Happy New Year! (At least in New York)

We celebrated New Year's on New York time, so that bedtime happened right on time!



We wish you and yours all the best in 2008!

Christmas Joy

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye hear of endless bliss
Joy! Joy!
Jesus Christ was born for this
He hath ope'd the heav'nly door
And man is blessed evermore
Christ was born for this
Christ was born for this

Our Christmas was full of celebration. We quite literally celebrated for days, savoring the joy of our Savior's birth and the joy of being together.

The celebrating began on the 23rd, when Kathleen was invited to a birthday party for Jesus. Our friends the Farmers hosted the event, and they did a fantastic job. The children made a nativity craft out of popsicles and clothespins. They also enjoyed an enormous bounce-house! Kathleen's not quite as good at jumping as some of the other children, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. Before the party, Daddy had been telling Kathleen how to make new friends: you walk up, you say hi, and you tell them your name. Kathleen tested out this approach at the party, racing by the other little girls on the bounce-house, calling out, "Hi!" and then patting herself on the chest and saying, "Neenie!" (That's Kathleen's version of her nickname, Leenie.) The other children didn't quite understand what she was doing, but Mama did! (And it reminded Mama that Kathleen is her own person and, at some point, will venture out into the world on her own. It was a particularly scary realization for Mama, and prompted some conversing with Jesus. Good thing it was His party.)

After lots of bouncing, the children took turns blowing out the candles for Jesus' birthday. Kathleen has been singing Happy Birthday to Jesus ever since.

On Christmas Eve our family had a splendid little dinner. We have our own (relatively young -- but we've only been married 5 years!) tradition of cooking a German feast on Christmas Eve. Now, we're not claiming that this is what Germans eat on Christmas Eve, but it's some of the foods we miss from when we lived in Germany -- bratwurst, brotchen (rolls), kasespaetzle (cheese noodles), and gurkensalat (cucumber salad). Although we weren't able to find Gluhwein this year, we toasted with some Erdinger weissbier instead! And we finished off our meal with some lebkuchen (we'll admit it's much better if you buy it fresh at a Christmas market) and some Rittersport chocolate. Yum!

After supper we went to our Christmas eve service, where a friend snapped the above photo of us. And after our beautiful, candle-lit service, we captured a very tired Kathleen wishing everyone a merry Christmas:

We enjoyed a leisurely Christmas morning, slowly emptying our stockings and opening our gifts to one another.

Because Kathleen is too small to read nametags (even our genius has her limits!) we tagged everyone's gifts with shapes: Mama was a green circle, Daddy an orange triangle, Kathleen a red heart, and Madeline a yellow star. Kathleen did a very good job of making sure everyone got the right presents!

We opened some gifts, took a break for breakfast, and then opened some more gifts. Kathleen then decided to press her new water toys into immediate service, and took a bath. By the time we finished the bath and some lunch, it was naptime. Present-opening continued in that meandering fashion for days!

After naptime friends joined us for Christmas dinner. Altogether there were eight adults, two toddlers, and four infants. It was a wonderful, slightly crazy, joyful gathering, and just as Christmas should be! We are grateful to have good friends when family is so far.

After supper, Kathleen and her friend Addie participated in a long-standing Christmas tradition: ignoring new presents and playing with the box!

We hope that your celebrations were just as joyful. Merry Christmas!

A Child at Christmastime

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
--Laura Ingalls Wilder

My heart has indeed grown tender this year as I've watched Kathleen delight in Christmas preparations. Her joy and enthusiasm in cooking, her wonder at the beauty of decorations, and her growing understanding of the gift of the Christ Child have made this season truly special.

We've given (or will give) sugared pecans to many of our friends for Christmas this year, and Kathleen was very helpful in preparing the nuts. She's not so good a measuring yet, but she's awfully good at putting measured amounts into the mixing bowl. And she loves to stir. Not everything she stirs stays in the bowl, but she's improving.

Look at me! I'm helping!

Kathleen loves our tree, which she calls a "Crissen Treat." We've had many discussions about that fact that it is a tree -- like the trees in our yard, for example -- but she insists that it's a treat. I suppose she's right, in a way. Kathleen was a big help in decorating the lower parts of our tree. It's a far cry from last year, when she pulled off the ornaments every day! The post tree-lighting ceremony was held at General's Loop (where -- you guessed it! -- the generals live), and our family walked over for the festivities. Kathleen's face when they lit the giant tree was priceless. "Oh!" she whispered, "Pretty lights!" (The fire engine was the other highlight of the tree lighting ceremony. Santa arrived on it, but since Kathleen doesn't really know who Santa is, he wasn't nearly as interesting as the fire engine itself.)

A few weeks ago we visited Ala Moana mall (the one the tourists visit, too) to have dinner and do some Christmas shopping. Although a trip to the mall happens for most people at Christmastime, a trip to Ala Moana actually qualifies as an event. There's a stage show in the center of the mall, based on the local Christmas favorite The Christmas Gift of Aloha. We hadn't thought that Kathleen would be too interested in the show; I guess we figured it would be over her head. We were absolutely wrong. We wandered over after dinner, and Kathleen watched from her Daddy's shoulders. She was transfixed. The singing, the dancing, the lights -- she loved all of it. I actually cried in the middle of the mall, overcome by the joy of watching my child transported by Christmas magic.

Kathleen has taken to singing lately. She's mastered "Happy Birthday" -- between Kathleen, Mama, and Jesus, that song gets quite a bit of use this week. Her holiday favorite, though, is "Jingle Bells." She sings it all the time. She has no interest in learning the "jingle all the way" part, however, so she simply sings "jingle bells" over and over again. We recently put her down for the night and listened to her sing "jingle bells" for nearly five minutes before she decided sleeping wasn't a bad idea after all. Another favorite is "Deck the Halls." Despite my attempts, "Silent Night'' and "Away in a Manger" haven't been nearly so popular.

And, best of all, Kathleen is learning about the real meaning of Christmas. We have a little magnet nativity set that I picked up one of the times we visited Prague, long before Kathleen was born. Kathleen loves to play with the set. (In fact, we've found the pieces all over the house, although the Holy Family seems to travel together.) She can identify Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus, and she knows that Christmas is Baby Jesus's birthday. Hearing her sweet little voice as she talks about Baby Jesus is truly precious.

Terrific at Two Years Old

Hooray, I'm two!

We know it's cliche to even mention, but it's hard to believe that it has been two years since Kathleen was born. And it's somehow harder to believe that the tiny baby we met in a hospital in Kentucky is now our energetic, talkative toddler.

We celebrated Kathleen's birthday with her favorite dinner -- a pizza picnic! We even let her have a little soda in her sippy cup. But the pizza paled in comparison to the excitement of presents. Kathleen deftly opened her gifts, cheerfully inspecting everything. It's amazing to me that last year she hardly understood the concept of presents, because she was all over it this year!

Kathleen tried on her new dress with matching purse, flipped through her new books, and took her new animal toys for spin. She also opened up her "Whose Baby Is It?" puzzle and promptly set to work, wowing us with her ability to identify animals and put together pieces.

After dinner and some playtime, we brought out the cake. Kathleen understood about the cake and candles, too. We'd barely told her to blow the candles out, and she'd done it. In fact, she was so quick that we almost missed the photo altogether, settling for this shot of extinguished candles and closed eyes.

We hope her wish comes true!

Kathleen's arrival was the answer to our prayers, and our lives with her have been a blessing beyond words. In the past two years this little girl has taught us more about joy and patience and persistence and love than we'd ever known. Hearing her say, "I luff you," watching her hug her baby sister, seeing her grow and learn and become the person she was created to be is humbling and harrowing and delightful. We love you, little girl, and we thank our God for you each and every day -- but today especially. Happy Birthday, Kathleen!

Playing Tourist

This past weekend we played tourist, and we stayed down on that small but very famous stretch of sand -- Waikiki Beach. Although many tourists who come to the island never leave Waikiki, we've found that we hardly ever go, since we live here. There are more than a few reasons: the traffic into "town" is almost always horrific, parking is a hassle, it is, after all, packed with tourists, and we live closer to the famed (and yet more laidback) North Shore. But Jim's unit had a formal ball for a welcome home celebration at a swanky hotel on Monday night, so we decided we'd take the opportunity to be tourists ourselves!

We learned an important lesson, though: our little family isn't really at the stage where staying in one room is a very good idea. Because we were worried that Madeline might wake Kathleen, I picked her up for almost every little peep, and so she was up a lot at night. And Kathleen is so inquisitive and so busy that it's a little challenging to put her down to sleep in a hotel room. She's just convinced that she'll miss something fun, so she can't really be bothered to try to sleep. At home we hardly ever have trouble getting Kathleen to bed. We have a little routine with some stories, some milk, and some singing, we say a little prayer, put her in her crib, kiss her good night and walk out the door. Since we couldn't walk out the door at the hotel, we settled for hanging out in the bathroom! We sat on the edge of the bathtub until we thought she'd be asleep, and then we'd (quietly) reclaim our hotel room. We thought we were a little crazy until we ran into the parents of another toddler at breakfast. They'd done almost the same thing! So, if we're crazy, at least we're the kind of crazy brought on by parenthood!

Despite our sleep challenges, we had a great weekend. We all got a chance to relax a bit.

Kathleen loves to swim, and she had a ball testing out the hotel's different swimming pools.

Another highlight for Kathleen: the penguins and turtles living right at the hotel. I don't know how a hotel comes to have penguins and turtles, but we sure loved visited them. We stopped by a couple times a day each day we were there!

And a random first for Madeline: her first stroller ride. Normally Madeline rides around in a sling or the beco baby carrier, but that can get a little challenging with wet swimsuits and such. We'd brought the stroller more for Kathleen, but discovered that Madeline was quite happy to lounge in it, watching her sister play.

(And, as a side note, although I've complained for months about not being able to figure out how to recline that little stroller, Jim looked at it for about two seconds and figured it out. Honestly, how did we survive without him?)

Mama and Daddy had lots of fun at the ball, and the girls had lots of fun staying up in the room with our friend Sarah while Mama and Daddy ate and danced and enjoyed grown-up conversations. We owe a HUGE thank you to Sarah for a truly stress-free night. And, for the record, friends, I'm not holding out on you -- although I took my camera to the ball, I failed to take even one photo! So, no pictures of the grown-ups. Sorry.

On Tuesday we headed home. Our adventure was fun, but exhausting. I think this picture says it all:

Short and Sweet

What a pretty girl!
Originally uploaded by the golbys.

A few days ago I scheduled our little car for an oil change. Fortunately, the dealership is right across the street from Costco, so I figured the girls and I would kill the hour-and-a-half wait time by doing some shopping. Unfortunately, I forgot that Costco wouldn't be open at 9am! After about 10 minutes of hanging out in the dealership's waiting room, I realized that the three of us absolutely had to do something, so we headed out for a little walk. We hit Starbucks for a coffee for Mama and a treat for Kathleen,and still had more than an hour to go. And then inspiration struck!

Kathleen's hair had gotten quite long, so we popped into Fantastic Sam's, intending to trim up her bangs. But she was so good that it turned into a full haircut! After a bit of discussion, the stylist and I agreed to trim her hair into a sweet little bob. (Her scraggly hair had sort of grown into a baby mullet, and I wasn't sad to see that go!) At first I was sad that I wouldn't be able to put her hair into little pigtails anymore, but now I'm pretty happy with just pinning her hair back with little clips. There's a lot less struggle, and she's still darling. The hardest thing to get accustomed to is that she just looks so grown-up now...

Tape?

So much for the shed...
Originally uploaded by the golbys.

A couple of weeks ago, a big storm blew through here in the middle of the night. The wind blew, the rain poured down in buckets, and the thunder shook everything. I was even a little scared by it, although the girls never woke up. The force of the storm knocked out the power, and it stayed off for about 18 hours. We were lucky, though -- there were parts of the island that were out of power for days.

In the morning we were able to see a bit of the damage that the storm had done. Trees were down all over post -- not to mention on the house next door. Again, we were fortunate. Aside from the inconvenience of being without power, our only storm casualty was the Army-issued shed in our backyard. It was first thing Kathleen noticed when she wandered out onto the lanai.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Mama, house broken!"
I explained that, yes, the shed had fallen down in the night, because of the wind and the storm.
"Oh, no!" she repeated. "Mama, fix it! Mama, fix house!"
I told her that we'd all go out -- Mama and Daddy and Kathleen and Madeline -- and we'd look at the shed and try to fix it, but that I wasn't sure that it was something we could fix.
"Mama, Daddy fix it!" she exclaimed. And then she looked at us, perturbed that she had to explain such thing to us:
"Fix it! TAPE!"

What did you say, honey?

Everyday Kathleen speaks more and more and we get more of a glimpse into her little world. She can effectively (if not always politely) convey what she wants or what she thinks. She still often needs to be prompted to say please, but generally remembers to say thank you or "danks." She'll call, "Mommy check Mah-lin, Mah-lin crying," when she hears her sister wake up. She yells "knock" as she pounds on a door and then immediately enters a room. When she can't find something or someone, she walks around the house calling, "Where are you?" And if all's right in her little world, she looks up at us, beaming, and says, "Happy!"

Kathleen still enjoys commanding us to sing, and now will sometimes sing along. She does a pretty decent rendition of portions of "The Wheels on the Bus" -- she knows "round and round," "wah, wah, wah" and "shh, shh, shh," among others. My personal favorite is her bus driver, who says "moof on back." (She makes a little fist and moves it as she sings, only she mostly moves it forward, rather than back.) The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Old MacDonald (e-i-e-i-o) and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star are also on her repetoire.

Lately I'm particularly grateful that I don't have a problem with cursing, since living with Kathleen is a bit like living with a parrot. Fortunately "Rats!" is the only exclamation she's repeated. There's something rather comical about watching her chatter "Rats! Rats! Rats!" after I've exploded at some minor home catastrophe.

And it's a good thing I don't have many secrets, because Kathleen certainly has enough vocabulary to blow my cover. A few weeks back I had one of those worst days of mothering, when Madeline fell out of the bouncer onto the floor. Madeline was fine, thank heavens, but we took her to the ER just to make sure. Kathleen can recount the whole thing for you, "Madeline fall bouncer. Hurt. Car go doctor." There's no predicting what will inspire a retelling of my truly low points, but she can do it with gusto. Of course, Kathleen also thinks that any bump now warrants a trip to the doctor, so we wind up saying, "No, honey, we don't need to go to the doctor today for that," more than I'd have imagined.

Kathleen is constantly picking up new words and putting them into use, sometimes before she's even sure of what they mean. One of Kathleen's newest words is "favorite" and she uses it all the time. She obviously knows that it means she likes something, but as often as she uses it, we're pretty sure she doesn't know how much she likes it. This week hot dogs, pork chops, cereal, yogurt, grapes, strawberries, water, milk, the christmas tree, playdough, the church nursery, a collection of books, throwing a ball, coloring, and playing "ring around the rosies" (which she calls "pocket," as in a "pocketful of posies") have all been favorites.

We had a bit of mystery last week when Kathleen kept saying, "Summin open doken." She'd say it rapidly, and a few times in succession, and she'd do it at various times throughout the day. Jim and I were at a loss as to what it meant. We'd ask Kathleen about it, but she'd just repeat it again and laugh, looking at us as though we were complete idiots for not being able to understand. Jim finally figured it out as we were waiting at the ID card section on Thursday to get me a new ID card. (Kathleen had slid mine down the window of the car and into the car door, where it landed with a thunk, taunting me with its irretrievability. We've replaced it now, though, and I can once again go grocery shopping on my own. Well, as on my own as you can be with two children.) In a flash of brilliance Jim asked, "Do the hokey pokey?" And Kathleen shouted,"YEAH!" (Which, to be perfectly honest, sounds a lot more like "deah.") Mystery solved, the four of us wound up doing the hokey pokey in the waiting room at the ID card section, to the great amusement of the crowds of people also waiting...

And as much as Kathleen talks now, I think Madeline will talk even more. She's cooing and babbling and smiling all the time lately. We have entire (unintelligible) conversations with her. Madeline also has begun laughing, and her laugh is so sweet and happy it always makes me teary. She'll laugh outright for her daddy -- big, long laughs that are like a conversation themselves. The only way I can get her laughs is to steal them. But at least we know she's ticklish!

Getting Away from it All

If you're wondering why we haven't posted lately, it's because we escaped for a little family vacation. One of the beauties of living on our little island is that other islands are so close. The flights (about 35 minutes to Kauai or to Maui) are a perfect length for our plane-loving but very active toddler. Having visited Kauai just before Jim deployed to Iraq, we decided to spend a little time on Maui now that he has returned.

We stayed in a condo on Ka'anapali Beach -- and when we say on, we mean on! This was the view from our lanai at sunset:

We couldn't have asked for a better location. We stayed in a garden unit, so there was a nice, green lawn just off our lanai. And a few feet beyond that, the beach! Not only did we enjoy amazing sunsets, but because we were so close to the beach, we could take turns playing with Kathleen, even when Madeline needed to nap in the room. Madeline came down to the beach, too, and she seemed to enjoy it, although not as loudly or enthusiastically as Kathleen.

When Madeline wasn't enjoying the view from my lap, or having her feet dipped in the ocean, she was napping in her tent, so she didn't get too much sun. She's the only one of us who didn't get even a hint of tan on Maui!

Kathleen loved every minute of the beach time. She jumped over the waves as they rolled up the beach, and she kicked around in the water when she'd venture in further with Mommy or Daddy. It's hard to remember that as a little baby she didn't like sand, because Kathleen is crazy about sand. She has discovered sand castles, and she insisted on building them on every trip to the beach. Well, she insisted that we build them. She's much more interested in knocking over the sand castles than actually building them! Daddy buried Kathleen, which amused pretty much everyone -- Daddy, Mommy, Kathleen, Madeline, a number of on-lookers at the beach!

In the above photo, you might be able to see Kathleen's bracelets. Her cousin Ali made them for her, and sent them with her mom, Margaret. Kathleen loves those bracelets! Once she put them on, we simply couldn't get them off her. She left them on, day and night, for more than four days. And then we only managed to take them off for a few moments... Thanks, Ali; you made Kathleen very happy!

We didn't do much sight-seeing. (Somehow, trapping the girls in the car so we could drive the road to Hana didn't seem like it'd be much of a vacation for any of us.) But even if we didn't see a lot of tourist attractions, we saw lots of truly breath-taking scenery. Some of that was the location, and some of that was the company...

And we hardly even noticed that, while we were gone, November ended and December began! It still seems like summer to us!