Christmas Letter '08

Hello All and welcome to the latest edition of the Hojnacki Family Christmas Update. I apologize for turning to the latest technology to keep people updated on our family, but it seems to be the most practical way to go as our lives speed through the year. I have heard several people comment recently on the fact that all of our christmas traditions were invented back in the 19th Century when 85% of the population were farmers and basically had nothing to do this time of year. Therefore all the cookie baking, crafting, tree decorating, letter writing and such served not only to make the dark, cold season more bearable, but also to waylay boredom. Flash forward two centuries to when our lives in December are indistinguishable from July and you find us all tearing our hair out to maintain those same lovely traditions of the season. I just thought it was healthy for us all to acknowledge that I doubt the agrarians of old could have brought in the harvest, canned the vegetables, cleared the fields, baled the hay, chopped the firewood and still done all of their holiday preparations. So I have found it helpful to remind myself often who we have to blame for this mess, "Game On, Laura Ingalls, Game On!"

As for our family, we are all another year older, some of us a few inches taller, others perhaps a bit wider, but all healthy and happy none-the-less. It was, however, a tough year for Dave's side of the family as we lost his Grandmother in the Spring and his Dad this Fall. Although his father had faced some serious health issues for many years, it was still a shock and certainly very difficult for his Mom. It will be a strange holiday season without them and, since Dave's family is so close-knit, every holiday afterward will be missing someone.

We have added two new four-legged members (one of whom is so needy right now that it's darn near impossible to write this message)

Nellie is a beautiful 5 year old tortoise shell kitty who we adopted from Dave's Mom this summer. She moved right in and made herself quite comfortable until we decided that a new kitten would be a perfect addition to the mix. So now we also have Skippers, a silver-point tabby I've been told (which basically means he's a gray cat with stripes) and now Nellie is not nearly as comfortable since the kitten is a relentless pest who must constantly be put in his place. The two have forged an uneasy truce and now actually "cavort" from time to time. Skippers was quite tiny when we got him; so tiny in fact that we thought he was a she and the kids named him Cindy. After some growth and a more precise examination by the vet we were told that Cindy was actually a boy and the search for a new name ensued. We landed on Skippers, which is often shortened to Skips, Cap'n Salty, Skipper-dee-do-da, or Trouble as the case warrants. Lest I go on more about the cats than the children, let me move on.

. Sophie is now 8 and in the second grade. She still enjoys school very much but has admitted that second grade is a bit more work than first and that the spelling words are "way harder!" She prefers math to english (obviously her father's daughter) and loves art more than any other subject. She has decided to grow her hair out so that she can donate it to Locks of Love in the next year or two. In the meantime she looks about ten years older and requires much more grooming than she used to. Thankfully she is still oblivious to the pre-teen developments of fashion-conciousness, high-tech gadgets, embarassment of her parents and (most importantly) boys. She is still liking soccer and plays on an AYSO team.

No basketball yet, but she does go to many of my games, and where last year she often left the gym not knowing if we had won or lost, she has taken a much greater interest in the team, the strategy and the rules this year. We are gearing up for our first ski outing this winter thanks to lots of early snow and some cold, cold temperatures here in West Michigan, but we don't have any "Out West" trips planned this year. Last year Sophie accompanied us out to Winter Park, Colorado to ski with our friends the Wendlings. It was some welcome one-on-one time with Mom and Dad and a really great way to spend time together, except that now we have established the precedent that when you are 7, you get to go to Colorado and ski with Mom and Dad. I guess that gives us one more year to get Lily on the ski lift and off the bunny hills.

Lily will be 6 on Christmas Eve. She is in an all-day Kindergarten class at a local Catholic school with many of the same friends from her young-fives class last year, including the same teacher. While she is not as enthusiastic fan of school as Sophie, she loves her friends, getting to eat lunch at school and having three recesses!

We have also discovered the joys of school uniforms and are loving the fact that the rest of her clothes rarely get worn (making them much more likely to make it down to Grace unscathed). Lily has also shot up quite a bit this year and is getting dangerously close to wearing the same size clothes as Sophie, which would just royally mess up our clothing rotation system, but I'm sure is bound to happen sooner or later. She also played AYSO soccer this Fall and was lucky enough to have her mom get roped into coaching her team. Even though I feigned ignorance (o.k. AM ignorant) about soccer, they assured me that at the U6 level you just (and I am quoting verbatim here) "Point them in the right direction and tell them to kick the ball." Well, it was obvious after the first few games that there was a lot more than just pointing and telling going on on the other teams because we were routinely getting beat by scores of ten or fifteen to nothing. Now, before you jump on my coaching skills, I will say that our team was populated almost entirely (aside from Lily and one other little dynamo who was only four years old!) by what are commonly referred to as "Daisy Pickers" in the AYSO community. They were lovely and gracious little girls who simply had no inclination to go anywhere near a soccer ball, be it moving or stationary and were often more interested in the half-time snack than the action on the field. After much squeaky wheeling, I have been assured that the "Green Frogs" (should have been my first sign) will be re-allocated to other teams next season.

Now that Kindergarten is in full swing, Lily is beginning to catch on to the fact that all of those confounded letters actually say something and, in her patented learning style, zip through all of the skills that we were so concerned she wasn't getting sooner. We signed her up for an acting class at the Civic Theater here in town which was right up her alley and she will be continuing that through the Spring.

Grace has probably made the most progress since last year's Christmas tidings. Since last January when she was still using a more limited single-word vocabulary she has started a full time Early Childhood Special Education class within the school district, graduated from that class and now attends a mainstream pre-school every day. She has tested at age level for her vocabulary and is still working with a speech therapist to clear up some articulation issues. She now holds forth on any and every topic and specializes in particularly annoying sounds that get the best reactions out of her big sisters. Here is a quick example of a standard Gracie-Mommy conversation these days that is still fresh in my mind from this morning,
"Mommy, where do you live?"

"I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan."

"What about (name of street), do you live there?"

"Yes, that is the street we live on. Grand Rapids is the city."

"Where is Michigan?"

"Michigan is the state we live in."

"But where is Michigan?"

"Michigan is in the United States."

"Michigan is in the United States, but I was born in China and you and Daddy flew there in an airplane and adopted me."

"Yes, that's right. And then you flew home on the airplane with us to meet your sisters."

"That was a long way!"

"And on the airplane you slept on my lap and sat on Laura's lap and turned the light on and off and on and off and on and off."

"Yeah, I was really funny!"

There's just so much going on in her little head that we never knew about because she couldn't talk about it. The special ed classroom was very good for her speech, but now that she is in a regular classroom, she's writing letters, spelling her name and doing all kinds of higher level activities that they just couldn't do in that classroom. Along with her new speaking ability has also come a brand new personality complete with mischief, antagonism and downright ornriness. She knows exactly what elicits fireworks from her sisters and will follow them around the house doing whatever it takes to cause them to explode. There was one period where she went to bed without stories for seven days in a row for not listening and acting up at bedtime. Sophie's remark was, "I don't get it, she's not dumb, why doesn't she just stop?" Good question, Sophie. Very good question. We just celebrated Grace's fourth birthday at Playworld with some of her friends. She got a new ballerina outfit and some tap shoes for her dance class. This year also saw the first instance of one of our children cutting her own hair. Grace gave herself a lovely 80's inspired mullet which was turned into a cute little pixie by my hairdresser. We're making every attempt to keep it that way since it is so easy and hardly needs any maintenance.

As with our other two daughters, Grace is absolutely lovely in a one-on-one situation. She is always cheerful and has been described by several of her teachers as having a "sunny disposition," but put the three of them together and you are more than likely to hit a land mine within a very brief period of time. It is definitely the hardest part of parenting right now and we are working on ways to increase the peace whenever and wherever possible.

As for Dave and I, we have made it through another action-packed year. Given the fact that Dave works in the banking industry, we are thankful that he is still employed and still here in Grand Rapids. Add to the current economic climate the fact that he underwent a merger during the same time and it would not be an overstatement to say that going to work each day has been an adventure. But outside of work we were able to take some nice trips and spend some good family time together. We rented the pop-up camper again but this time stuck a little closer to home, driving just over the bridge and up to the U.P. to Pictured Rocks National Park on Lake Superior.

The weather was spectacular and the camp sites up there are just about unmatched by any we have ever visited. In addition to that trip we spent Spring Break in Florida with my parents, including a one-day jaunt to Disney World and spent our Winter Break in Colorado with Sophie.

Dave paddled down the Green River in Utah with some friends from college and I attended a good friend's wedding in Los Angeles with some of my college friends. Since Dave and I were already so busy with other trips we decided to hold off on our ten year anniversary vacation and are currently planning a trip somewhere warm this coming Spring. I am coaching the JV Girls Basketball team at our high school again this year and will be teaching a few German classes at Aquinas College just down the road starting in January.

So that should do it for the Hojnacki's this year. We welcome any and all visitors here in Grand Rapids, whether it be for skiing and sledding in the winter or beaching and dune climbing in the summer. We hope to keep in touch with as many of you as possible this year and since I am now a semi-Facebook addict you can find me there if you are likewise inclined. We wish you all a very happy Holiday season!

Summer wrap-up

Today is Friday, which means we have had four blissful days of returning to school, which means returning to one routine, three schedules, one uniform, three backpacks, two packed lunches, and some much needed peace at home for Mom. It's been so long since I've blogged that I'm not sure where to start. I believe that blogs are much better when they track the day-to-day details of any given subject instead of trying to sum everything up, but since I've avoided the blog in favor of summer laziness, I will try to summarize without boring.

Michigan's new law mandating that schools not begin before Labor Day gave us a long, luxurious summer which also needed to be filled with activities to keep everyone from killing each other. The weather in Michigan this summer was perfect for just about everything except swimming, save for a handful of hot days. The hottest day of the year topped out at 92 and arrived just in time for the first day of school. So for the most part we were busy with sports camps, ballet, art class, trips to the pool and beach, bike riding, trips to the park and library and general neighborhood merrymaking with friends.
Each of the girls spent a week with my parents in Carmel and at the lake. They all enjoyed having alone time with Nana and Grandpa Bud, going to the Children's Museum in Indy and swimming at the cottage.

We attended the third annual Hojnacki family reunion at Indiana Beach which was as big a hit as ever with the kids and grown-up kids alike

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Sophie and Lily celebrated their eighth and fifth(-and-a-half) birthdays together at the park with a gaggle of friends and then a trip to the zoo

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Lily learned to ride her two-wheeler

Sophie and Lily went to soccer camp

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Lily and Grace took ballet for two weeks and Sophie took an art class at the library.

Dave and I were able to get some R&R in as well. I got to attend the wedding of a good friend in L.A. in August

and Dave is off next week to canoe down the Green River in Colorado with three good friends from high school. (Just don't mention the movie "Deliverance" and he'll be fine)

Our family vacation was a camping trip to the Pictured Rocks in the U.P. of Michigan. We rented the same pop-up that we took on our trip out East last summer and had a great time. The camp sites up there are out of this world: right on Lake Superior, white sandy beaches, beech trees, dunes and very few people for miles and miles. The star show at night was spectacular. The camp host thought we might be able to see the Northern Lights one night, but we were not so lucky.

Otherwise newsworthy events include Grace cutting her own hair and getting a cute new pixie cut from my hairdresser. The mullet that she gave herself just wasn't a look we were going for. Her speech has kicked into over-drive to the point that she now rarely stops talking and especially loves asking questions, "why" being an all-time favorite right now. Her speech issues have migrated over to articulation, which is still a problem since others often have a hard time understanding her, but the vocabulary is making leaps and bounds every week. She goes to school every morning on the school bus and comes home around lunch time. There are eight kids in her classroom, and even though the other Grace from last year has moved on to Kindergarten, ours is still referred to as "New Grace" by several of the boys. She doesn't seem to mind.

Lily started all-day Kindergarten in her brand new uniform and has come home from school more energized and happy than she even did from half-day school last year. She has a new friend named Ella and gets to eat lunch in the cafeteria and have rest time after recess.

Sophie started 2nd grade and, in a new era of independence walks to and from school every day. I feel woefully cut off from what is going on in comparison with Kindergarten and even 1st grade where we knew her teacher well and often dropped by at pick-up. Now she is upstairs on the second floor where parent intrusion is frowned upon and so we are biding our time until open house night to see how things are going. I suppose this all goes with the territory, but it is hard to get used to after years of involvement and shepherding. So far we have gotten only good reports from her and she is happy to trot off to school each morning.

I am looking forward to two relatively quiet months (save for soccer on Saturdays, Sunday school on Sundays, violin on Wednesdays, Speech on Tuesdays, pre-season basketball work-outs, room mothering Lily's class, homework, laundry, meals, etc.) until basketball starts in November. I will also be teaching two sections of German at Aquinas College right down the road starting in January when the German professor there goes on sabbatical. In two weeks I will be attending my 20th high school reunion in Carmel. I have already caught up with some old friends and am looking forward to seeing everyone (who I probably won't remember) back at home. I hope all who are reading this are healthy and doing well. As we push onward into this "new year" and look forward to the election in November, we wish you all a safe and happy Fall!

The Tipping Point

Today is the day that Grace has lived with us exactly as many days as she lived in China. She was twenty months old on the day we adopted her and today she is forty months old. Welcome to the rest of your life, Gracie!

End-of-winter wackiness

Fabulous news at the Hojnacki household! Actually two exciting developments: first, Grace has moved from her crib into a big-girl bed, which is noteworthy in and of itself, but not quite as interesting as the fact that this has allowed us to pursue our new winter pass-time: mattress surfing! The second happy accident has happened since giving up on shoveling the back half of the driveway about a month ago. We figured, hey, why bother? We'll just drive over it and when March hits it will all melt anyway, right? Only problem being the massive amounts of snow in February and the complete lack of a thaw thus far in March. So the recipe seems to be: take two months of heavy snowfall, add freezing cold temperatures, drive over repeatedly and, viola! an ice rink.

If you think that over 100 inches of snow, fourteen consecutive and numerous other non-consecutive days of no sun, three kids stuck in the house passing cold and flu bugs endlessly to each other, and a husband enduring the ridiculousness of a corporate merger would be enough to drive one into the pursuits of mattress surfing and back-yard ice skating, you would be right on the mark. It has been a long, long winter and the end is only in sight because we are turning our clocks forward tomorrow, not because the temperatures have risen or the snow has abated in any meaningful way.

The mattress surfing came about when the old crib mattress was left lying at the top of the steps on an otherwise rather boring Saturday. Inspired by repeated watchings of "Princess Diaries 2" we decided to give it a try. It proved quite entertaining for all members of the family except Grace, who has proven to be the only sane one remaining this winter...she refused to take part. All was well and fun until Lily took a bit of a header from about five steps up and Mom and Dad had to step up to the task of parenthood and shut down the whole operation. We do have video which I will try to add when I have time to get it all loaded and edited.

Ice-skating in the back yard proved to be, surprisingly, more tame and somewhat safer than our indoor endeavors, but just as fun. Each trip out the back door and to the car turned into a challenge of balance and coordination. Due to the orientation of the garage, this area gets almost no sun, so we're looking forward to the use of our private rink for some time to come. This, too is recorded for posterity and will be posted here when time permits.

Basketball season has ended. I have to admit that I miss coaching. I miss the girls and the rush of the competition and the strategy of being in charge of a team, but it makes for much smoother operations on the home front to have me here every day after school. We ended with a 6 and 14 record which is a relatively accurate measure of the strength of that team. The moral victories of the season involved playing much more competitively in the second half of the conference season and getting two wins against teams to which we lost the first time around. The coaching staff is already brainstorming ideas for the summer and next season. Not having coached for eight years before this, I was reminded of many things that I could improve upon for next year and am already making plans for next season.

On the Grace/speech front we have seen some significant improvements since Christmas. She started going to an early childhood special education class through our school district in January. It meets every morning for around two and a half hours. There are five kids in the class, a teacher and an aide. The speech pathologist comes in twice a week, the occupational therapist once a week and a music therapist every Friday. There's another little girl named Grace in the class which has led to much shuffling of nicknames to figure out who will be Grace and who will be Gracie. We aren't sure if it's directly related to going to the class or just a natural spurt in her development, but she has begun to use her growing vocabulary much more often and is actually initiating verbal interaction with us in ways that she wasn't just a few months ago.

Grace has also proven that although she may not be saying much, she is certainly paying attention. We gave her the obligatory set of refrigerator alphabet magnets for Christmas. After putting them up, I sat down a couple of times and looked at them with her and then didn't do much with them until one day when Dave and I were talking in the kitchen. Grace was playing with the magnets when I looked over Dave's shoulder and saw her picking out the following letters from the randomly placed magnets: G-R-A-C-E. Surprised, I went over and started pointing out letters. She identified each one adding details like "D, Dadda" and "M, Mamma" when I pointed out those letters. She takes great delight in walking up to me when I am wearing one of my basketball shirts and and saying, "E-A-S-T G-I-R-L-S B-A-S-K-E-T-B-A-L-L," grinning and walking away. So that's been interesting.

Smarty-pants!

For winter break, Dave, Sophie and I headed out to Colorado for a little ski vacation. Lily and Grace stayed with my parents in Indy. We stayed at our friends' brand new condo in Winter Park and had a great time. In an attempt to pack as much skiing into our three days as possible we just about wore ourselves out, but managed to enjoy just about every run in the park that we were capable of skiing. Sophie did great. She went to ski school the first day and then skied with us the other days. We've decided that skiing is the perfect family vacation because of all of the "quality time" that we spent together. Between riding the lift, skiing down the mountain and hanging out at the condo, we did almost everything together and had a great time doing it.

Lily and Grace have been promised that if they can ski the blue hills when they are seven then they can join us out West as well. Lily did her first solo skiing on the bunny hills this year here in Michigan although her ability to stop is still a bit suspect. Even Grace was determined to join her big sisters and took a couple of runs with me holding onto the hood of her jacket. Aside from the mattress surfing (which we will again chalk up to good common sense) Grace is usually very daring and shouldn't have trouble picking it up over the next few years. Lily, on the other hand, seems to be exhibiting a rather scary pattern of extreme reticence in new situations, followed by a period of complete obstinacy in the face of offered help, and ending with a try-only-when-mastered attitude. This behavior, honestly, scares the crap out of me because it is done completely on her terms at her own pace and borders on that most terrifying of personality traits for me...perfectionism.

Our little perfectionist!

I saw the next 12 years of my life flash in front of my eyes when we had our first small "homework" assignment from pre-school. In honor of "March is Reading Month" they were asked to complete a poster about their favorite book. Lily chose, "There's a Bird on your Head" by Mo Willems. She ardently loves all books by Mo Willems and decided that she would write the title of the book across the top. This coming from the girl who has just decided, at the ripe old age of 5, that the letters are something worth learning. So I read off the letters to her as she began to write. It only took about two letters for her to get mad that she wasn't doing them well enough and want to start over because, "Nobody will ever be able to read them!" But after numerous outbursts, fits and starts, but absolutely NO HELP from me, she finished the job and I must report that it is quite legible.

The same has held true in the swimming pool. For the past several years she has enjoyed swimming very much but never been willing to put her face in the water. Last summer she began treading water and going short distances by herself, but always with a distinct doggy paddle and head held high out of the water. We tried to get her to wear goggles and blow bubbles; no luck. We signed her up for swim lessons where they were somewhat more successful but she would only put her face in exactly as many times as requested in the lesson and no more. This persisted all winter until about three weeks ago when she suddenly decided, on her own imaginary time-table, that it was time to start swimming at which point she strapped on her goggles, stuck her face in the water and performed a near-perfect crawl stroke for the 25 meter length of the pool. Within the same time she went from flat-out refusing to jump from the side of the pool to running, jumping and sinking all the way to the bottom. None of us receive any warning when these barriers are about to be crossed and there is rarely an explanation for why they happen when they do, so we all just let her go at her own pace and trust that at some point it will all come together in its own time.

That is where we stand right now. We will all be packing up and driving to Florida next week. All are more than ready for some warmth and sun. Our next post should be much more tan.

Happy Easter!