Melkam Gena!

Since it's almost mid-January, I figure this is a good time to write something about our Christmas, which also happened to be Ana Luisa's first Christmas home. Although Ethiopian Christmas was just a few days ago (January 7th), so maybe I'm not so late in posting after all.

Our Christmas festivities actually started in November, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Because Ana Luisa had just had surgery 10 days before, which meant that we missed spending Thanksgiving with Jeff's side of the family in Chicago, his family was gracious enough to come all the way here, with all their young kids and babies, so that we could all celebrate together. My sisters-in-law even brought the main dish for our Christmas brunch. It was great to see everybody, and Ana Luisa did really well meeting so many new people for the first time. It probably helped that she was at home in a familiar environment. Juan Pablo had a blast playing with his cousins, Seth and Luke. They were even too busy to open presents when the time came. And about an hour after Seth and Luke had to leave, I found him sitting at the table, picking at a piece of leftover cinnamon roll lamenting, "My brothers! My brothers!" I asked, "Your brothers?" To which he responded, "Seth and Luke. They're gone!" Thinking he didn't know the English word for cousins, I said, "Oh, your cousins, tus primos." He looked at me like I didn't get it and said, "NO! My brothers!" Apparently they really bonded. So cute. And of course, since we were hosting the event we did not take a single picture. This tends to happen. Oh well. It was a good time, you'll just have to take my word for it.

We got back into the swing of Christmas festivities the week before Christmas. We took a break from school to focus on Christmas-y things, such as:

Making and decorating cookies. Juan Pablo made several Christmas sharks, Christmas turtles and Christmas seahorses. Ana Luisa ate as much dough and frosting as she possibly could.Decorating a gingerbread house. You can't tell, but Juan Pablo dropped a bunch of jelly beans down the chimney to be the "smoke".
Making Christmas tree ornaments to give to all the extended family. Which I also didn't get pictures of. I need to hire a camera crew to follow us around.

We spent Christmas Eve with my family. Tio Sebas came home for three weeks, which made everybody very, very happy. He and Juan Pablo are already best buds, and though Ana Luisa was not so sure at first, he very quickly won her over. We had a fantastic meal, and opened gifts...and tried wearing stockings.
This year, Juan Pablo drew Tio Sebas' name in the gift exchange. Since he's old enough now to have opinions on such matters, I asked him what he wanted to buy for Sebastian. He immediately responded, "Un pato que no habla, o una camiseta de Michigan." ("A duck that doesn't talk, or a Michigan t-shirt.") Sebastian said that he would have been pretty excited about a duck that doesn't talk, but since the Michigan t-shirt was going to be easier to find (and clean up after), we went with that. I took Juan Pablo to a Michigan apparel store, where he quickly zeroed in on the 2010 football season shirt. I tried to steer him in a different direction, since the 2010 season is one that, as Michigan fans, we hope to forget as soon as possible rather than commemorating with the purchase of a t-shirt, but he was adamant. So we got the shirt. And because Juan Pablo picked it out, Sebastian liked it. He's that kind of uncle.
By the way, this is how Ana Luisa always looks when she's around my sisters:

You can just see the thought bubble over her head: "Wow. When I grow up, I'm going to wear sparkly make-up just like that. And I'm going to have lots of bracelets like those. And pretty necklaces like that. And that's exactly how I'm going to do my hair..." She's in awe.

After dinner and the gift exchange, we went to 8pm Mass. Both kids were doing great...until the homily ended. Just as Deacon Dan finished speaking, and the church fell silent, Ana Luisa suddenly jerked her head back and bumped it on the pew. And started SCREAMING. And she is LOUD. And we were sitting as far away from a door as you could possibly be in the whole church. I picked her up, and got out of there as quickly as I could, while she screamed bloody murder the entire time. As soon as the door to the sanctuary closed behind me, I heard everyone laugh, and immediately knew that Fr. Ed had cracked a joke. Apparently he said, "Well I liked the homily." Oh man. Yep, we're that family.

After the kids went to bed, Santa's elves did their work. For several months, anytime Juan Pablo played with toy kitchen at anybody's house or at a toy store, we suggested to him that he ask Santa for one for Christmas. So when we saw Santa at the mall he asked for one for him and Ana Luisa, and guess what?!?

They got it!!!

The kids had a great time playing with their new gifts, and we had a nice Christmas breakfast together. Later in the afternoon, after naptime, Oma, Opa and Uncle Mykal came to spend some time with us and have Christmas dinner together. Juan Pablo especially enjoyed playing with his grandparents. I especially enjoyed having Uncle Mykal, who is currently in culinary school, there to help me get Christmas dinner on the table, since Ana Luisa decided to permanently attach herself to my hip for the better part of the afternoon and there's only so much you can do in the kitchen with one hand. Juan Pablo also gave Oma and Opa the ornaments that he had made for them, although I'm not sure why that event required that he make this face:
Hmm. At least we got a picture from the afternoon.

Sunday morning after Mass we got together with my family to open more gifts...the non-gift exchange related ones. The kids were especially excited to get lots of pots and pans and plates and silverware to go with their new kitchen. And again, it was nice to be able to spend more time all together.


The festivities continued throughout the week as we ate good leftovers and spent time with family.

Since Juan Pablo's arrival, rather than ringing in the new year when the ball drops in Times Square with the rest of Americans in the eastern part of the country, we've been celebrating the new year in Rome with our friends the Buraks, who also have young kids and therefore also don't get super excited about being up at midnight, even if it involves drinking champagne. Rome is six hours ahead of us, so we eat Italian food, count down to the new year at 6pm, and toast with Prosecco. This year, having a finished basement and therefore the ability to have a few more people in our home, we decided to invite some more families to join the festivities. The final head count was close to 30, with half of those being children age 5 and under. We had pasta, and at 6pm, rather than watch the ball drop, we watched candy drop out of a pinata (not Italian, I know, but the Mexican in me couldn't think of anything that would make the moment more exciting). It was totally crazy and super fun, and, as tends to happen, because we were hosting we didn't get a single picture. But the party wrapped up by 8pm, and by 9:30pm both kids were asleep and the house was cleaner than it had been all week. Perfect.

We wrapped up the Christmas season on Epiphany last Thursday (no pictures again...ok, I'll look into the camera crew.), with a couple more gifts. Juan Pablo was a bit confused when he woke up in the morning to find gifts under the tree for Ana Luisa, mama and papa, but not for him. The mystery was solved when he found a note, signed by Melchior, Gaspar, Balthazar and The Camel telling him to look in the basement. Apparently these so-called "wise-men" (and their camel) are not so wise, as they assembled his gift, a mini-trampoline, in the basement, not realizing that once fully assembled it would not fit up the stairs. Maybe they should just stick to gold, frankincense and myrrh. Just the gold would be fine, really.

And that brings us to where we are now...back in Ordinary Time, trying to get back to ordinary life. Mostly trying to figure out what ordinary life is. Last year at this time, we were just getting on the exhausting, emotionally draining and often terrifying roller-coaster ride that ended up being Ana Luisa's adoption process. As soon as she became legally ours, we were caught up in the whirlwind of preparations for our trip to Ethiopia and becoming a family of four. After bringing her home in June, there was no time to relax: our basement was under construction, and her first surgery was scheduled for mid-August. As soon as we felt we had gotten out of the recovery, there was a basement to put together, and preparations began for her second surgery in mid-November, as well as trying to get a jump-start on Christmas preparations, knowing that she would still be recovering as we entered the holiday season. Then the holidays were upon us. And now here we are, finally, a family of four and nothing to stand in the way of that, with no more appointments with the surgeon until next September, no major holidays or big events looming on the horizon. We can finally just be. I still haven't fully wrapped my head around the idea, but I think I'm going to like it.