Our little dude Jamisen is learning how to read. It is such a kick and a rush to see him sound out words, piecing the letters together, one painful, slow synapse snap at a time. **We can do hard things** and watching this little guy learn to read leaves me in awe of our capacity to achieve, grow and change. I'm so proud of him.
His sister is following suit by 'pretending' to read books. She makes up long nonsense phrases and it's adorable, cute and precious. She really wants to be like her big brother.
This year sister in law Cheriss and Erik spearheaded Thanksgiving. It was a huge undertaking for them but really made it lovely for the guests (Thanks, Cheriss!). Baby Alise isn't really a 'baby' anymore so I'm going to need to quit calling her 'Baby Alise' like it's a compound name. She is growing up so quickly and it's fun to watch her go through the development phases of compound sentences.
She plays with her cousins so nicely and they're super cute together. Alise is also super agreeable (for a toddler or any age!) and that flexible, go-with-the-flow attitude is a thing of beauty (especially when contrasted with her more stubborn cousins; cough cough).
Aunty Saron came up to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. She had not seen the kiddos for a while and they very much enjoyed having another adult to read to them and show interest in their thought-processes and projects.
You can sort of tell in the above photo but Jamisen is in a "I wear the same pants every day" phase. We finally bought him a pair of duplicate pants but he insists they are different so we alternate between this secondhand (really, we bought them at a consignment store) elastic waistband pants and this pair of striped knitted cozy pants from the Gap. He is so thin and tall that no pants stay up (ever) so despite him having a variety of drawstring pants to wear (hello lined, soft Hannah Anderson pants for boys), he insists on wearing the same pair of pants for weeks on end (though we do wash them at night every few days to keep the dirt at bay). We ignore it for the most part because there are more important things to use parental command-and-control capital on like, being nice to his sister or keeping his room semi-pigsty as opposed to full pigsty.
At Thanksgiving dinner, we were one seat short so Cheriss took the short end of that proverbial seat and sat on two chairs (one butt cheek on one chair, the other on the other one). It was pretty funny and then she also had the two wiggly worms on either side to ensure that she couldn't possibly eat a bite herself until they were done.
Lily is not yet taking piano lessons but this is the year that she will start. One of our goals as a family is to have one extracurricular movement-based class per week + piano. Right now, the kids are in taekwondo but that might change as their interests change and grow.
The food for Thanksgiving was epic. Though there was no turkey (oh the hilarious tale of the turkey ... keep reading to learn more about that), we did not starve. Amazing dishes were prepared by all. Aunt Sharon brought 3 savory appetizers that were devoured by everyone so quickly that there was barely room for the actual feast of Thanksgiving.
The kiddos got to go to church with Grandma and Grandpa Faiola.
They even fit three car seats side by side in the back of the car. Thank goodness for Grandma and Grandpa Faiola's workhorse of a 20 year old car. It's quite roomy.
Eh hem, speaking of memories, the tale of the turkey: Cheriss has never cooked a turkey before (of course she hasn't - we're mostly all vegetarian). So when she won a 22 pound (frozen) turkey at her work, she gamely brought it home and started to cook it the day of. Little did she know, a frozen turkey of that size not only takes overnight to thaw, it takes another day to brine. So, on Thanksgiving evening, at 10 p.m., Grandpa Faiola and I wrested the turkey into a plastic bag, in our garage, into a garbage can to brine it for 24 hours. Then, Cheriss and Erik put that whole contraption in their car and drove like 2 miles an hour home to get it to their house and cook it. Yes, it spilled along the way. But really, what this meant was that we got a full second meal at Erik and Cheriss's house and that was awesome. Leftovers + the turkey and another meal to laugh and make memories over? It was a total win-win.
