Merry Christmas, Honey!

I don't have much to say today... actually thinking of my husband... all the cute little quirks about him that I didn't know about before we were married (miraculously, considering we dated for 5 years)....

Like his love of freebies! He sent an email to his family members this morning about a morning radio show prize giveaway that he wanted us all to participate in so maybe one of us would win. I think most of us hear those contests as we're driving around listening to the radio, and we think, "hey, lucky person. They just won an ipad (or whatever)." Chad always, always goes into action, ready to be that lucky person... Well, we didn't win the ipad this morning, but thanks to his freebie fire, we won free concert tickets to OK Go last week. We also got a Christmas tree marked down from $40 to $18 this year, because it was stuck in the wrong spot and Chad was willing to find a manager to see if they would honor the mistaken price. Ah... sometimes I find myself trying to hide a little while he's perusing booths and snatching his 6th free pen or water bottle or whatever (not all from the same booth). But it also cracks me up. I love this about Chad--I hope he never stops (mostly because I'm excited to see a 73 year old man grabbing for free toothbrushes. Priceless). And after a fabulous OK Go concert last Thursday night, is it worth it? Yes, I think so!

Like his inability to keep his hands off me, in public or even just in front of our kids! (Is this a TMI?) I'm sure at some point we'll have to stop making out in front of Coren, especially now that he can communicate what he sees... but it's going to take Chad some work to do it... And quite frankly, I LOVE this. And secretly, I hope it doesn't stop for a long time, like ever. Really, how many wives have the problem of too much public affection from their husbands? Awesome!!

Like his refusal to drive his work car an extra five or ten miles to catch up with me at his parents' house for the evening or something... I usually have go pick him up from a Park-and-Ride off the freeway and bring him back later... just because he doesn't want to use a single mile of gas on non-work activities. Because he has that much integrity. In everything, really. And it makes me so thankful that Coren will be growing and learning with a man like that as his father.

Like how he walks into his work party, and everyone has to come up and talk to him, just to be around him. How he has this dignified magnetic quality to him that draws people--all kinds! His coworker covered in tens of thousands of dollars of tattoos, his 40 year-old coworker with her teenaged kids, his previous coworker who reminds me so much of my little brothers, dancing with a tie around his head. Everyone wants to know Chad, to be around him. Everyone respects him. It sounds exaggerated, but ask those who know him--it's true. Honestly, I'm a little in awe sometimes.

Just a few of the quirks I was musing on this morning. A few little qualities (and oddities) that make my husband irresistibly fantastic! It's no wonder I needed to marry him from the first time I ever met him. Lucky me!

Merry Christmas Honey, how I love you!!

And because people wanted to see...

Here he is... My boy with chopped hair. My boy who no longer looks at all baby, who looks all boy, who makes me miss my little dude, but who is still as cute as ever (I can say that now, a month into the haircut, now that I've resigned myself to it).

Because the kids are still asleep...

I thought I would get on here and post some thoughts (miracle of miracles!):

I am surrounded by Christmas decorations--half put up and half laying around on the floor waiting to be assigned a place for the month. And I am starting to get that Christmas-y feeling.....

The hard/beautiful part of that Christmas-y feeling is that it always brings memories of my mom. This was her "basking" time of year, and now innately I want to do the same--put on Mannheim Steamroller's Stille Nacht, turn the lights off, lie down in front of the Christmas tree and just bask.... and cry. I actually can't hear that song without crying anymore; that is the quintessential Mom song for me. But the feeling is a sweet kind of painful, and it's lovely, not bitter or depressing, so it's welcome around this time of year.

And reflecting on Mom, for the life of me, I can't figure out how anyone else was born into the family after Tera... what do people do with more than two children?? Really, I want more than that myself (many more), but I'm still not sure I'll survive the stage I'm in now, with just the two. I am learning that a huge portion of motherhood must take place in the Now--does that sound like a super obvious statement? Let me explain...

I have been realizing the last month or so that I am TERRIBLE at the whole Ecclesiastical idea of seasons. I have goals, and they all need to be achieved now! I keep looking at the future and panicking about the things I'm not getting done now, things that I want to already have accomplished by my forties, like a Masters degree and a bestselling book, and a job working at a university. Thinking, I still want to be young and in touch (yes, I know, ridiculous) when I do those things. So I'm trying to live in multiple seasons of my life as if to prove to myself that I won't be held back... but held back by what? My kids? Um, yep, that's what I discovered this month--I have this awful idea that Motherhood is holding me back. Oh dear....

Now that's not to say that some women can't do it all right now--I actually know some women who have, and can. But I am not that woman. So I'm faced with the dilemma of choosing a season for myself. Well, I already kind-of chose (I have two kids), and I am teaching myself to submit to the natural turn of the season I'm in. It's hard. I am stubborn. I don't bend easily, and I often rage against things like, oh, common sense, that make me step back and reevaluate myself (really, who likes to reevaluate themselves?).

So then I turn to the women I love--how did/do they deal with seasons? My mom is foremost in my mind these days, because she loved her season.... and now that I can't ask her, I find myself wondering, how in the world?? How do you love a 20 year/7 child season? And I realize that she did it by living now, by making the present as important (maybe more) than the future. She lived this moment with this child, and this hour for this child, and that minute for that child, and there wasn't anything beyond that. And I mean that in a more exalted way than it sounds.... not that she didn't have ambitions, but that she learned to see the greatest ones she had--the ones that woke up every morning and needed her constant attention. I need my mother's vision, the ability to recognize that my forseeable future is my children, set that future aside, and live the present with them....

Remind myself that Coren became a toddler before I said he could. That Risa's little baby grins will only last for a couple more months before they lose that brand-new-ish something. That her thunderthighs will disappear (sigh!). That Coren will start talking in complete sentences--in English or Spanish, whatever--and will forget the language he jabbers in right now, a language that delights me! Remind myself that it doesn't get easier, ever, so stop looking forward to the easier.... Just tackle the now, and love the now, and bask in the now, and remember that the now is what I wanted then.... and what I will want later, when my next season starts. Ah, my beautiful, frustrating, peaceful, hysterical, tricky and delightful season of life: Motherhood!

Does every mother feel like this??