Taking stock

2016 was a challenging year in many ways, but within our nuclear group of family and close friends, it has been a wonderful year of adventure and growth and simply of enjoying each other’s company. I hope for the same from 2017.

My 2016 wish list, and progress

• More sleep – It’s better, but not great.  
• Camping – Yes! We went three times.  
• Baby book progress – I bought some paper and made some notes and piles of scraps and things, so… that counts, right?
• More home movies – Not as many as I wish I had, but we did a few.
• Minimalism – Nope! We tripled our square footage of living space this year, not to mention got a garage, and rapidly expanded our stuff to fit into the spaces we acquired. Oops. We are still reorganizing, and finding the right place for each or our things as well as letting go of what is no longer needed. It’s hard to know what baby/kid things should be saved for the next one vs. what can move on. In the last few days we have pulled a car load of donations to go become someone else’s thrifted treasure and it feels good to move the clutter out.

My 2017 wish list (in addition to everything again from last year)

• Stop using the kitchen counter as storage space / landing zone for everything that comes in the house. Really, I need to work on all downstairs surfaces, but the kitchen is the hardest.
• Backpacking – Now that I am no longer exclusively pumping and K isn’t reliant on bottles, the need for electricity and clean running water won’t hold us back from adventure. I’m hoping to go backpacking at least once this year.
• Finish painting the inside of the house, and add more pictures and color. We’re still unpacking… so decorating has not happened yet. This is the year.

Listening to: Mairi Campbell’s rendition of Auld Lang Syne, looking back and forward.

Christmas

Christmas morning I ran downstairs first to turn the lights on and start water for coffee and warming milk, then back upstairs so we could all come down together. The first thing she ran for was her Snowdrop Deer that I made for her, and while I make her things as much because I enjoy the process of making them as for the end result, I love that my not quite 1.5 year old loves handmade things so much too.

She was excited about everything she opened, but the biggest hits this year were this Horse and Rider from her Nana (which I expected and requested be opened last in case she wouldn’t be into other stuff after it), Owl, Pout Pout Fish, her Narwhal and Daydreamers from Santa, Otter from my brother and Stormy Weather. She also got a big bag of socks with pictures of animals on them and had fun all day moving them from room to room and into and out of various containers. We joke that her favorite game right now is moving commodities.

She loved her stocking and unpacking it. When I was pulling the pictures for this post, she came in and saw the stocking picture and squealed with excitement, pointing and laughing and babbling at the picture. We then went to find the narwhal to play with and that was also very exciting. She likes carrying him around by the tooth and making him swim. She likes to pat and feed the pony, but absolutely will not sit on it for anything so it’s really more a toy for her to grow into.

My family came over in the afternoon and we did more presents and had an early dinner together that my mom kindly brought over and cooked for us – steak, cheesy scalloped potatoes and pomegranate pear salad with raspberry vinaigrette. We then thought we’d play cards, and I remembered that Santa forgot them for the stockings, and husband went out to get some so we could.

We had a really lovely Christmas, and hope that everyone else did too.

Stockings are the best part