MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I LOVE YOU TO THE MOON AND BACK!

Holidays are so, so, so much fun when you have little ones around! NO ONE ever told me how much more awesome life gets when you have babies!!!

We don't have an Elf on the Shelf this year, but we have been having some elf antics going on around our house!  We found this little elf flying through space on Priya's spare oxygen tank on December 16th!  She's been into all kinds of things since December 1st.  Yesterday, she was baking cookies.  She has used our furniture as a jungle gym, taken rides in the dryer, roasted marshmallows in front of the fireplace, rowed a boat in the bathtub, and all kinds of things!  She is the busiest elf I have ever seen!  You never know where she will pop up next!

Mike's parents, brothers, Uncle Cecil's family, Mama, and Lee's girlfriend is joining us for Christmas.  It's going to be a FULL house!  This will be the first time Mama gets to meet Priya!  We are excited for Christmas around here!  To gear up for the big day, we started off the month attending a neighborhood live nativity, we've gone on several drives to see how neighboring towns and cities have decked their halls, and Priya and I made holiday crafts with our neighbors across the street. The only think we DIDN'T do was get Christmas cards sent out, and I am still feeling a little bad about that--especially this year!

The big news on my side of the family is that both my sister's family and my parents will be moving into new digs before the end of the year!  I can't wait to go home and see their new places!  I wish we didn't live so far away--especially during holiday season.  They are MISSED!

As we come to the end of the year, we are SO THANKFUL for the greatest gift 2013 has given us, our beautiful, amazing daughter!  Forget candy canes!  Life has never been so sweet!  She brings wonder and joy and so much love to our world!  When you bring a child into the world, you want all that is good in the world to multiply a hundred-fold for THEM!  You wish like never before that wars and hunger and disease would be banished from the earth forever!  I guess that is one of the messages of the season--how a small, helpless baby can come into your world and change everything!  Let us make the world better for everyone's children and live every day with a little more peace, joy, and good will towards others!

ELF ANTICS, Days 1-17

HOLIDAY FUN

It seemed like November flew by in a week!  We had a visit from my dear friend, Mengkha, from Orlando, FL, for Thanksgiving.   She brought a friend, and we ate, we watched Bollywood, and we ate some more!  I sure wish Auntie Mengkha lived much closer so we could see her more!

Mike passed his final boards, so he is officially a BOARD CERTIFIED physician!  We are so proud of him!

Now the first week of December has flown by almost as fast as Santa's sleigh!  Priya is NINE months old and wearing 18-24 month clothes!  It seems like she is doing something new every day!  She is working hard at crawling by picking her belly off the floor and sometimes scooting backwards a bit.  She is working on balance by testing herself to see if she will topple over.  She thinks she is hot stuff when she doesn't.  Her latest is putting her arms up above her head to see if she will lose her balance.  Another new thing Priya is doing is attempting to pull herself up on furniture. She has started making "neh" sounds. As her vision continues to get sharper, it is fun to see her discover the world around her. One morning, she tilted her head to one side and just stared into my face for the longest time.  I was wondering what on Earth she found so interesting, when she gently reached for my eyelashes and pinched them between her thumb and finger and smiled.  She has started noticing art on her walls, moles on my skin, and all sorts of things; EVERYTHING seems to amaze her!  Priya LOVES to dance!  I figure this is good for my emotional/mental health, because I end up dancing every day just to see her smile so big that it must hurt her face a little.  Priya is the happiest baby, which in turn, makes me the happiest momma!

This time of the year has been so much fun living in our neighborhood!  We have the coolest neighbors to do stuff with.  We recently met them at a neighborhood church for a live nativity and tree lighting service.  It put us in the holiday spirit immediately!  Today, Priya and I will be walking across the street to make holiday crafts with some mommies and kiddos.

It's that time of the year when little elves turn up on shelves and interesting places until Christmas.  This is a peak of what my little elf has been up to!

HAPPIEST HALLOWEEN EVER!

This is a first Halloween for both Priya AND Daddy!  So much fun!  We enjoyed an awesome neighborhood parade, music in the park, and trunk-or-treat with our neighbors last week.  Tonight, we are meeting up some neighbors and some of their pre-school class to have pizza and then go trick-or-treating (guess who will be enjoying the candy this year).  Holidays are SO MUCH better when you have kids!

If this is our future, I am feeling better already!  

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

They say it takes a village to raise a child.  For us, it takes 10 specialists.  Fortunately, though, that has been reduced by one after today.  Priya had an appointment with her allergist this afternoon, and it looks like we will no longer be needing her services.  This is good news for both Butch and Kitt--even dairy--but may not be so good for Priya's tonsils, as this means they are likely enlarged due to organomegaly secondary to BWS and not an allergy. This means that if they cause too much trouble with breathing and sleeping, they will have to be removed. Time will tell.

EVER-PROUD

I was playing with Priya this morning, and we had a moment.  Well, I had a moment anyway.  We were playing with one of those toys where you stack color rings on a peg.  Today was the first day she took all the rings off by herself.  But then she ALMOST got one of them back on the peg, and I gasped and almost cried!  I thought to myself, "What is the big deal, Tanya?  Even monkeys can put the rings back on the peg."  But it's my little girl--the one that started off as a crying little baby in the hospital, completely helpless--and now she is growing up and learning things so fast!  This week she has also started making the sign and "uh" sound for "up."  I am so proud of her!  Now I get it.  Parents are proud of everything their children do, even though other children may be doing a hundred cooler things or even doing the same things faster or better.  We are just proud!  Isn't that great, though?  Isn't it a wonderful thing to have someone always proud of you?

TODAY, I LOOKED INTO THE FACE OF GOD.

While watching Priya sleep this morning, I pondered some things in my mind... Like, how easy it is to see

'God" in the face of your own child--all the Love and Power and Mystery of the Universe wrapped up in the package of that face, those eyes, that nose, those lips.  But, then, if every parent with a stable heart and mind can see "God" in the face of their own child, why is it so difficult for us to see "God" in the face of every person we come in contact with (the stranger on the street, the coworker,the client, the patient, the other driver on the road, the criminal, the addict, the homeless person, the politician in the news, the spouse)?  Aren't we all children that have grown up?  Haven't we all been the face of "God" to a parent?

Love is like a magnifying glass that helps us see what we cannot see without it.  It takes thoughtful or prayerful awareness to look at everyone through the lens of Love and see "God," but it's what our world needs the most.  It's no wonder Jesus said that if you have shown a kindness to even the "least of these," you have in truth done it to Me.