less ability to achieve what my mind is still capable of dreaming. This Christmas season I've really struggled with feeling all this pressure inside to accomplish all these things- one sleepless night I sat up and wrote down literally 43 things I needed to do that were stressing me out! The majority of those things really weren't even all that important!

And yet the constant consciousness of all the many things I "could" be doing has been steadily driving me CRAZY the last few weeks! I feel like my mind is turning into Swiss cheese! My subconscious is so consumed with all this "stuff" that it seems like there are whole "rooms" in my mind where things are getting lost- I'm forgetting all kinds of stuff and just really struggling to keep even just the really important balls in the air. It makes me feel like I'm going prematurely senile! Last night, Brad and I spent TWO HOURS searching the house from top to bottom looking for the remote control! We COULD NOT FIND IT anywhere!! We were both so stressed out and frustrated but neither of us could just let it go and go to bed. Sometime around midnight, we finally did find it. And guess where it was? The most obvious place in the world: right between the couch cushions. Each of us had thought the other had removed them to search for it! EEEEK!!!

No doubt some of you are smiling because you know me well enough to know that this crazy, spazzed out person is just who I am, who I've always been, and who some of you at least, have learned to love. Others may be just feeling thankful that there are crazier people out there than they are! But I think we all need to take a moment at this point when the holiday craze has reached a fever pitch and The Great Holiday is nearly here to STOP. Just remember. Think, consider, and let go. I know I need to.

From the Mouths of Babes

For those of you unfamiliar with Luke 2's account of the angel visiting the shepherds with the good news of Christ's birth:

"And LO! An angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid! But the angel said unto them, 'Fear not! For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find the Babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.' And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth, Peace, good will toward men.'"

We have been acting out the Christmas story narrated by the same King James version of Luke 2 I grew up hearing each night before Christmas and it is amazing and wonderful to see Carolyn beginning to learn and internalize the Story. I especially love the expression with which she says "Lo!" She knows almost the entire chapter, but she especially likes the part with the shepherds, so that's the part I could videotape. :)

Snow Day!!

Yesterday the long-predicted and much-complained-about Blizzard arrived. It's been THE major story on the news all week and everyone was poised for it forever and it finally got here yesterday. All the kids in town had a snow day, so we took one too. I always overcommit around this time each year and end up getting really overwhelmed with all the stuff I "have" to do. I've been heading for my yearly breakdown for awhile now, and though I didn't get anything done yesterday, it was really a nice thing to just take a break from it all and enjoy a day with my girls. We had fun!

What else do you do in a cookie-loving family when it's too snowy to go anywhere? Make cookies, of course!!

Carolyn's gotten so much more coordinated that she's actually helpful now! She can get the ingredients into the mixer now without spilling them all over the counter. :)

She likes to watch the cookie dough swirling around in the mixer. She knows better than to stick her fingers in there!

After the dough was done, it needed to chill for awhile, so I got to go spend some time hanging with this little sweetie and I love her snow day shirt so much I couldn't help scheduling an impromptu photo session. :)

She is so adorable and full of pure joy; I love her so much!

After naps, we cut out the cookies! Carolyn was better at this than she was last time, too, though she still got tired of it before we were done.

We made a "multitude of the heavenly host!" Also, not pictured, we made a "blizzard" of snowflakes and many other assorted Christmas cookie shapes.

They were a hit!

Even Nora approved. :) Yes, I allowed my 3 year old to give my 10 month old a cookie. :) Figured it was a sure-fire way to get some fat into this tiny little bean! And sure enough, she loved it.

I was so proud of Carolyn; she helped clean all the cookie cutters without complaining at all! As part of our parenting class, we're trying to develop a sense of family identity in our family and instill in them a sense of teamwork, which means that even though it's often really easier for me to just do the chores myself, it's really important for Carolyn (and Nora as she grows) to participate in the things that make the family run. She needs to be a participant in our family; not just a recipient of services rendered by Mommy. There have been some rough moments over the last few weeks as we've tried to really encourage her to begin helping ("Helping Time" is now one of the "times" in our day) as she's able, but I think she is finally beginning to get it, and discovering the joy of doing something unselfish!

Nora: Ten Months Old!

My mommy is a little behind the times and didn't get around to my interview until late this month! I keep reminding her that I'm growing so fast that she'll just miss it altogether if she doesn't take a minute now and then to capture things! So here we pause and I'll tell you what I'm like at 10 months old. You can see from my picture that I am still full of joy! I seem to exude a sort of glow everywhere I am.

Although I'm still definitely characterized by JOY, there have been more disgruntled moments for me this month. You might see one reason for this in my mouth- I now have THREE teeth! I worked very very hard and suffered much for the new top tooth I'm sporting on my top right gum... and the second top tooth isn't far behind it. Mommy hopes we get a break from teething for awhile once that one comes in. I'm not a very happy camper (or eater!) sometimes when my mouth is hurting. :(

However, teething aside, I am quite happy most of the time. I'm very proud of my physical achievements this month. I LOVE to stand. I can walk around the furniture and I'm very interested in what will happen when I'm able to let go like my big sister. I've tried a few times, but I always fall down. I'm not discouraged by this; I just get back up and try again.

My mommy loves to see this sweet face when she comes in to rescue me from the cage/crib I sleep in. :)

My sister also loved standing up in the crib. We still look very much alike, but our differences are starting to become more apparent. Mommy says we are both beautiful, though, and Daddy agrees!

Mommy says she loves this picture because it captures where I am right now. I am nearly always in motion. I am curious about everything and I want to touch it all. It doesn't take much to distract me (especially if I am eating!) I would much rather have fun and experience it all than take time to be still and eat or sleep. I have almost no fear and no sense of discouragement when I can't do something I'm trying to do. I just try harder, and often find that I am able to accomplish my many goals. I am VERY determined.

Just in the last few days I have started mimicking the things the Big People around me do. Last night, we were singing "Hallelujah!" and I enjoyed playing along. Today I entertained a whole group of ladies at Mommy's meeting by playing peekaboo with myself and anyone else who would look at me. I am very cute.

And finally, this is what happens to me when Mommy lets Daddy do my hair. He calls it "Nora's Mop Top." It's true that I will soon need my first hair cut. But Mommy's not ready. My hair is turning out to be nice and thick like my sister's, though it is considerably darker than hers was, and Mommy thinks my eyes are darkening too, so I may turn out to be a little dark-haired, dark-eyed kid. For now, it's still a little undecided.

Sorry about Mommy dropping the ball in the video department. She needs to get some better footage of me so you can all see how amazing I am!