Christmas 2003

We see him come, and know him ours, who with is sunshine and his showers turns the patient ground to flowers - Robert Herrick

Late season's greetings to all our family and friends. I could probably spend the entire letter giving you a whole new crop of Laneyisms and stories of her antics. I will try to limit myself.

She still uses her ciuccio (pacifier), although somewhat less recently. Like most children she has a particular type that is the only kind she will accept. Of course, they are extremely hard to find now so the remaining cache we have is very dear. When they “break” they either collapse or crack. Several have withstood years of heat and almost subterranean pressure inside her mouth and have begun to turn into precious stones of some sort or another. Last year I told you of her trick of periodically twisting the ciuccio in her mouth so she's always refreshing it. She now has perfected this trick and it can be performed on cue using only her tongue.

Several times she has gotten into Lenore's supply of balms and petroleum jellies and done unspeakable evil with them. More than once Ruby the cat has been at the losing end of this mischief and had to endure a week or so of permanent bad fur days while the Vaseline wore off her coat. Before we realized that Ruby was covered with the stuff she was able to spend unfettered hours going from place to place in the house marking doorways or lolling on a bed or couch. We have numerous spots on the floor in our bathroom where we have tried several times to clean the concoction from the carpet. Each time the spots return only a couple of days after the cleaning. The last time Laney did this, Lenore let out a wail that had me bounding up the stairs literally thinking I was going to find a corpse on the floor. Thankfully, there was no physical harm to household humans or pets. But, we found Laney completely undressed and slathered with Vaseline from head to toe. Her complexion has never been better.

One day Laney was at the kitchen table coloring while Jensen was practicing her piano. Laney yelled out to Jensen, “no pound!” Then she turned to Lenore and reported “is pounding.” In describing a messy diaper once she said, “it tickles like sour.” Another time I was partially aware of her fiddling in the bathroom. I heard a small thump as she dropped something and started whimpering “.....uh, uh, uh, uh a hurt a eye.” She had sprayed some of Lenore's perfume in her eye. So I cleaned up her eye and admonished her. About five minutes later,... another thump as she dropped the perfume and more whimpering “.....uh, uh, uh, uh a hurt a eye again.” Another time she pulled a similar not-learning-from-experience-experience, taste testing the kitty litter by dipping her ciuccio in the litter box.... twice. Strangely enough both times she proclaimed that it was .... yucky. Still another time we were riding in the car and Laney said “Mommy, I want a bicycle, I want my own bicycle.” Lenore told her, “you have a bicycle at home in the garage.” Whereupon Laney said “Oh, thank you, Mommy!”

We had a small scare with Laney when she decided to try to go swimming by herself at a family party in July. So when we went to San Clemente we bought her a nice floaty swim suit so she could play around in the water without our having to be right with her all the time. The suit has thick pieces of Styrofoam sewn into the fabric all around her torso. I'm surprised we didn't have to register it with Homeland Security because she looked like a suicide bomber fitted out with C5 explosive. She has been exposed early and extensively to all of the cultural fads and whims of her two older sisters. Right now her favorite song is “Du Hast” by Rammstein. She's actually pretty good with the German.

One of Jensen's highlights this year was being able to vacaction in Hawaii with her best friend and his family during the school year. He traded in his first class ticket for two coach seats so Jensen could go with them. She spent two weeks on the big island of Hawaii on the Kona side swimming with sea turtles and chasing lizards.You may recall years ago Jensen being “diagnosed” with ADHD. We now know that was preposterous. She has demonstrated a great capacity to concentrate when the subject is something she cares about. She has an innate ability to tell the time of day without any external clues or time pieces. She uses this talent to know precisely when the next episode of The Simpsons will begin. She has also demonstrated the ability to memorize paragraphs of script from Finding Nemo or Drop Dead Gorgeous. Unfortunately, she still can't remember the names of the 15 former Republics of the USSR or recall where she left the telephone. Jensen has also developed as a very good artist and is in the middle of doing a mural at a local Internet Gaming cafe. We've found that if a child immerses herself constantly in current pop cultural images through cartoons and video games, she might be well equipped to cater to the artistry needs of the Internet Gaming crowd. But, her drawings can be alarming to her very conservative and well-meaning school principal. We are trying to get her to draw more bunnies and stars and fewer skeletons, medieval weapons of war, and elvish looking boys with amazing abs.

Ailsa and Jensen are continuing with Kung Fu and doing well. They are second degree blue sash and first degree blue sash respectively. Their Sifu teases Ailsa that she fights like a ballerina. Ailsa's taste in music has taken on some new dimensions. I already mentioned Rammstein. She also went through a phase where she was fascinated with a Japanese musician named Gackt. To look at him you might think of a punked out version of the Iron Chef. Those Japanese. His songs are melodic enough. On one of our trips to Preston, Idaho this year driving through Sardine Canyon Ailsa's keen eye spotted a menacing two-dimensional painted plywood cut-out of a Moose hiding in the brush off the side of the road. She claims that she was fooled briefly into thinking it was real. She is just ditzy enough for us to believe her. Ailsa has turned sixteen. Both our cars are still intact. But, we are seriously studying the possibility of trading in dad's Acura for something that makes a lot more sense to insure with a brand new driver in the family. Riding around with Ailsa lately has given me new respect for the people who drive around town slowly, and without a clue what their next move is, and who seem to consistently find themselves in front of me. Ailsa has seen more movies this year than anyone else in the family, some of them two, three, or four times. About 90% of these showings starred Orlando Bloom. She has taught Laney to spot Johnny Depp posters at 70 yards over open range.

Lenore and I struggle to find time together watching our favorite shows: Jake 2.0, Enterprise, and CSI (not CSI:Miami so much. I have a slight congenital aversion to David Caruso). Earlier in the year we could be found sometimes indulging in the guilty pleasure of watching “Blind Date” and “Shipmates”. This latter would be more aptly named “Shipwrecks”. The only attraction of these shows is the voyeuristic desire to see a “date” self destruct as they so often do. I find myself continually thinking “I could do better than this guy.” As if the point is to try to get along with each other (isn't it?) As I am sure some of you did, we spent many hours watching on TV the invasion of Iraq by US forces and we stayed up way later than we should have watching the reporters going into Tikrit ahead of the troops. Lenore has been very good about following her uberdiet, a sort of Atkins/Zone/Fat Flush hybrid. The part that I am really good at is taking advantage of the “free” days.

On the cycling front, I decided my knee might do better if I took longer rides and strangely enough, my knee did do a lot better this year. I especially enjoyed the ten days we had at San Clemente where I rode a total of 250 miles with a one day ride of 48 miles at 20 mph average. (This included about 14 miles round trip on the 5 Freeway in between Camp Pendleton and Oceanside.) Overall I did more miles this year than in a long time, maybe ever, and I reached a better state of health than I have had in a long time. I plan to try to do better next year.

We spent what ends up to be our last visit to the Old Smith Household in Kentfield, California last Christmas. Lenore's parents have since sold that house and moved to Midvale, Utah just down the road from us. Christmas with the Smiths last year was very fun and memorable. Darrell roped me into tiling one of the bathroom floors on the main level. I took one day with the kids where we went into San Francisco on the ferry to see the Aquarium at Fisherman's Wharf and to go shopping at American Eagle and Abercrombie and Fitch. Over the years we have spent many fun do-nothing days at the house on Crown Road (especially Thanksgiving 2000, during the height of the Bush-Gore election brouhaha.) and we will certainly miss not being able to return. It turns out that vast gains in mutual understanding and insight were to be had by the Smith's moving from secluded mountaintop to a cul-de-sac neighborhood. We both can now see the differences in the socialization that we each had. With surprise, they are thoroughly enjoying the close interaction with neighbors and the abundance of playmates for their grandkids that are both the burden and the benefit of their new home. And I realize that what was a fundamental and basic part of my growing up has been lacking from their lives for 40 years or so. After almost 18 years of association, I have become somewhat accustomed to my in laws and the Smiths are starting to feel like family. They cannot take the place of my parents and siblings. But over time they have come closer than I would have expected. One note of amusement: Christmas with the Smiths last year was not unlike watching the Osbournes without the swearing: Dogs, dottering old folks and all. (Did I just compare my father in law to the prince of darkness, Ozzy Osbourne?)

We are grateful for all our friends and family, for your contacts throughout the year and for your love. As we celebrate Christmas, we acknowledge the important place that the Gospel and the Mission of Christ play in our lives.

The Lillywhites
toddlillywhite@yahoo.com