Playing with the baby

Zoo Photographer

Nora went to visit my mother for a few special days by herself, so Elsa (and Beatrice) and I had a few days to ourselves!  We spent one whole day at the Birmingham Zoo, where Elsa was delighted to go just wherever she wanted without having to take turns with anyone!  Beatrice was a bit sick that day, so she slept almost the whole time in the stroller.  It was really nice to have some substantial one on one time with Elsa.  She became very interested in taking pictures, so it was especially convenient that we could take our time however she wanted.  I didn't actually take too many photos of the animals because I was having too much fun watching Elsa frame her shots!  I'll have to post some of her pictures when we upload them.

Yes, this is a fake hippo in the pond, but Elsa said it would make a good picture anyway because it was so close and she liked the grasses and lily pads:

They have a children's zoo, which is basically a farm petting zoo, so of course we loved that.

And just to prove that we're not from Alabama (as if anyone was really wondering), Elsa is the only child I noticed that wanted a picture with BOTH the Univ. of Alabama and Auburn mascots.

It was a sweet day together with lots of conversation and happy baby who took two very long naps that day.  We spent 8 hours at the zoo!

Circus

One advantage of being in a big city is that the circus comes to town!  And it's a really big one!  

I had never seen a human cannonball before.  I kinda didn't think they did that anymore.  But she came out in all her glitter...

 ...and flew out of the cannon to the other end of the arena!

We managed to get seats together with some of our new friends here.  Two other new friends babysat Beatrice for us.

Nora's favorite part was the Poodle Show:

Joel's favorite was the street acrobats/trampoline act:

and Elsa's favorites were the mermaid trapeze acrobats.  What?  Yep.  Mermaid acrobats.  They didn't do too many tricks, but they did have very sparkly costumes.

Another year

The girls have their memory books out in their craft area and have gotten them out a few times lately to add pages and make up new adventures for them to have with Oliver in heaven.

This year for his birthday they wanted to bake cookies with Nana (who visited last week) and a family we've become close friends with.  They came over for dinner, looked at our picture books of Oliver, and loved us through the evening.
 

His tree survived the cross-country journey in the moving van and bloomed right on time again.

I've mostly held myself together this month, but now that I am putting this post together, sorrow is suddenly welling up into tears.  These memories are so precious to me, but while I cherish them I simultaneously fear them and the grief they stir up in me; a fear I'm learning to overcome, because I want to remember and I want to grieve well.  I suppose that with any child, part of parenting is dealing with the pain of heartache at one point or another over your child for any number of reasons. So one way I can be mama to Oliver (because I will never stop being his mama) is to hold his memory firmly in that balance of grief and hope and not diminish it out of my own fear of emotion or  of what anyone might think.

Maybe that's why I decided tonight to start getting the last few months of pictures ready to post - it was really just time to unzip those thoughts that I have been avoiding and keeping neatly tucked away.  But grieving isn't neat, no matter much I'd like to have a tidy description of "how to grieve" and "how long it will take."  Hope can feel rather messy too, especially when false hopes get shaved away.  As messy as it feels, my grief comes from the pain of a world in desperate need of redemption, and thus points directly to my hope of that redemption.
 

Happy Birthday my little boy.  

Georgia Aquarium

The final Christmas adventure with my family was a trip to the Georgia Aquarium.  It was huge and amazing!  We wish we could have had more time to explore, but we made the best with the time we had.  

The girls loved the tunnels under the penguin habitat that had pop-up windows in the middle of the habitat:

Elsa wished she could have a real mermaid fin (of course) for the coral reef:

The most impressive visit was the extra large, 6.3 million gallon, Ocean Voyager tank.  Here we all are in the tunnel (Joel, Beatrice, Naomi, Elsa, and my father):

and Nora and my mother, with one of the four whale sharks overhead (the largest known fish, averaging around 25 feet long):

The girls really liked the bubble windows that curved into the tank.

"Oh no, Nora fell in!  Look out for that giant grouper!"

I thought she might actually get spooked by the huge fish that had swum up behind her, but she didn't seem to mind at all, and just said "Hi fishy!"

There was also one super large gallery viewing window of the entire tank.  That's Elsa's arm raised up at the bottom:

We hung around for the feeding time for the whale sharks - watching the tank was rather mesmerizing after a while.

Whale sharks eat tiny zooplankton and tiny fish.  They scoop them up with their large mouths and filter the food through a very small throat opening, so it looked like they became vacuum cleaners sucking in the water when the food was distributed.

It was a pretty amazing way to end the year.

A few more photos from Christmas

A few last orphaned photos that a post before I finish up the Christmas season - 

My parents love contra dancing and took us to two dance events over Christmas.  We all had fun dancing, and it was sweet to see mom and dad showing us what they have been learning for the last few years.  (Here they are waltzing during the break.)

And of course Beatrice was a doll.  She can army crawl and scoot around now so that kept us a bit busier watching her, and she's just as happy as ever.

Fairies at Opa's castle

My father's castle is really coming along.  He's waiting on paperwork before he can start on the main castle itself, but the multi-story wall and the property is coming together.  The latest Google Earth update got a nice arial photo too (you can see where he's started excavating for the main castle/house in the middle of the walled area).  This is the main entrance/driveway gate:

And this is the view looking northeast from the highest turret on the wall:

Some fairies received new wings for Christmas, and what better place to try them out than at a castle surrounded by woods?! (Beatrice caught a ride with my sister's wings...)

At the end the fairies decided that they did not like humans interrupting their play so they tried to chase us away.  Or at least they tried to chase Daddy away...