Holidays 2014

Happy New Year! Here's a re-cap of all the cuteness and wonderful-ness from the holiday season.

Thanksgiving was lovely over at Grandmama & Papa's. Back story: Michael has been working on (and reading about) a lot on projects related  to electricity, motors and robotics to develop a deeper understanding of them, and then make things that interest him. It's so cool that he's doing this, and he's getting Rosalie involved! On Halloween he made a light switch to an LED candle for Rosalie's jack-o-lantern.

So with that in mind, here's a car he made for her that weekend with a motor from an old sewing machine that Grandmama & Papa gave us:



We also saw Grandma and Grandpa for Thanksgiving time, and Michael used a beeper from an old "Molinater" they gave him (it emits that high pitched noise underground to deter rodents) to make a funny little horn for a cardboard box car that Rosalie wanted to make for herself.


Now this car has a little beep-beep horn and (not pictured) some LED headlights and tail lights using little plastic condiment cups to augment the lights. Love it!!! Michael's a "Maker" now, and he's showing Rosalie how to do it, too. There's lots of taking-apart and soldering-together going on around here these days.

I've been trying to take lots of pictures of Rosalie's teeth recently, because one of the top ones is loose and about to go. Her smile is going to change soon! I've said it before, but it's surprising how easy it is to get sentimental about teeth. But of course, what I see most when I look at these "teeth" shots is the magic charisma of this kid:






As you can see (above and below), it's more than her teeth that make her smile so great. You can see her spirit right through those shining eyes.





And what Rosalie sees through HER eyes is pretty great, too. She entered a watercolor in this year's "Reflections Art Contest" at school. "Reflections" is an annual, national competition put on though the public school system's national PTA board. The theme this year was "The world would be a better place if..." and her response was: "...there was less litter." The title of her painting, therefore, is "Clean Forest." In the painting, she depicted herself wearing a red dress and picking up trash.



We were proud of Rosalie for her hard work on the painting, and thrilled to the gills when discovering that her painting was selected from school to go to the next round, the city level. That meant that her work would be displayed, along with the other finalists', at the Seattle Center (that's where the pic above was taken).

And then, wow! We received an email over the winter break that her work made the next round, and her painting is going to state! This meant that we went to the Reflections ceremony at the Seattle Center last weekend, and the Seattle Public Schools Superintendent gave Rosalie a certificate and ribbon on stage. She talked about going up on stage for many days beforehand.

At the ceremony, when her name was called, she calmly and proudly came up to shake the Superintendent's hand and receive her certificate,



and came to stand with the other finalists together for a picture.



Since she was one of the earlier kids called, she stood up there for awhile. She was so dignified. I could not tell if she was comfortable or not, but afterwards it was clear that she loved every second of it (she told me). My baby! Oh my goodness. We were busting our buttons.


Seems like we spent quite a bit of time at Seattle Center this holiday. Between going to visit Rosalie's painting, to the Nutcracker, and to the awards ceremony, we had lots of Mod Pizza and Plum Bistro vegetables at the Armory. And of course, there were many photo ops.









In the pic above, Rosalie was admiring the enormous toy train town that's set up at the Seattle Center Armory during the holiday season. There's a tiny hot air balloon that goes up and down, controlled by some motor attached to a string, high above the town. Rosalie loved that balloon. Also inspired, Michael made a motorized hot air balloon himself in the basement using a small motor, a bobbin & thread from that sewing machine from Thanksgiving, a hook attached to the ceiling, acting as a pully, a paper Chinese lantern, and a plastic to-go container and wire. It's hard to capture this in a picture, but trust me, it's awesome. We have played with this balloon at length, with tiny animals and people going for multiple rides.

In mid-December, Rosalie's teacher led the students in a study of all of the light-filled holidays, including Diwali, Hanukkah, and St. Lucia's Day. St. Lucia's Day is Scandinavian in origin. Originally St. Lucia brought food to the hungry wearing a white dress with a red sash, and a crown of evergreen lingonberry branches and candles (the crown would hold the candles so that she could have her hands free to hold more food to give away). Now in Sweden, the tradition continues, often with the eldest daughter of a family wearing the traditional garb, making and delivering breakfast to her parents or the family. Well. I can get behind that.

Rosalie told us all about St. Lucia and shared her plan with us: She wanted to make us breakfast, get dressed in a white dress and a candle crown, and serve us breakfast in bed. In preparation, we made a crown with paper leaves. We had also intended to put LED candles on top of it, but you know. Life. Maybe next year the candles will be part of the thing.

The highlight for me, of course, was that Rosalie decided what to make us for breakfast (me: gluten free toaster waffle with peanut butter on it; Daddy: peanut butter and jelly sandwich), and she did it all by herself. That was the best breakfast. It tasted like an awesome kid made it.



To tell the truth, December was a bit of a foggy month for me. I got sick and took weeks to recover. No fun! And yet, there was still fun. The weekend before Christmas, Grandma & Grandpa came over, and for the day itself, Grandmama came over.

The whole Christmas week was delightfully low key. I wore pajamas quite a bit. Rosalie, having started a new allowance/job chart thing, has been automatically getting up, making her bed, and getting dressed. So even though I associate wearing pajamas most of the morning on Christmas, Rosalie exited her room fully dressed and ready for the day on Christmas morning. She just seemed so grown-up. She chose this pretty cardigan to wear, and I marveled inwardly at her ability to know her own taste.

Rosalie was quite happy with her gifts; she'd asked Santa for a Squinkie (tiny squishy plastic figurines), "pill growing animals" (foam animals in gel capsules that expand when soaked in water), a chia pet, and some kind of surprise art supply. She loved the surprise art supply, which was a "Klutz" book showing how to make small pom poms out of yarn, then transforming them into adorable little animals. Here's her first one, a little duckling chick:



Grandmama and Papa bought Rosalie a dinosaur model to put together. I have to admit that all of us grown ups wanted to help. She probably could have worked it out herself. It was remarkably age-appropriate. Being made of plastic, it guards the garden now, in all its formidable size.



We have to keep the dinosaur away from the small animals, though.

 Another favorite gift of Rosalie's was a set of wooden painted Russian nesting dolls--bought in Russia by Uncle Matt while he was working there. Wow! Look how tiny that smallest one was!

By the time we got to the 5th doll, we were impressed. By the 7th doll, we were freaking out. When was it going to stop? Would there be dolls forever until it got to a hand-painted molecule? Looks like just-smaller-than-pea-size is the limit. That one is adorable, with little tiny eyes.

 Apparently the big Christmas news in Seattle this year was the final production of the Maurice Sendak version of the Nutcracker. He designed the sets and costumes, and I believe he also had something to do with emphasizing certain parts of the plot. Anyway, it seemed like the city was particularly Nutcracker-crazy this year. Rosalie really wanted to go--her music teacher and dance teacher had showed the classes some video footage of the ballet. By the time I got around to buying tickets, almost everything was sold out. So we wound up getting amazing seats, the very last night of the performance (it was after Christmas, but before New Year's). We got all gussied up.

But we still had fun.

The most memorable (funny) part of the play was the snow fairy dance--there were delicate snowflakes falling throughout the song, but near to the end it just seemed like someone up top decided to dump buckets of snow from up there every once in awhile, since it was the last night. What else were they gonna do with this stuff? So every time a new bucket-dump of snow fell on the fairies, the audience laughed with surprise. It was pretty hilarious.

Our gingerbread structure tradition continues. This year it was a house that came with a pre-constructed Santa. I belong to a group called "Buy Nothing Ballard" and posted that I was looking for some extra candy to go on the house that day. I received at least 5 responses within the hour. Being short on time, I just went with one of the offers. We dropped by the neighbor's house (she was just one block away) and picked up a bag of candy to augment the design. Thanks to this stranger, our house had a walkway, chimney, firepit, and stained glass door. 

 I love that Buy Nothing group, and the concept of "give where you live." I was especially impressed by the speed with which I received what I needed.  I give lots of things away on that group--much more than we receive. But it's fun to imagine asking the group for something out of the blue--and possibly getting it! One family who was short on cash this year (laid off, I think?) had Christmas gifts to put under the tree for the whole large family, without spending a cent. So cool.  Our family? We don't really need anything, but this situation was perfect for Buy Nothing. I didn't feel like going to buy a 7 huge bags of candy, just so that we could get variety for decorating a house. It just seemed wasteful. This way we had variety, spent nothing, wasted nothing, and had this wonderful thrill that a stranger shared with us. 

 One other source of joy during the season: Winter camps! Working parents need something to do with the kids during the holiday times, and lots of places are happy to oblige. We signed Rosalie up for two weeks of day camps. The first week was at MoonPaper Tent, "where magic is alive and dream worlds exist." The theme was "Enchanted Pine Cone Forest." A couple days that week Rosalie came home as a sparkly purple kitty:

The week of New Years, the zoo offered a cool camp with the theme of "Tracking Animals." She came home as an owl one of those days. 

 Man! When I write it all out, it's clear that even though we had a "low key" holiday this year, it was still incredibly rich & full. It really strikes me this year that the more we can cut out during this time, the better. So many traditions--and surprises--arise in late November and in December. I need to remember: don't try to add anything! There will be plenty of plenty. Must remember this for next year! It could be the key to an even happier holiday.

I hope you have a wonderful 2015! Rosalie's resolution is to "get up earlier so I can get to school on time." I also have to share that what she likes to do is to "be kind and to crack people up." She likes to see smiles on people's faces and make them happy.

Well, kid, it's working!