Originally from December, 2013

What We Learned in 2013…

12 random, wacky, insightful, but mostly plain stupid, Twedtisms.  One for each month of the year in no particular order.

1. Bangs were so last year for 7-year-old Emily and me.  Emily wants bangs again but mama loves the money saved every 6 weeks.  That’s almost 10 lattes between the two of us!  I love bangs on people like Lindsey, but we are never looking back.  Here’s to a winter with hats and to many, many more grande soy lattes than ever before.
2. Toddlers are fun.  Not that we didn’t embrace toddlerhood fully the first two times, right?   Spunky Lauren throws tantrums with the best of them, but her outbursts are of the mellower variety for a two-and-a-half year-old.  We have it good and know it.
3. We love technology.  Greg bought me new hearing aids early in February as a late Christmas present and my life changed.  What can I say, I’m Bluetooth compatible.
4. We hate technology.  Mobile phones break when your toddler and young children (and you) drop them.  And when your phone breaks, hypothetically speaking, there goes your contacts, your calendar, your life… I was the only parent at the pediatrician’s office with a full sized calendar to secure a follow-up appointment.  We’re counting on my new iPhone lasting a wee bit longer than the one it replaced.
5. Having a beginner reader in the house is awesome.  She would argue that having a little mathematician in the house is better.  We delight in the fact that Emily loves math just as much as I hate it.  She’s more like daddy in the area of logic and reasoning and for that we’re grateful.
6. A particular parenting style embraced by us in the past is for the birds not the Twedts (pun intended).  We’re not exactly hippy parents, but we’ve been known to co-sleep on occasion, we wore 2 of our 3 babies, and we’re once again taking a child-led approach to potty training.  Did I mention our love/hate relationship with cloth diapering?  Boundaries are clear as well as follow-through but in the new regime, instead of going cold turkey and weaning her, Lauren gets a new pacifier every time she chews through an old one in an effort to ease teething pain.   We may or may not have purchased pacifiers by the bulk from Amazon.   I know, I know…
7. Twedt children love in different ways.  Lauren loves everything and everyone.  Emily is pining for the same boy since infancy with no end in sight.  Her love is slow and steady like Grandpa Richard and Grandma’s, who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in June.   5-year-old Steven’s love is sporadic, impulsive but freely given.  This fall Steven announced his intention to wed twins Ashlyn and Emily from preschool.  Yes, both of them.  I promise he’s never watched Sister Wives with us but he clearly believes love should be multiplied not divided.  He also has his eyes on grownup Lauren from next door and Mrs. Mueller the crossing guard at the elementary school.  Grandpa Dave jokes that Steven’s vision can’t be all bad.
8. Young adult lit is delightful.  I enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Jellicoe Road by Melina Marcetta, and Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief for book club.  Caution Beck tribe: The Fault in Our Stars is about the big C-word and it’s pretty hopeless.  We all know there’s only one way to end a book about cancer.  But Green captures the teenage female spirit magnificently and it’s worth it in the end, I promise.   As for Greg, he really enjoys when I get sucked into a book.  For then he can watch series like Swamp Logging on Netflix without a peep from me.  Greg’s love for Swamp Logging is yet another reason our family could never really be “crunchy” or “green.”  It’s my fault, too.  The more natural I try to be, the more unnatural things I do to my hair and the more I adore paper towels.
9. We’re not as young as we used to be. In the month of November alone, Greg and I were both injured doing activities we love.  Not romantic injuries like broken bones or concussions, but really stupid injuries like a sprained index finger from playing with the kids at Pump It Up (Nicole) and a sprained thumb from paintball (Greg).
10. Miracles are happening.  To hear Dr. P. say in October that Steven’s optic nerve is “More normal than ever,” and that we are “witnessing a miracle” is beyond exciting.  He still needs plenty of prayer and much is unknown regarding his eye structure and vision.  Yet we’re thankful for the good work continuing in our sweet boy’s eyes.   We keep on praying and trusting Jesus until the day Steven’s healing is complete.
11. Faith of the mustard seed variety.  The unexpected happened this spring when our tiniest tiny was suspected of having the same type of hearing loss originating in the same ear at the same age as mine.  How we wrestled with this one.  Our fears were confirmed in May.  Lauren was diagnosed with a high-frequency hearing loss in her right ear not present at birth.  Since the pediatric audiologist was unable to complete testing due to the sleepiness of our little one, she ordered us back in July, three days after Lauren’s second birthday.  Until then we could only guess where Lauren’s hearing fell on the mild to moderate hearing loss spectrum.  We prayed and prayed, but our prayers were the half-hearted kind.   Frankly, I didn’t believe God would heal Lauren’s hearing loss because He hadn’t healed mine.   On this side of heaven we will never know why some prayers are answered and others aren’t, at least in the way we anticipate. But He knows our wildest hopes and deepest hurts, for us in the area of hearing loss and deafness.  He knows our fragile faith, tiny as the mustard seed, almost too delicate and afraid to voice.  He held these in His tender hands and said Yes.  On July 16, Tympanometry for both ears showed perfect curves where once there was none in the right, indicating normal middle ear function, followed by a perfect Audiologic Evaluation for both ears.  Repeat tests in October yielded similar results.  Thank you Jesus, thank you.  And thank you those who came around us during our season of darkness.  Your faith encouraged us and your prayers reached the throne room of heaven.  Amen and Amen.
12. Naughty is the new nice.  Okay, this isn’t new but it’s appropriate.  We’re seven years into this gig called parenting and Greg and I are amazed that pushovers like us are able to have strong-willed children.  We have, however, come to accept that parenting strong-willed children is our lot in life, along with breaking picky eating habits.  We always suspected this, of course, but we desperately hoped to pass the torch to someone else.   Only by the grace of God, and our dumb luck, were we able to help our oldest overcome her eating issues.   Now the middle one, formerly our hearty eater, is backsliding and the youngest prefers baby food.  Also, I hate to say it, but we are going on year 2-1/2 of the puppy dog phase with Steven, a.k.a. A Puppy Dog Named Buster.  And now we have a little kitty in Lauren.  Did I mention the nose picking?  Greg and I long for the day when we are able to drive to the store and back without someone barking or meowing or eating their boogers from the back of the van.  Perhaps we should give parenting classes a second shot.  Nah.

Greg, Nicole, Emily, Steven & Lauren Twedt