To Calvin, who is two today,

Is it even possible to sum up an entire year of a young life in just a few paragraphs?  And yet, looking at you today, just today, we would be at a loss trying to describe what that year of changes entailed.  As the time passes, each day melts into the next, and sometimes whole weeks, even months, will blend together in our memories.  But in sitting down to reminisce about the past year, and looking at those pictures and videos from a year ago, we are reminded of just how far you really have come over the past 366 days:  from toddling to running, climbing stairs, turning somersaults, and even to full blown jumping; from a baby of few words, a handful at best, to a toddler with over 600 of them, and a growing grasp of phrases and sentences; from a shy introvert, to a full participant in dance, music, and library classes, and in Sunday School play room as well;  from a face stuffing, floor decorating eater, to a boy who uses his silverware and his napkin (most of the time), drinks from a glass, and will even set and clear the table and help load the dishwasher.  

We are coming to know you as a calm, gentle, and sensitive little boy who spends as much time thinking as acting, watching as doing, and listening as talking.  If we worried a year ago about your development without the daily exposure so many kids get in daycare, our fears have been set aside as we have seen you grow.  You love to share (even down to the very last fish cracker in your bowl or the only toy giraffe in the library), you are patient with others (always waiting your turn in line, never afraid to be last), and you have begun to fully take part in cooperative play (building towers or playing house with other kids in Sunday School).We absolutely love to hear you talk, especially to hear you practice your good manners with words and phrases like please, thank you, and excuse me, and we are so very proud of your happy and friendly demeanor, even when speaking with strangers (as long as your parents are near). 

You can sing your ABCs (mostly correctly), count to ten (though you sometimes forget "5"), and most days remember to do your chores (feeding the pets and setting the table), but perhaps one of our favorite developments has been that of imaginative play.  It was around Thanksgiving that you got your first play food set, and from then on there has been no stopping you.  You were so in love with that first set of food, pretending to cook all sorts of things, that it was soon followed by more food, then a set of pots and pans, plates and silverware, the kitchen itself, and now even condiments.  You can spend an uninterrupted hour playing by yourself in your kitchen, and we love to listen to you as you talk to yourself about your play.  But your imagination is far more active than even that.  The funniest example is the way you use one of your Maracas to vacuum the floor (when it isn't busy being an instrument, that is), and our favorite is probably the way you run around the house on all fours, roaring like a lion, barking like a dog, or meowing like a cat, and demand to be pet or fed.

If we had to sum up the past year in just a word or phrase it would be difficult to choose between a year of physical growth, intellectual achievements, or social advancements, but more likely than not we'd just have to say that the past year has been just plain fun.

Sense and Sensitivity

Kids have an almost inhuman way of tugging at the proverbial heartstrings.  Even the hardest of souls can be softened by a baby's coos, or a toddler's kind word.  I'd like to believe that we run a tight ship around here, but every once in a while we, too, just go all to mush.  Today was was my once in a while.  Calvin and I went to the library today to enjoy a presentation given by "the local farm lady," who brought a chicken and a duck for the kids to ogle.  Calvin was absolutely enthralled by both the woman and her birds.  He spent the entire forty minutes sitting in one spot on the floor listening to her with rapt attention, and when her talk was over he waited patiently in line for his turn to get close to the two farm fowl.  Wally, the enormous white duck, really drew his attention, and when it came time for the feathered friends to go home, my sweet, sensitive son was absolutely beside himself.  I was not at all prepared for the torrent of tears or the soft, sorrowful whispering - "Wally, Wally, go home, Wally."  It wasn't at all a temper tantrum - he was being quiet and obedient - it was just pure and utter sorrow.  We sat outside and talked for a few minutes about how hard it is to say goodbye, and that it was okay to cry quietly (which he was doing), and about how Wally was probably quite happy to be going home where he could play outside, and would Calvin like to go play outside?  "Nooooooo, Waaaaallllllllyyyyyy." And that's when the heartstrings finally broke, my inner reserve went completely to mush, and I lost all touch with my common sense and we walked from the library to a downtown giftshop where Calvin, still tearfully, picked out a duck of his own to take home and care for.  Wally joined us for lunch, he joined us for quiet time, he joined Calvin for naptime, and even now both Wally and Calvin are safely snuggled, along with blanket and froggy, of course, in bed for the night.

Lightning will strike twice.

And if not lightning, then most assuredly water.  This also falls under the category of "if it can go wrong, it will."  After a long day of unpacking we (thankfully) decided to move a few more boxes out of our garage and into our basement only to find water seeping in from every available edge (that being all of them since, again thankfully, we hadn't put much down there yet).  It was eerily reminiscent of August in our old house, only on a quicker timeline - four years after moving into the old house the sump died, four days after moving into the new house the sump died.  Thankfully there are actually people out there who see it as their life's mission to replace your sump pump at 11:30pm on a Saturday night if that is when it should happen to break.  The man who came to our rescue was not only uniformed, courteous, and professional, but also strangely cheerful at a time when all we could think of was going to bed.  If anyone out there (in our general area) happens to find themselves in a similar situation, we highly recommend Michigan Power Rodding.  That being said, we hope none of you ever need that advice.

You know you live in a small town when...

This move has taken us into a whole new world, really.  We both have always lived in a city big enough to have "household mail delivery," or mail delivered directly to your home, and that is why we failed to ask about how we might be getting our mail in our new house, and that is why we spent an entire week trying to figure out where our mail was going.  There are no boxes on the houses here, not even curbside boxes, and the banks of boxes the entryways to the subdivision didn't have house numbers on them (and we had no box key).  We finally gave over to the embarrassment of not knowing such a thing and called our local post office where the nice postman replied "oh yeah, the first owners left their key here at the desk in an envelope marked with a C."  And if that isn't small town enough for you, then how about this:  when we went to the post office to pick up the key there was only one person working, not because the others were on break, but because there's only room for one person to work behind the desk (or in the whole building for that matter), AND... there was no line.  That quick visit left us with not only a key to our box but also with a hand drawn map complete with instructions, and a coloring book for Calvin.  So after naptime we embarked on a journey, hand drawn map in hand, to locate our box.  It has a nice location nestled between a neighborhood pond and the grocery store, and after a little additional exploring we stopped in to pick up fresh ingredients for dinner.  How very European of us.  This could become a habit.

And how about one more small town anecdote?  Before our actual move we called what we thought was the listed number to put the waterbill in our name and were gently told that in order to take care of such a thing she would need to "call Brenda, down at the town hall" or some such a thing.  And when she did call "down to some such a thing," Brenda turned out to be a real person with no automated answering system and didn't' even put us on hold.  And she also turned out to be a wealth of friendly, if unsolicited, additional information.  Before hanging up the phone (five minutes later), not only was the water bill put in our name, but we also knew when and how our garbage would be picked up, when and how to do recycling (although they are out of containers and don't know when they'll get more in), and the best route to get to several choice parks in the village.  Thank you Brenda, for reminding us what real personal customer service is all about.  We love it here already.

The house does not make the home

A good friend warned us that moving is rated as one of the most stressful moments in life, ranking right up there with getting married or having a baby, but we have to disagree.  We think that's a deplorable understatement - moving seems way more stressful than marriage and childbirth combined.  It could be the monetary strain, or the physical one, or maybe it's the act of condensing one's whole life into boxes and hoping it makes the transition in tact, but we think it goes even beyond that.  We think it's less the act of moving and more the process of being between homes that elevates the stress level so greatly.  With our old house, once familiar and comfortable as an old shoe, now stripped bare and left for the taking, the new house has become our family base. But we are not yet familiar with the sights, sounds, or smells of the new house, and in some ways our first week here has felt a little displacing, like being on vacation and expecting go home any day now.  Glimpsing our possessions settled into their new arrangements has been unsettling as well - familiar but in the wrong context, like seeing a face at church that you had previously known only at work.  We truly love our new house - we love the layout, the colors, the deck, the neighborhood, the location - but it will take some time for it to fully become our home.  In the meanwhile we find ourselves marveling at and enjoying the new (the open kitchen, the larger bedrooms, the wood floors), but clinging to the old (the dogs and cats in the same old sunshine, our usual coffee in our usual mugs, Calvin's same toys on the same shelves, and hey - we painted his new bedroom to match the old) while we go through the seemingly unending process of unpacking our familiars.  We'll know we've come to an end point when Calvin no longer exclaims "new house" whenever we pull into the driveway.

More pictures in the New House Process alubm.