The New Year Is Looking Good If A Little Bit Turned On Its Head

Kjell's Many Christmas Memories

We had a wonderful first Christmas season with Kjell. First of all, in the Osterholme-Peters-Siebum clan, we don't just celebrate Christmas once, we keep it up for a while. We have at times celebrated Christmas from the week before Christmas, all the way through February, March or April I think. Kjell of course is very popular, so we had a few official Christmas and Christmas Eve celebrations with all sorts of family helping us enjoy his first Christmases.

While Kjell was just still a little fetus in the big fat belly, we had decided that we would spend this, his first Christmas, at our home in Charlotte. We had planned on a big, fat, merry Christmas inclusive of all our three wonderful families. We did have some sort of hybrid of that plan. Mom and Anna did not make the trip out, but maintained our normal traditions in Oregon, but celebrated with us by phone. We had Bob and Sara and Jon Siebum out to our house from several points in the west. Jon is now in school in Arizona and Mom and Bob came out from Roseburg. All were affected by some sort of winter travel changes, so that kept us on our toes. We also were glad to have at various times throughout the traditional weekend for Christmas Cory, Leslie,and Cousin Cade, as well as Penny Peters and Great Grandma and Grandpa Vickey and Mel. Then, the following weekend, we celebrated at Penny P's house with our usual meal of make-your-own pizzas and Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation and Bing Crosby's White Christmas.

Since Grandma Sara was not able to be at our house on the day she had expected to arrive (due to Denver's snowstorm extravaganza), I braved making her special Christmas cinnamon rolls and fruit-filled pastries. Although not quite as good as the ones Gramma makes, they were a pretty good first attempt.

Kjell enjoyed the ribbon and paper that adorned his presents probably more than the gifts themselves. The blue silky ribbon was his absolute favorite, but the toys are growing on him now. He really enjoys the little stacking ring toy that probably every kid in the past several generations has had the fun of experiencing. We tried to convince ourselves that he is in fact brilliant because he can put one of the rings back on the little, cone-shaped toy.

We were missing very noticeably this year our Poppa P., but Jamie and Cory reluctantly enjoyed (well, managed to choke down) a glass of Black Velevet in his honor. We know that he was with us in spirit and was very much on all of our minds and in our hearts. We know he would have loved his first Christmas as a grandpa, but there were many reminders of him that we shared with Kjell and Cousin Cade.

We have been enjoying our new kitchen table, Kjell's big boy car seat, new kitchen sink, and a very fun waffle maker to ring in the new year. These were some of the great gifts we received this Christmas. Everyone was far too good to us.

Mostly we are just thankful to have such great families and of course our best gift of the year--- Kjell, who continues to be a happy, healthy, boy. In our most recent visit to the best child urologist in the world, Dr. Perez told us that his "bad" kidney is shrinking very quickly, which is what we have been hoping for, and that his good kidney is robust, quite large and very healthy. We think he wets enough diapers for several children! He is growing and changing like crazy. He now has two teeth coming in, can sit up, and is we think quite strong due to all the push-ups he likes to do.

Happy new year to all of our friends and family!