First Vermont Christmas

It was long on fun and memories, short on actual photos. Here’s the rundown of the fun:

Dec. 23: Nana and Boom arrive from Virginia! Embodying the word “trooper” they got my Dad suited up in body armor to stabilize his broken vertebrae (the girls now call him “Iron Man”) and made the 9+ hour drive north.

Santa hats, rubber gloves, and antique hair rollers = a recipe for fun!

That evening, we went Christmas caroling Vermont-style. Our friends Cris and Courtney (parents to two of our girls’ best friends, Wyatt and Isabelle) have family that runs a local dairy farm, and every Christmas they hitch up a hay wagon to a tractor and drive around singing Christmas carols. They invited us to go with them this year, and it was a BLAST! We drove through single-digit temperatures and snow flurries to a local assisted living home, sang carols, and then rode the hay wagon back to the farm, where there were goodies and hot chocolate waiting for us. (We have no pictures of all this for the obvious reason that it was dark. Also because we were wrangling 3 little girls on a hay wagon).

Dec. 24: One last batch of Christmas fudge, complete with the best part — the pan licking.

Then dinner at a friend’s house and a candlelight service at church.

Georgia's ready for her first Christmas.

Before bed, Boom reads "The Night Before Christmas."

Dec. 25: Amazingly, the girls slept in until 7:45. And after a very mild and non-snowy start to the winter, we awoke to find that a light blanket of snow had fallen overnight, thus making our first Vermont Christmas officially white. Then…Stockings! Breakfast! Church again! Presents! Lunch! Naps! Dinner with our friends Damascus and Betty and their two sons! Phew!

The girls' favorite gifts: bean bag chairs and (not pictured) snowshoes.

...but it was the best gift of all this year.

Georgia, after sampling some of Boom's fruitcake, declares Christmas a hit.

We hope that you all had similarly special Christmases. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Gongs!

HEY! Unto Us A Child is Born!*

Today was the children’s Christmas pageant at Memorial Baptist Church. The Gong girls made their debut as sheep.

The pageant was really for children aged 3 and older, but since Campbell is 2 and has an older sister, she was offered the chance to participate. As of dinner the night before, she wasn’t very enthusiastic. “I’m going to be in the audience,” she kept saying, in response to Fiona’s urging. But once she got to church and saw all the sheep hoods, she apparently couldn’t resist.

And a star was born. Those of you who know Fiona, with her penchant for drama and her love of musical theater, might think she’d be the most likely candidate for the stage.

So did we, until Campbell put on that sheep’s hood. To say she embraced the role would be an understatement. “BAAA!” she kept shouting at regular intervals at the poor man sitting in the pew behind us. (That’s until she grasped church etiquette, after which she would say, “SHHH! THERE’S NO TALKING IN CHURCH,” whenever somebody who was supposed to be talking at the lectern would begin. Those moments until the pageant started were perhaps the longest of my life).

All of a sudden it was time. Mary and Joseph were at the manger. Campbell and Fiona, holding hands, made their way sweetly to the platform with the other livestock. (Sorry for the poor quality of pictures — challenging conditions!)

While Fiona sat demurely (turned away from the congregation for most of the pageant), Campbell was having a great time joking with the other sheep and her friend Wyatt, who played the lone cow. And then, at exactly the moment we all started singing “Away in a Manger,” she noticed that the baby doll that was standing in for the Baby Jesus was just inches away. At that point, she reached out and, depending on who you ask, began either giving the Baby Jesus a head massage or attempting to pick him up by his head.

As you can see, Joseph himself felt the need to intervene.

When we asked Campbell later about why she was giving the Baby Jesus a head rub, she said, “Because I love him!” So I guess that’s the right idea. Anyway, it was great fun, and even Georgia gave it a positive review.

*Reference from “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” a hilarious children’s book that I’d highly recommend if you haven’t read it yet!

Let go, Breathe, Repeat

I’ve written on this topic here before, but if there’s one thing that being the mother of 3 young children is constantly teaching and REteaching me, it’s to let go of my expectations. And if there’s one time of year that’s particularly loaded with expectations, it’s Christmastime. So I’ve been learning this lesson a lot lately.

Like when I sit the girls down to sponge paint gift cards, and instead of neatly dipping the sponge pieces in the paint, Campbell digs in with both hands and SMEARS, until she and the cards are completely covered and then of course Fiona joins in, too. And I’m so frustrated and disappointed because I wanted these to look NICE! Then Fiona looks up at me and says, “But Mommy, they DO look nice!” And you know what? She’s right.

Or like how our whole family has spent the past 3 weeks spreading around 1) a stomach bug and 2) an upper respiratory yucky thing. But you know what? It’s forced us to slow down and hang around the house more, and I’m just going to have to relax about catching up with the cleaning.

Or like when we go to Middlebury College’s “Lessons and Carols” service, and the two girls next to us who are the SAME AGES as our oldest girls sit there quietly while our girls squirm so much that we have to leave 10 minutes in, and then on the way back to the car Fiona picks up a large frozen chunk of snow, throws it on my foot, and gives me a toe contusion. And you know what? I’m not so sure what I learned from this other than that our girls aren’t yet ready for serious musical performances, and that it’s no good comparing your kids to others (how many times will I need to relearn THAT?). And Fiona has learned that snowballs you pick up are substantially different from those you make.

Then there was this book, Pippin the Christmas Pig, which one of our girls (I can’t remember who) threw into the library bag at the last minute. I’d never heard of it before, and didn’t have high expectations. “Great, another overly sentimental animal story,” was what crossed my mind. But then I read it to Campbell at naptime, and unexpectedly found myself fighting back tears. It has been one of the things I’ve clung to this season when everything else is like static drowning out the joy and wonder that I’m fighting for.

The premise: all the animals in the barn are boasting about the roles that their ancestors played in the first Christmas, but they completely brush off Pippin the pig. Hurt, Pippin runs out into the snow, where he finds a single mother and her infant daughter walking along the road. He nudges them back to the barn for shelter. And here’s the kicker of the whole story:

…[A]ll the animals turned to Pippin.

“Who is this woman?” snapped Curly.

“Pippin, we can’t take in some homeless nobody,” Noddy added.

“My very-great –” Bess began.

“We’ll need milk,” said Pippin. “We’ll need some warm, soft wool. We’ll need your old blanket, Noddy. We’ll need lots of lullabies. Your VERY-GREAT-grandparents aren’t here. You must help this baby yourselves.”

“But that’s not a special baby,” Noddy protested.

“Of course she is,” said Pippin. “All babies are special.”

Noddy gazed into the small sleeping face.

“You are right,” he said. “I’d forgotten.”

And if I had to choose a soundtrack for this lovely book, it would be this beautiful song that I’ve just discovered, “Sweet Night” by Katie Rice. You can listen/download it for free here: http://www.noisetrade.com/katierice Consider that my Christmas gift to you!

So those are my ramblings this naptime, when I should be vacuuming. I hope that this Christmas season surprises you, too, by NOT living up to your expectations in the best possible way.

About a Tree (and a Bush)…

We got our Christmas tree on Sunday. In keeping with our new life in Vermont, in which we now drive a matter of minutes to do what we used to drive at least an hour for (i.e. apple orchards, pumpkin patches, dairy farms), we drove up the road to Werner’s Christmas Tree Farm. The Werner family not only has trees on their farm, they also have an assortment of poultry…

…and a couple of horses.

Campbell's not looking at the camera because she's nervous about the turkey. Can't say I blame her!

Even with these distractions — not to mention the model train — it didn’t take us long to select an acceptable tree.

We took it home, we got it up with a minimum of angst (Erick might differ with me there), and then the whirlwind Gong girls took over with the decorating!

Note the completely unsupervised third child, making a grab for the tree.

Erick thinks we should take more pictures of Georgia so that she won’t feel neglected later on, so here’s one to prove that, in fact, she did not pull the tree over on herself in the photo above.

See? Happy baby! (Really, that is her happy face).

When the dust settled, we stepped back and realized that this house was absolutely made for Christmas.

Which brings me to the bush. Of course, when you move into a new house, you also inherit all the landscaping. Here is the bush in question right when we moved in:

It looks okay there, but the thing is, it grows pretty fast and starts getting into the front decking, which meant that I had to spend significant time this summer pruning it. And what you don’t see in this photo are the SHARP thorns that line every branch. I’m talking pierce-through-your-gardening-gloves sharp. By summer’s end, I was about ready to dig up the whole thing. And I really would have, but then in the autumn, it suddenly did this:

barberryearlyautumn — NOTE: This is a photo from the internet, not our actual bush.

That photo doesn’t quite capture the brilliant purplish-red that the bush turned. “Okay bush,” I said to myself (Or maybe I was actually talking to the bush. What? Don’t judge!), “I’ll give you another chance. But if you don’t shape up after those pretty leaves are down, you’re outta here!”

And here’s what it did next:

winterbush — Again, not our actual bush because it's grey and rainy here, and nothing would look very good outside right now.

As you can see, the thorns are still there, but get a load of those brilliant red berries. It’s the only splash of color outside right now, and it’s just spectacular.

Why am I going on about this bush? Well, for starters, if you take another look at our Christmas home, you’ll see that I’ve found an indoor use for some of its trimmings:

I hope that these branches will deck our house for many months to come — at least until Easter.

I’m so glad that I gave this bush a little time — and by the way, I’ve just discovered that it’s officially called a “Barberry bush.” The fact that it went from being a hated piece of our garden to surprising us with its late-season beauty seems like such a fitting part of this season of expectant waiting and hope. Draw whatever allegories you like between this and the human condition, the spiritual journey, whatever — I’m not going to preach at you. Except to say that if there’s only one thing I’ve learned from our Barberry bush, it’s to give all your plants at least one full growing season before you decide to uproot them. I think that’s true of people, too.

Randomly Thankful…

It’s lightly snowing in Middlebury as I write this, and our house is firmly in advent-pointed-towards-Christmas mode. But only a week ago, our family was giving thanks. For so many things. Obviously there was the feast, featuring an enormous turkey from just down the road at Stonewood Farm. We’re STILL eating the leftovers!

Fiona and Erick preparing the turkey for cooking.

And on the other end, Fiona and Erick preparing the turkey for eating.

Joining us for Thanksgiving dinner were Nana and Boom. The feast marked a celebration of sorts, as their Gilligan’s Island-like visit (the 3-hour tour that became much more!) came to an end. You might recall that Nana and Boom had journeyed to Vermont in late October for a 1-week visit. After Boom broke 4 ribs and 2 vertebrae falling off a ladder in our yard, their visit stretched to 5 weeks. We loved having them here and were sorry to see them go, but we’re happy to report that they’re now safely back at their home in Virginia!

Lately we’ve also been feeling randomly thankful for our three girls. And I want to give particular attention to the fact that we do have THREE girls; poor Georgia gets pretty short shrift in these posts. It’s funny: when you have your first baby, everything they do is endlessly fascinating and gets documented by the second; when it comes to #3 (at least in our family), they’re the least interesting member of the family because you’ve already seen their tricks twice over. But we do love Georgia — everybody loves Georgia. She is happy, adorable, and doing a great job of being a 9-month-old (babbling, working on walking, eating solid food). And our girls seem to be having increasing fun being sisters, which is endlessly joyful to see. They’re starting to have a great deal of fun together, as evidenced by the following pictures.

About a month ago, when we still had leaves in our yard.

But wait! Our third daughter was also there!

Just this week: our three girls enjoy some post-lunch under-the-table play.

These are very small, specific things that I’m feeling thankful for today. It’s easy to feel grateful and warm and cozy, and lose sight of the fact that we’re often thankful for the things we DON’T have to deal with…but other people do. For instance, yesterday was World AIDS Day. Erick was asked to give a talk at Middlebury College about his research, which deals with the economics of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. So I’m awfully thankful that I’m not in the position of having to engage in potentially fatal sexual behavior to feed my kids. But how can I – we – move from being thankful to dealing with the things I’ve been fortunate to avoid? That’s where my brain is headed this time of year, and I’m writing it here to keep myself honest, because I want our family to be engaged in random acts of giving this Christmas. One of my favorite “anti-Christmas carols” has become Jackson Browne’s “The Rebel Jesus,” and I try to have its spirit inform the way we celebrate Christmas in our house. If you have a minute, it’s worth a listen, just click here. I’ll report back on what we came up with this Christmas season!

First Real Snow!

It did this last night:

Looks like it’s going to be a white Thanksgiving! Here are the girls exploring our yard and posing with the first snowman of the season. I’m sure the excitement will wear off after another 5 months of this, but it was a thrilling morning!

And the best part: hot chocolate and popcorn after a morning of playing in the snow.

Feeling very thankful for the beautiful snow, for fun with family, and for a warm house with a (finally!) completed new roof!

Scenes from a Birthday

Fiona had a spectacular 4th birthday. It involved 2 days of celebration, beginning with cupcakes at preschool, continuing on to a family party, and continuing further with her “friend party” today. As I sit to write this, I have just recently survived a house full of 11 children under the age of 5. So I am going to smack up some photos and then go have a glass of Scotch. If you’d like a more sentimental glimpse of Fiona, please read the previous post; this is all about the parties!

Fiona and Campbell explore the big ticket gift -- mom's old Barbie doll collection -- with Nana.

Fiona with her birthday cupcake at her family party.

The "Fall Harvest" cake for Fiona's friend party (theme: Pocahontas).

Fiona in her Pocahontas costume (courtesy of Grandmommy) in front of the "longhouse" set up in our sunroom.

...and for good measure, in her Mulan costume (also courtesy of Grandmommy).

Fun times! And while we’re on a roll, tomorrow we’re having Erick’s students over as well. G’night!

Five Facts About Fiona

Today, Fiona turns 4. This feels like the first birthday we’ve had where the age wasn’t such a big deal. For instance: “You’re 1 year old!”, “Uh-oh, now you’re 2.”, “Phew! You’re 3! Goodbye to the terrible 2s!” But 4? Not a huge milestone. What I would say about this age is that, recently, Fiona seems to have passed through the developmental sturm and drang of the past couple years and emerged as a fairly mature little girl. Someone with her own opinions, capable of sustaining a conversation. It’s now much easier to see who she is, what she’ll love, and what hurdles she’ll face in the future.

Fiona on her birthday morning. Yes, I know she's posing like a goober. No, we didn't teach her how to do that. It's just pure Fiona.

So here, in no particular order, are 5 fun facts about Fiona on her birthday:

1. Fiona is dramatic. This will come as no particular surprise to anybody who knows her: Fiona loves drama in every sense. She has always had a vivid imagination; by age 2, she had no fewer than 5 imaginary friends (4 cows: Pak, Pook, Lolo, and Orange, plus one lion named…Lion). Today, whenever left to her own devices she will play make-believe, and reenact any situation: the library, the doctor’s office, preschool, Sunday School, and just about any fairy/princess tale there is. (There is of course a flip side to this drama, when Fiona chooses to bring her drama into everyday life. But we all have things to work on!).

2. Fiona is an all-star big sister. We could not ask for a more loving, thoughtful oldest child when it comes to her two little sisters. If she had her way, she’d carry Georgia around the house all day. And she’s been amazingly generous and patient with Campbell, who is now going through the terrible 2s with a vengeance. All three girls are now sharing a bedroom, and they love it — and it’s so fun to hear them talking and singing on both ends of bedtime. As the oldest, I give a lot of credit to Fiona for helping create a sweet sister culture.

3. Fiona has her own style. Ever since she was old enough to dress herself, Fiona had a very strong sense of what she wanted to wear. She continues to choose outfits that are kind of amazing in the way they mix bizarre elements and yet somehow still work. (Her latest thing is to wear printed t-shirts backwards). And she really loves clothes; given a choice of how to spend her money, she’d choose clothes. Which is just incredible as someone who is the offspring of Erick and me, arguably two of the least fashionable people out there. We don’t value clothes in our house, and have certainly done nothing to encourage this tendency in Fiona. She was truly just born this way.

4. Fiona always surprises us by her kindness. She can still throw a great fit on occasion, but this is also a girl who will always check in on everyone else’s aches and pains. She will suggest taking food to or making a card for somebody in need. She will volunteer to give away toys or clothes that she doesn’t need. With Boom still recuperating at our house, she will go check in on him regularly (overheard yesterday: “Boom, would you like to come out for breakfast or would you like breakfast in bed?”).

5. Fiona likes music. Loud music. At the moment, her criteria for whether a song is good is two-pronged: 1. Is it loud? 2. Is it dramatic? Favorite songs at the moment include “Colors of the Wind” from Disney’s Pocahontas, and “On My Own” from Les Miserables. Needless to say, anything sung by Snow White gets a big thumbs-down.

We can’t imagine our family without Fiona. We love all of her — the good and the challenging — and we hope that she will keep being herself.

Fiona and Campbell, going for a ride on Boom's cane. Fun times!

Things That Are Scary:

1. Snow TWICE before Halloween!

Sure, it all melted. The girls were thrilled. But it’s still kind of wrong.

Georgia, with Boom, after experiencing her first snowfall. Clearly thinking: what's up with this?

2. Halloween.

This year, the girls had a multi-day Halloween. It began with the “Trick or Read” party for Middlebury College families, continued with the Middlebury town “Spooktacular” (featuring a Halloween parade in which all the kids trick or treat at the businesses on Main Street), and concluded with trick-or-treating on the actual night with their friend Ruth. They had a blast, and the amount of candy is truly scary. We’re handling it with our usual stern parental authority…combined with our “stealth candy relocation operation.”

Here are the two big girls in their princess costumes. Sadly, we had NO time to take pictures during the actual trick-or-treating, because the 4 adults in attendance were all completely occupied with chasing Campbell. It was like somebody wound her up and let her go; she charged from house to house along the length of South Street until she stopped abruptly an hour later. (Favorite Campbell moment: at one of the first houses we hit, she knocked on the door and, when it was opened by a friendly, candy-bearing resident, charged right past him and into the house. It took some convincing to get her out, too. As best we can figure, she suspected a hidden candy supply).

Georgia was dressed as a guinea pig (her sisters’ nickname for her), but of course we have no pictures. Fate of the third child. But if you take another look at her in the picture of her first snow, and then imagine her in brown, you’ll get the idea.

The three girls with their three pumpkins.

3. Boom Going Boom.

Nana and Boom came to visit us for a week to help out while Erick was at a seminar in Toronto. Their visit was set to end immediately following Halloween. However, the weekend before Halloween, Boom climbed up a 20-foot extension ladder with a chainsaw in order to take down a birch tree that was bending ominously over our driveway. If you think that sounds like a bad idea, you’d be right; he got the tree down, but he came down, too. We now know that birch trees are notoriously soft and unpredictable; when the top of the tree fell to the ground, the bottom snapped back and Boom went flying through the air. He is INCREDIBLY lucky that he “only” broke 4 ribs and 2 vertebrae.

As of this writing, Boom has just been released after 4 days in the hospital here in Middlebury. He’s resting here at our house, and we’re making plans for his recuperation. He and Nana are doing well, considering, and the girls have been delighted to have TWO ambulance visits in one week, multiple trips to the hospital, and have their grandparents here for longer than expected.

Boom sitting (a big deal) with his princesses post-Halloween.

All of which goes to show that scary things, when looked at from the right perspective, can actually be kind of fun!

Obligatory Fall Foliage Photos

For somebody with a graduate degree in photography, I am a horrible picture-taker. I blame grad school, actually; it’s like unless I can justify my purpose for taking a photo to a room full of world-weary New York City artists, I just don’t take it. It doesn’t help that I never seem to have my camera in hand during the most obvious moments, so it’s actually a miracle that there are photos on this blog at all. And if the subject matter is REALLY obvious and sentimental, like Fall foliage in Vermont, just forget it.

Except that it’s really beautiful here right now. The girls are getting tired of me exclaiming, “Look around! This is gorgeous! Can you believe we get to live here?!?” every time we leave the house. So here are a few snapshots of what is, apparently, a pretty ho-hum year for Vermont foliage. If that’s really the case, I’m going to need some barbituates to get through next Fall.

So, crank up “Moonlight in Vermont,” light a fire, sit back with a hot apple toddy, and enjoy!