Christmas 2011 Thus Far...

I know you've all been waiting with baited breath for a little "what we've been up to" post. Don't deny it. I know it's pretty much all you've been able to think about this holiday season. And I'm here to deliver!

We'll start with our most exciting news.

Guess who I saw shopping at the mall the other day?

You can't tell?

It may or may not be Melissa Gorga and her daughter being run down by a super creepy stalker... like me. Don't know who Melissa Gorga is? Well aren't you just toooo classy for Bravo TV! You think you're better than me?!

No, really, congratulations. You might be a little bit better...

Sadly, this is the only picture I got, because after I sniffed her out at Guess and started to ask her for a picture, my darling three year old bolted. And because I'm totally selfless and a super good mom, I ran after her. The things I do...

Turns out Leah's bolting was due to a little celebrity sighting of her own. Ladies and gents, the Christmas Ice Princess:

I'd say there's a pretty good chance this particular princess moonlights as a professional wrestler.

Think the Turkey Sub was phased by her deep voice and casino-esque aroma? Not a chance.

Jersey-style princesses, we love you.

We also love Macy's. Because on Friday we ventured into Manhattan to Macy's "Santa Land" to meet the man himself. And because I was so enraptured by the general splendor, I only took three photos...

Eve was completely hypnotized by Santa.

She appreciates luscious facial hair. Makes her feel all cozy and taken care of. What can I say? It's in her blood.

Leah, on the other hand, was a little put off by that crook-eye. But not so much so that she didn't go ahead and ask for a swimming pool.

There's no photo evidence of Leah's Santa visit because, well, I was sitting with her... and somehow my gut magically spilled over the top of my jeans and emerged out from under my shirt. It was a real Christmas miracle.

After Santa gave us the boot, Sam left work and met up with us at the Miracle on 34th Street Puppet Show. I dare say it's the cutest little Christmas tradition there ever was. There were no photos allowed during the show, but here's the Turkey Sub and Tiny Tuna waiting for it to start.

And finally, Saturday night we had our ward Christmas party. Sam and I both have a weird phobia about asking people to take pictures of us. There's no excuse for it. And we're getting help. But I just wanted you all to appreciate what a real victory this photo is.

Meet CrazyEyesMcBigface...

The primary, of course, reenacted the Nativity. Leah and her friends made their acting debuts as sheep. The special effects were seriously mind blowing.

The best part was that during the songs, Leah baaah-ed along in tune, pretty much louder than the ensemble as a whole.

The entire cast.

It was a glorious night, indeed.

Thanks for reading.

JCC

Last year on this day, I was in a major postpartum haze. It was actually my first day at home after Eve's birth. My mom was in town, worrying sick about my dad, who was all by himself in Idaho. And we all sort of just moved around our apartment as if under water, trying to process our feelings in different ways.

Today, a lot of things in my life are different. Almost everything, in fact. Except I still sort of have that underwater feeling. Two years ago today, my brother passed away.

I woke up last night remembering this photo of Jesse and me. I'd completely forgotten about it, but in the middle of the night it was etched in my brain. I've gone through all of my pictures, time and time again, cataloging and organizing any with Jesse in them. But not this picture. I hadn't seen this picture in years. How could I have forgotten about it? How could I have missed it? I felt immediately panicked that I'd lost it. I got out of bed and pulled my photo boxes out of my closet, and miraculously, there it was... a gift, a treasure reserved specifically for this day.

This was taken in Phoenix over Christmas my freshmen year in college. I remember something obnoxious going on... most likely a love-handle pinching. This is the Jesse we all get a gut-check remembering. The one that we ache for our babies to know.

Death is such an individual ordeal. Everyone handles it so differently. I've experienced the bittersweet passing of three of my grandparents and I can certainly say, those deaths felt nothing like Jesse's. Jesse's death left a wake of extreme and strange feelings. Feelings I'd never dealt with before. They're still there, I think I'm just more used to them now.

I have always been able to envision my wearied grandparents, freed from their fallen bodies, racing towards the Savior in a glorious reunion, relieved to be finished with their sojourn on this earth. I knew they had lived good lives. I knew the Savior could look at them and say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Well done." How happy they all must have been.

I've envisioned this same reunion for my brother hundreds of times. In my darkest moments since his death, I've clung desperately to it. At times it has made me sad--like, I wish I could have been there with him to explain it all. As if Jesse's estrangement from the Savior in this life could have possibly caused unease between the two of them, and that he would have needed me or my family there with him to make it all more comfortable.

But then Heavenly Father reminds me to get real. To get over myself. To shake off the immature and limited scope of my mortal mind and remember, with surety, that no time spent during Jesse's life here on earth has ever brought him more comfort or relief than that of his blessed reunion with the Savior.

In these two years, that is what I have come to know most. Jesse is happy. More happy than he has ever been. More happy than I have ever been. He is not lonely. He is not unsure. He is the very best of the Jesse I knew and more than I can begin to imagine.

And when I see him again, he'll most certainly try to pinch my love handles.

Eve Sophia... A Year in a Dream.

Today is a most spectacular day! Exactly one year ago, at this very minute, I was rolling around, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, waiting for the tiny little tuna camped out in my tummy to come out and join our family. You can read that harrowing tale (about an evil midwife who sabotaged the fair maiden's chances for an epidural) here.

You came to the world itty and perfect. Just 6 lbs, 7 ounces with exactly four hairs on your little melon head... Today you are still perfect but not so tiny, weighing in at a hearty 24 lbs. Hair count up to 37. You have one, half-emerged, razor sharp, bottom tooth and two, almost-there, top teeth. You have big, pillowy lips, dark brown eyes, one dimple, and ample junk in the trunk. And right now, you are sitting next to me, showing a mighty-mini popsicle who's boss (it is your birthday, afterall). In fact, here is a picture of you at this very minute.

Oh, Baby Eve. You are such a squishable little heff, I can hardly contain myself around you. And I can hardly believe you are already one year old. There are so many things about your one-year-old self that astound, baffle and entertain me. I spend a great majority of the time I spend with you wheezing and snorting and chuckling away in amusement... and surfing the net. J/K. We spend a lot of time watching TV, too! J/K again. Kinda.

Ahem.

At the ripe age of ONE, you should know (in case it ever changes) that you are completely obsessed with your elder sister. You think everything she does is, like, the best thing ever. Even though she abuses you. It appears you have a full on case of abused wife syndrome. Cause you can't get enough. You've got the feva... and the only cure is more Leah. In fact, I get so annoyed and claustrophobic for you putting up with Leah's antics without standing up for yourself that I will, at times, strategically place you in prime "pulling Leah's hair" position, and then turn a blind eye to the chaos that ensues. I can't help it. And you're welcome.

See? See how much you love her?

I even catch some of your sisterly dynamic on film sometimes...

Your crush on Leah is problematic for me at times. Every time she gets in trouble, generally for pushing you down or some other unmentionable, you look at me with as much betrayal in your eyes as you can muster and shout around, trying to rescue Leah from "time out." This happens when your dad tucks Leah in at night as well. You feel utterly distraught and left out.

You hate baths. HATE them. Unless, of course, Leah joins you. Then all is well in the world. This vexes me greatly because, well, sometimes I don't have the energy to wash all of her hair.

Should Leah ever be in the bath alone, you lean over the tub, swatting at the water while she douses you in the face over and over. And you just take it. Because you're a good sister.

I can say proudly that you will sit and watch an entire episode of "Blue's Clues," which, in case you didn't know, is highly impressive for someone your age. I think that little dog speaks your language.

You shriek and slap my legs until I pick you up and then immediately put one pointy finger into the palm of the opposite hand to "mark it with a B." This means you want me to sing Patty Cake, and if I don't comply immediately, you begin swatting my face until you've beaten me into submission. Overall it's a very violent process, that patty cake. You would do it all day long if you could.

You love your daddy and squeal and screech and lurch across the room to him when he gets home from work. You especially love when he spends quality time teaching you important life lessons, like how to beat the final level of Angry Birds.

For your big day we took you to see, "Disney on Ice." Which was completely for you and not at all for your stinky big sister. I promise.

You clapped along with the crowd and shouted, "Oooo! Oooo!" when something spectacular happened and were a most excellent spectator... until the last half hour wherein you became disenchanted with all things princessey and attempted to ruin the rest of the show with heckling and foul language. This was remedied by inducing you into a good ol' fashioned cottoncandycoma.

And then we dined. And you stuffed your face with french fries to your little heart's content. And Leah's face melted into her neck...

Really, there's no excuse for Leah in this photo. Never seen anything like it in all my life.

Your very favorite of all of your birthday gifts this year was this magical contraption:

And, perhaps most importantly, people tell me all the time that you look exactly like me. 'Specially when I was a little, fat cherub. Which, of course, makes me love you above all...

Oh little Eve Sophia, I wish I could give you the world today. I'm so lucky to be your mama. Happy, Happy Birthday Teeny Tiny Tuna!

Guess What I'm Gonna Post About?

If you guessed Halloween you're absofreakinglutely right! Oh, Hallow's Eve, how I love you... for you created this:

That right there is a candy-crazed superhero princess. Is it weird to want to call your three-year-old little girl a bad-A? Cause I do. And she is.

This moment was captured by my friend, Halley, at the kickoff of our Halloween festivities last Friday. The m&m's (mamas and munchkins) got together and decorated cookies and chatted... and played spin the bottle.

Our brood...

Little Eve woke up and joined the party once we got inside and out of the cold. She was feeling super festive...

It was a glorious morning, indeed.

The next day we suited up for the ward Halloween Party. Every year I have complete visions of grandeur about Halloween and my plans for the most amazing costume ever! And then every year I don't end up even dressing up. At all. I blame this on the fact that I'm pretty sure I operate at about 30% of where all other moms operate... but at least Leah looked squishable.

Posing in the hallway on the way out... after no less than a 35 minute wrestling/pleading/berating match about me wanting her to wear black boots instead of brown. Guess who won?

She'll regret it one day. Mark my words. She's gonna regret the brown boots of Halloween 2011.

Other than a shameful amount of chili consumption, the ward party was pretty ummm...mellow. So we didn't really take any pictures. And I actually wrote "lame" instead of "mellow" when I first wrote that sentence. But I was just kidding.

Truth is, I was feeling a little run down (remember the me running at 30% of everyone else part?) so I've got no one to blame but myself. Cause I was probably only running at about 20% at the party... which would pretty much mean laying flat on your face for anyone else.

We did manage to get outta there before having to help clean up so that was cool.

I should mention, for documentation sake, that we got slammed with a rogue snow storm on Saturday that left the whole tri-state area in a declared state of emergency. We were delighted when we went to turn our heater on for the first time and it sputtered and coughed and swore at us but failed to produce any heat. We spent the whole day chattering and trembling and huddled under blankets. Nearly lost our lives to exposure and typhoid fever.

'Cept for Leah...

...she seized the day and brought us back a squirrel to eat.

By Monday all the snow was gone and it had heated up to a toasty 58 degrees so we set off for the Hoboken Halloween Raggamuffin Parade. Does that not sound like the cutest Halloween festivity ever? It is. It's a parade down the main street of Hoboken where all the little ones in town march along together, along with some excellent floats and marching bands, etc. And then all the businesses along Washington street pass out candy for trick or treating. It was most excellent.

Some little Raggamuffins of our own... and me.

The beginning of the parade... right before we jumped in.

Leah was smitten with one marching band member in particular, the tuba player. She was overjoyed clomping along, trying to trip him.

Then we hopped out of the parade to collect some loot.

This little gem was taken by accident when I was putting my camera away. Love the sneak attack it captured.

The Turkey Sub and Tiny Tuna looking delectable.

Leah couldn't be contained. This was pretty much my view the entire time. I luffed it.

And after some extensive elbow throwing to collect a sufficient amount of sugar, we headed home.

So Leah could let her hair down, drink some hot chocolate....

...and Eve could get back to work on her ipad...

I will say, having a child who is old enough to actually enjoy and get involved in Halloween makes an already magical day one thousand times better. I dare say this was my very favorite Halloween yet.

A Tale of Two Sissies..

So, I've spent the last 5 days staring at the wall in the dark, consumed by bouts of profanity and ugly-face crying... and pant-peeing. If you know me at all, you know that there are only a few things in this world that can produce this sort of behavior in me. That's right, you guessed it... my sisters came to visit. And on Sunday, they left... sending me spiraling into the bog of eternal stench.

It was a dark and dreary Wednesday night when I got a phone call announcing the arrival of this beauty:

Just look at 'er in all her glory, holding my eldest child in her arms, sunglasses slightly ajar from the headbutting she'd just received at Leah's hand...

Upon opening the door and after an appropriate amount of hugging and kissing and squealing, Bethany said, "Oh my gosh, Nessa, there are some tiny kittens over here on the corner! They're all alone!"

Of course I immediately started purring and kneading and licking myself, and charged out into the night to rescue them... I've been prepared to answer the call of "mama cat" for some time now, you see. Luckily I'm already lactating, I thought.

I could hear tiny "meows" from the bushes. "They're meowing! I hear them!" I shouted.

And just as I turned the corner, a bewitched mass of blankets and garbage came springing from the bushes, screeching and slobbering and belching like a rabid, angry cat.

I wet my pants on the spot. I let out a guttural, primal scream and braced myself for combat. And then suddenly, all my fears melted into blissful delirium as, from out of the dark night and garbage, a tiny face emerged... not the face of a kitten, but of this beauty:

Pictured here, holding my second babe at Trinity Church.

Meradith had flown out in secret to surprise me. Which is the oldest trick in the Collard Family Book of Tricks, Second Edition. But never fails to delight peoples and nations all over the world. But mostly just me.

The very best part of it all is that Sam was out of town on business... so we called up some dudes to watch a movie.

No. No, we didn't. But we did feel like we were getting away with something crazy just being there all together without any of our better halves.

Now, here's what we did!

The first morning, Bethany and I set off on a mission to make it onto an episode of Cake Boss at Carlo's Bake Shop here in Hoboken. We were prepared to go all Mardi gras if we had to. We were going to get some camera time. At present, Mera is baking her third bun in the oven, so she stayed home to get some much needed rest away from her munchkins.

Anyway, Bethany and I walked to the bakery and were delighted to see there were only about ten people in line in front. What luck! We congratulated ourselves on our superior timing and intellect (and looks) and got in line. And then the little wench policing the front of the shop gave us the boot to the back of the "real" line, which was one block down and made up of about a million poor saps who, by the looks on their faces, had had their hopes dashed to the ground as well.

We were undeterred. See how happy we were?

And so we waited... for 3 hours... to get our wee lit'l box o' cannolis.

And we feasted. And were satisfied...

Though I nearly went on a murderous rampage after standing for that long on the sidewalk with my children.

On the ferry on our way into the big city for a girl's night out. Beauties.

We found this cute little hole in the wall in Times Square to eat... so quaint.

Especially that creeper that shimmied his way into our photo at the last minute. So startling.

The real highlight of the evening was when, while we were looking at a table full of handbags on the street, the vendor, we'll call her Bag Lady, pointed at me and said in broken english, "she is not so beautiful." And then she pointed at Meradith and said, "and she is not so beautiful." And then she pointed at Bethany and said, "She is most beautiful."

It was a good sales strategy on her part... I chucked the bag I was contemplating back on the table and stormed off. Then I slapped Bethany across the face.

No, really. We all just stood there awkwardly for a second digesting what she said and then burst into laughter. And then we really did chuck the bags back in her face. Except Bethany. She bought one.

Matching sister pedicure... if you're trying to guess which foot is mine, it's whichever one you think is cutest.

This is, perhaps, my very favorite photo of the trip... there's just so many things I love about it. My face, and Leah's shades. But mostly how thick my neck looks.

What you see here is actually me telling Sam to put the camera away. Because just as he started taking pictures, a voice came booming over the subway loudspeaker saying, "ABSOLUTELY NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED IN THE SUBWAY STATION." And because I was the only one who actually tuned in to what the guy was saying, I started shouting at Sam that he couldn't take pictures. But he couldn't hear me over "the voice." So he just kept on snapping. And it went on so long that "the voice" ended up being like, "Ummm helllooooo! Dude with the camera! Stop taking pictures!" And then we all started laughing and pointing at "the voice" and then we took a picture of it.

My four favorite ladies on earth. At Trinity Church.

Eve was happy to get out of the ergobaby to stretch her gams...

And then I got completely tapped out lugging my kids around NYC so I abandoned taking pictures all together. But you better believe we did some pretty crazy shiz. And Meradith may or may not have gotten bashed in the head by a rogue, ill-anchored wall hanging at a Subway sandwich shop. But just maybe.

It was a most glorious trip.

Oh sissydoodles. How can you expect me to ever look at my new home with anything but disdain and disappointment after I've beheld it under the glow of your beauty? How can you expect me to go on living when I know that since you've left, my life has no where to go but down?

Now I have no choice but to go and pick a fight with Sam to lift my spirits...