Kendell thinks this is weird of me, but every December 29th, I say, "______ years ago we had red burritos for dinner," only I fill in the blank with how many years old Jakey will be the next day. I guess I remember that meal so well because it was my only labor when I actually went into labor all on my own (instead of being induced), and one of the things I noticed in the middle of the night when I was walking up and down the length of my house, from the hall closet on one end to the kitchen door on the other, was that I'd forgotten to put the leftovers in the fridge.

This year, the blank is filled by the number nine. Jake was born almost three weeks early, and I was completely unprepared for it, as I'd had a busy semester at college and then getting ready for Christmas, and I thought I'd have until at least January 12. I never, ever expected to have a December baby. And every December 29th, when I think about him being born, I am sad for him that his birthday falls so close to Christmas. Because every year, no matter how deep I dig, I am out of energy for planning more stuff and shopping more. Tomorrow, instead of making dinner to eat with both sets of grandparents, we'll be ordering pizza and making a big green salad and something yummy and slushy to drink. I felt bad about this plan until Jake told me, in his characteristically sweet way, that he is really, really excited about seeing the Grandparents eat pizza because he doesn't think he's ever seen them eat it.

So, he's good with a quieter and easier celebration. Which is OK on so many levels, as the celebrations I hold on each of my children's birthdays are also quiet---the personal ones. Like making sure to stop and mark the exact time they were each born, or making sure to find a few quiet minutes to page through the baby scrapbook. Remembering the individual just-born moments that made each one of them unique. And really making myself stop and realize just how much they've grown, what a miracle each one of them are. The days my children entered the world are the most precious ones of my life. The party and the balloons, the cake and the gifts---those things are for the child who was born. But it will always remain important for me to celebrate the day my children were born in my own quiet ways.

(And now, for a paragraph that is completely unrelated and probably, in the larger scope of things, unnecessary: It seems that everyone in the blogosphere has blogged about their Christmas. But honestly---even though I've already written in my journal about the day---I can't bring myself to blog about it. I love Christmas---but this deep into December, with all the planning and the anxiety and the music and decorations and snacks and gifts and parties and and and past, as well as with January looming so close? I'm emotionally worn out! So here's the skeleton version of our holidays:

• Jake sick Christmas Eve day and Christmas Eve night (because we cannot have a holiday without at least one child barfing)
• Haley and Nathan singing in the church choir
• No one liked my Christmas eve dinner but me---I made cranberry pot roast a la Heather, but apparently meat should never have any hint of sweetness. Unless you're me. Of course, I had a grand total of three bites before needing to clean up yet another stomach-flu mess. Glad I tried.
• Kaleb was out COLD way before I was organized enough for the traditional Christmas Eve Pajama Experience. Meaning: no Christmas Eve Pajama Experience With All Four Kiddos Photo. Sigh---are you sensing a trend here? Foreshadowing!
• Kendell helped me put out the gifts from Santa. He's usually asleep when I do this, so having him there was different.
• Christmas Morning: Kaleb up at 5:freaking:30 in the morning. Luckily, he took a bottle and dozed for a bit. Haley up at 7:00 and graciously watched Polar Express with Kaleb while Kendell and I slept/snoozed/woke-up-with-frantic-thoughts-of-possibly-forgetting-something. Jake up at 8:15. Nathan dragged out of bed at 8:45.
• Christmas gifts wonderful! Everyone surprised! Only one Disappointed Child (Nathan, who was just blue for no reason I could figure out)! I managed one unusual gift for Kendell! (aka the man who is impossible to surprise.) He surprised me! (New waffle iron.) Everyone happy!
• New breakfast casserole a big hit. Big Hit, Sorensen-style, meaning: all children except the requisite one loved it. Will share later, as this "one paragraph" is getting too long. Kendell especially loved it. Two servings. Or was that three?
• What's this? Kendell not feeling well? Kendell feeling shaky and nauseous and feverish and chilled? Special. No, dear, it wasn't the eggs. It wasn't the sausage. It wasn't the hash browns. It wasn't even the cheese. It is called rotovirus.
• Children play, Kaleb naps, sick hubbie snores and tosses and moans. I: make salad, wrap gift to in-laws (a gorgeous picture of Christ), pick up house, organize toys, organize space in front of tree, pile up boxes and bags. Put all necessary stuff in van, pack diaper bag, get everyone dressed and brushed (both hair and tooth) and ready.
• We head off for brief stop at Kendell's sister's house, where we spend 15 minutes giving his parents their previously-immaculately-wrapped-until-Kaleb-got-ahold-of-it gift, and then drive to my mom's. Despite fever, chills, nausea, and constant threat of needing to barf out the window, hubby insists on driving. Testosterone is weird. He drops us off and makes the best decision he can: continues on to his parents' empty house and spends Christmas huddled on the couch underneath blankets.
• Meanwhile: Christmas at my mom's. Ham, cheese potatoes, that salad I made which is another delicious recipe I thought, way too much fudge-caramel-divinity-clamdip (although not all in one bite), gifts for kids, talking with sisters and Mom, great pics of Kaleb with Dad, some laughs. Weird without Kendell there.
• Drive home, tuck still-sick hubbie in bed, tuck kids in bed after asking the traditional "what was your favorite part?" question, tuck baby in bed. Collapse in bed.

See, I told you: I'm emotionally all worn out and only good for sarcasm. Will have to share the pleasant and moving experiences later. I will say this: Kendell is STILL sick. I had it a little bit, as did Nathan, but I am beginning to think Kaleb will never stop throwing up. On that lovely note...here's a photo from Christmas morning:

It's snowing here, one of those snows that just feels like it's going to stick around all night. I love it when the quiet, shy night storms sneak in after most everyone is asleep and leave before morning---furtive snow. Everyone else in my house is sleeping, and I have pajama pants to sew, with Christmas music and the lights on the tree to keep me company. Even though I'm tired, and I'm caught up in the midst of the week-before-Christmas madness (just why did I decided that each child needed not one but TWO pair of sewed-by-the-world's-slowest-sewer pajama bottoms?), and there's a million things on my mind, I love this part of being an adult. The behind-the-scenes Christmas prep might just be better than childhood Christmas mornings.

Seriously---my to-do list is a mile long. I've not started wrapping yet, and I've got seven pair of pajama pants to sew, and I've got a few more bits of shopping to do. We've not gone to visit Santa yet, and I still have some Christmas cards to finish up. I've not yet made my Christmas staples of caramel and fudge and hand-dipped mint chocolate truffles. I still need to figure out something cute and yummy to give to the neighbors for Christmas. I need to do my visiting teaching. All of that list is making me anxious. But---it's Christmas. It's snowing. I'm brimming with secrets and there are some gifts I cannot WAIT for my kids to open. And I've got sewing to do...and furtively, among the to-do lists and my meltdown on the phone this afternoon with Toys R Us, it sneaks in: the Christmas spirit.

First off, I want to thank everyone for your kind comments about my last post. I hope you each know how much those words mean to me! My mom is out of the hospital (although they still are waiting for test results and still aren't sure what is wrong) and I think the return to normalcy will hopefully keep Dad's "incidents" to a minimum. But really---thank you.

In the mall I go to most often, there's an enormous Bath & Body Works. I swear you can smell that scent of a million different soap/lotion/spritz flavors halfway down the mall. Whenever we walk past it, my kids invariably stop, sniff, and then beg to go in to wash their hands. As there is no other experience in the world that has them begging to wash their hands, I usually say yes. But, since it's Christmas, I went there by myself this week, for stocking stuffers. I promised I would only buy stocking stuffers. Only stocking stuffers. Nothing else.

Yeah right.

I have this problem in that store: so many things smell so good. THERE. But once I get my purchase home, far too often I discover it's "too" something---too fruity or too sweet, too powerful or too an undefinable something. And then that damn expensive (to borrow Kendell's description) soap/lotion/spritz/body butter (on sale this week! Buy One Get One Free!)/lip gloss/body cream/glycerin soap sits in my growing collection of TOO something (and thus used only once or twice) scents in a bin under the bathroom sink.

So I've learned to be careful in Bath & Body Works. There ARE some scents I don't like---the ones that smell like food. I obsess about chocolate enough already. If I smelled like it I'd never get it out of my mind. The brown sugar or gingerbread or caramel ones smell yucky to me. And then there are the scents that I associate with certain experiences so strongly, I either don't want to disrupt the association or I don't want to remember it. There's the country apple, which IS the smell of Nathan's delivery and hospital stay and newborn days; likewise the mandarin orange, which is the same for Kaleb's newborn time, and I smell them to remind myself how it felt, but I don't want to actually use them anymore because I want them to only smell like Nathan's newborn days or like Kaleb's. Did that make any sense? I don't buy the association scents because I don't want to disrupt that memory. And then other scents are so associated with negative experiences, I can't stand them. Not because of how they smell but because of the memories they bring back. Like the sweet pea---can I just say how much I used to love that scent? I went through a phase as a child when I desperately wanted my dad to plant sweet peas in our flower beds (something he never did). I was so excited when they came out with it in lotion form! But alas, I received a whole new package of it on the Christmas before I started student teaching, so now it's associated with anxiety and exhaustion and terror and that dang student who was determined to make the creepy-old-lady student teacher cry (he never managed it, by the way). I will NEVER buy the sweet pea. So at least some of my choices are narrowed down. I hardly ever make an impulse buy. Instead, I make myself try a scent out first--- sometimes five or six different times before I buy it.

But this week I walked out with a total impulse purchase along with my stocking stuffers (despite my NOTHING BUT STOCKING STUFFERS mantra): Very Festive Pomegranate. You know I have that emotional response to pomegranates, but this doesn't really smell like the fruit. Or, it's just vaguely fruity. Definitely not TOO fruity. With cinnamon undertones. But the thing I love the most is that it also has a vague pine-tree smell. I used it today for the first time and...yum. Jakey even told me I smelled good when I hugged him goodbye this morning.

And dang if he isn't right. I think this one will never see the dark recesses of the "too something" bin underneath the bathroom sink! Definitely a Christmas "Buy This" recommendation.

This weekend, my mom had to be admitted to the hospital for some intense stomach pains. They still don't know what is wrong with her, so she will be there for awhile longer as they do more and more tests. That's been difficult enough, but my sisters and I are now taking care of our dad, who is at a particularly horrible place with his Alzheimer's disease. His mind has invented some awful, angry, violent memories---things that never happened but which he thoroughly believes are true. I had yet to experience one of these episodes, but he had one on Friday morning when I went out to his house to bring him to spend the day with me. I won't share the details here, but it was ugly. In the face of it all, I felt desolate and sad and very, very alone. Learning how to live without your dad in your life and how to cope with the stranger put in his place is something that I don't have the language to explain. As I drove away from his house, one of my favorite Christmas carols, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" came on the radio. But everything felt too painful. Tidings of comfort and joy? How could those ever come to me again?

Dad ran some errands with me, and then we went home to put Kaleb down for his nap. I needed to get some baking done for a Christmas party we had to go to that evening, so I asked him what he wanted to do. "Well, I want to read one of those books you do. Those books you make?"

"Do you mean you want to look at a scrapbook?" I tried to clarify.

"I think that is what I mean. Those things you make." That he even had a vague memory of me making scrapbooks brought a little bit of comfort to me, especially since during his episode he didn't even know who I was.

"OK," I said, and ran downstairs and got the fattest scrapbook from the shelf, which just happens to be Nathan's baby-year scrapbook.

He sat in my front room with the book on his lap. And he read every single layout in the album. Reading is hard for him, but he read them. I worked in the kitchen, and every once in awhile he'd say something about the scrapbook. "This is very well-written," he said, and "I love how you wrote this."

Maybe this is pathetic of me, to feel...well, to feel proud of my writing, as it was complimented by a man whose brain is slowly deteriorating. But I still did. Maybe you never grow out of your need to please your dad. And for a little while, it felt like having him back again. My dad and my sister Becky are the only ones who ever really read my scrapbooks---anyone else who looks at them just looks at the pictures. So to have him recognize, at whatever level, whatever small amount of "good" might be in my journal? Well. It was the opposite swing of the pendulum, the high point of a day made up of one of my life's lowest points.

And as difficult and as painful as this experience is, as much as it is teaching me of razor blades being dragged across the fleshiest part of the soul, it always manages to turn around and teach me something good, too. I finished my work in the kitchen before he finished the album---he had only a few pages left, so we read them together. He closed the book and said, with a serenity in such opposition from his earlier agitation, "you are so smart to write this all down. You are smart because one day maybe you'll be like me and can't remember anything, but then you can read this and you can remember it anyway." What other confirmation do I need that the attention I pay to scrapbooking is important and relevant? And that my own scrapping philosophy---that scrapbooking is about matching pictures up with words as well-wrought as possible, and all the rest, the products and the tools and the publishing and the paint and ink and paper and ribbon, are incidental---is the absolutely right one for my life.

As I sat on the arm of the chair in my front room next to my dad, reading a layout about a trip to the park Nathan had as a newly-mobile baby, I had a scripture tickling at my psyche. After I took Dad to my sister's house so that we could go to that Christmas party, I looked it up. This comes from an LDS book of scripture called the Doctrine and Covenants. I could only remember the part about after a challenge, blessings come. But the scripture in its entirety was just the tiding of comfort I needed:

For verily I say unto you, blessed is he that keepeth my commandments, whether in life or in death; and he that is faithful in tribulation, the reward of the same is greater in the kingdom of heaven.

Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation.

For after much tribulation come the blessings. Wherefore the day cometh that ye shall be crowned with much glory; the hour is not yet, but is nigh at hand.

Remember this, which I tell you before, that you may lay it to heart, and receive that which is to follow.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:2-5

I remembered hearing that carol in the car---turning off the carol in the car, as a tiding of comfort seemed impossible. But there it was: my tiding. And maybe the greatest tiding of comfort is that through all of this, my belief that God is good continues to be strengthened.

Today was Kaleb's 18-month birthday. He's one and a half---you know this breaks my heart and makes me happy, all at once! The funniest thing he does right now: entire conversations, with pointing at objects and nodding and laughing, but with nary a word of English we can understand. It feels like he "gets" the concept of talking, but hasn't quite gotten the actual word thing. It'll come. For now, I'm just enjoying listening to those funny little conversations!

This Christmas meme has been floating around the blogosphere and I thought I'd answer the questions. Just because!

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate. My kids love egg nog, and I don't detest it, but it's not my first choice. My mom used to make us homemade egg nog and now I shudder at the thought that I actually drank raw eggs. Gross. Right now I'm loving the candy cane hot chocolate that Stephen's makes. Yummy!
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Santa wraps at our house. Because Santa wants to make things as complex as possible, perhaps. Or maybe it's because Santa remembers looking at all the gifts under the tree as a kid, wondering which ones were hers and what was in them. Not wrapping seems less magical to me.
3. White or Colored lights on tree/house? White lights on the Christmas tree. Our outside lights are red and white, with a green and white tree. I'll have to post some pictures, as this is the first year we've done a tree outside. It looks fabulous!
4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nathan asked me one day this week why we don't hang mistletoe. I told him that there's no point in hanging mistletoe because if I stood underneath it with someone other than his dadd, it wouldn't be a good thing. I only want to kiss his daddy! He thought that was a great reason and even told his first grade teacher why we don't hang mistletoe. But he also thinks that, to quote, "but it's OK to hang up when you're just a teenager and can kiss anyone you want, right?" Well...sort of. We'll go there when you're older, Buddy.
5. When do you put your decorations up? Sometime during the first week of December.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? SFor Christmas, it's definitely cheese potatoes at my mom's Christmas dinner. Also brussels sprout casserole. Haley's favorite holiday dish is shrimp. She adores shrimp, but I just cannot bring myself to buy it because A---I have no clue how to cook it and B---I think shrimp is outright disgusting. But she's got her Aunt Suzette hooked on bringing shrimp for her to eat on Christmas day.
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: Really, I have so many it's hard to choose. One I've not written about here: One year, my grandparents came to our house on Christmas Eve and spent the night so they could be there with us on Christmas morning. My sister Becky and I had to sleep in sleeping bags downstairs. My dad built a fire in the fireplace so it was warm and cozy. I had to have been 10 or 11, and I had known the Santa Truth for a long time (see question #8 below), but that night I believed anyway, because I stayed up really late that night, but I never heard any Santa machinations. But I did hear sleigh bells.
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I was only five or six. It was my own fault---I was a SNOOP. Of course, I could also blame my mom for not hiding things very well! I found this cool toy under her bed; it was a tube filled with water, with a button on the bottom. Inside the tube was a basketball hoop, and you pushed the button to try to get the balls through the hoop. I sat in her room and played with it for at least twenty minutes, and then put it back. When that same toy ended up in my stocking that year, the gig was up. After that discovery, I was even more snoopy and found most of my gifts way before Christmas morning. It makes me sad that I discovered the Santa Truth so early in my life---I feel like I missed out on something. So I work REALLY hard to make sure my kids don't find out.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? I don't, but my kids do. We do the Christmas Eve PJ tradition here. They all know they're getting PJs on Christmas Eve; the fun part is in seeing what they look like this year. (Off the record, everyone is getting flannel PJ bottoms. Haley & Nathan have red plaid; Jake & Kaleb have red with penguins.) My kids and I all love this tradition. It makes them happy to have the new PJs, and it makes me happy to have everyone color-coordinated for Christmas morning pictures. Is that wrong of me???
10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? I don't really have a specific theme. Every year, the kids each receive an ornament in their stocking, so those are on the tree, and then I have lots of Santas, some bells, and those "quilted" balls you make with styrofoam and fabric. I love my tree, but I love my nativities more.
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? I love snow. It's on my top-ten-life-favorites list. I know Utah's famous for its snow, but we don't get enough in the spot where I live, so I'm usually fairly snowly-disappointed.
12. Can you ice skate? You know, I have never been ice skating! My sisters used to go ice skating at a rink they had by Utah Lake, but I never went.
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Really, my favorite gifts were the ones I managed to not uncover in my snooping expeditions. I think my favorite-ever gift was the watch I got at 11 or 12 (I never snooped it out). It had a white leather band and the face had my name in it. I still have it in my jewlery box, even though it doesn't work anymore.
14. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Fudge, caramel, and homemade chocolates. Sense a trend there? I also really like divinity, but canNOT make it. I'm thinking I need to start dropping divinity hints to my mom, who really makes it well.
15. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Spending the day with family. Having two families to visit in the same day sometimes (well, ALWAYS) makes things hectic, but it's worth it. I love that my children will grow up knowing and having relationships with their cousins and will remember their parents hanging out with their aunts and uncles.
16. What's your least favorite holiday tradition? The traditional Amy-and-Kendell-are-both-stressed-out argument. Seriously---every year we have a Christmas Argument. SIGH.
17. What tops your tree? A Santa hat. I'd really like to find a cute Santa top, but haven't ever found anything I loved. The kids like the hat!
18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Giving of course. I do miss that feeling of anticipation I felt as a kid on Christmas, but even better is watching my kids experience the magic.
19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? The Carol of The Bells. It gives me chills every time! But I also love so many Christmas hymns---the ones that are about Christ, not the commercialized Christmas. The ones you sing in church. (December is my favorite time of year for church!) The First Noel, Far Far Away on Judea's Plain, and Little Town of Bethlehem are some of my favorite Christmas hymns.
20. Do you like Candy Canes? Sort of. I like them added to things, like that hot chocolate I mentioned above. I make candy-cane shaped cookies that have crushed bits of real candy canes in them. I've sprinkled them on top of still-hot fudge, which is good. But just to sit around sucking on a candy cane? Not so much!

What are your answers to these questions???

I had a little panic attack over the weekend. I got my tree up (and I am singing hallelujah for the wonder that is a pre-lit Christmas tree...I feel the tiniest bit guilty for being too lazy to put the lights on our old tree, but not guilty enough to take the new tree back!) and my house decorated, all except for the little tree I put upstairs, which somehow over the year of storage will now no longer stand up by itself. But I could not find the box with the Christmas movies, books, and CDs. It's just not Christmas without reading books in front of the tree. And December without Christmas music is no December at all.

I did finally find it, though, on the bottom shelf in the storage room, down in the corner (all the other Christmas stuff is kept on the top shelf). And I've been a Christmas-music-listening crazy woman ever since! I bought two new Christmas CDs this year, Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong and Celtic Women A Christmas Celebration. That Celtic Women CD was a pure, Amazon-is-brilliant impulse purchase, but as much as I love and adore Sarah's CD---I love and adore the Celtic Women even more. SO good.

The radio station I listen to has been playing Christmas songs every fifteen minutes. Cool Christmas songs, which has made me start thinking about making my own little Amy's Christmas Compilation CD. So I've been a song-downloading maniac, too. So far, this is my compilation:

• Three Ships by Sting
• Christmas Day by Dido
• Joy to the World by Jewel
• Suzy Snowflake by Soul Coughing
• Greensleeves by Sarah McLachlan
• Little Drummer Boy by Tori Amos
• Oi To The World by No Doubt
• Carol of The Bells by Celtic Women
• The Coventry Carol by Alison Moyet
• The Night Before Christmas by Carly Simon
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Barenaked Ladies/Sarah M.
• Santa Baby by Everclear
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Chris Isaac
• Winter Wonderland by The Eurythmics
• Gabriel's Message by Sting

SO! What awesome Christmas songs do you love?