Someday you will learn that time around vacations acts differently than normal time: before vacation, it slows down, during vacation, it speeds by, after vacation, it leaves you wondering what happened. Today we packed up to return to Houston tomorrow and said goodbye to 2012, a year that has changed all of our lives very much. Next year, 2013, will be like that too. We are very grateful that we could spend the holidays with our families (you have been super spoiled with attention) and while we look forward to the return to normalcy, we will wish they could be more a part of the everyday normal. Maybe next year…

Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you learned to sit up by tri-podding with your hands. You could sit up but not do much because if you moved one hand, you would tip over sideways or (more impressively for us not-as-flexible older folk) fold in half. The day or so after Christmas, you started being able to stay up without your hands, very wobbly with frequent tips and resets at first, then for longer and longer on your own. You think this is awesome and give anyone in a room a smile and a statement of excitement. Reaching for and holding toys while sitting is still a bit much to handle. Just think what you’ll be able to do in a couple more weeks (Mommy and Daddy are picturing objects being thrown from a high chair…).

Today was your first wine tasting (okay, so Mommy and Daddy did the wine tasting on your behalf but you were in attendance). Making wine has been a hobby in the Brewer family for a couple generations. Grandpa Don has a couple hundred bottles of wines he’s bought or wines he’s made in his cellar (mostly reds and ports as whites don’t store very long). Ever since Mommy has known Daddy, Grandpa Don has tried to pass on his wine making and wine drinking knowledge. At today’s event, Daddy was the official host and explained the qualities we were looking for in the 6 “fruity reds” on the docket. Grandma Lois provided delicious munchies to go with the wines…if you’re taking notes(and you should be), good cheese is particularly important.

Related factoids:

The elder Brewers generally prefer red wines, on the dry side. Ironically, wine is produced and consumed in the Brewer household far more often than beer. Mommy’s favorites are fruity whites and ports. Daddy is more adventurous. Red wine that has only aged a month…is vile.

A few months before you were born and while they were setting up your baby registry, Mommy and Daddy read an article on a baby website with a title like “The Things You Really Need For A Baby”. This article contained a relatively short list: clothes for baby, a place for baby to sleep, a car seat, a stroller, a way to keep baby’s behind clean, and a way to feed baby (bottles, nursing stuff). A trip into a baby store at University Village today to get you 6 month+ pacifiers made Mommy and Daddy smile thinking about all the baby things they have that they haven’t needed or used in your lifetime–and they tried very hard not to overdo it. Sigh…the things only experience can teach you…

This Thanksgiving and Christmas, you were over run by monkeys and happy about it. You received lots of adorable monkey clothing as presents (and from Mommy and Daddy who just couldn’t resist it on sale). Uncle Caleb gave you a small version classic sock monkey for Christmas. You immediately tried to put its whole nose in your mouth and it was love at first chomp. Sock monkey seems to be your new go-to stuffed animal for teething, bouncing, throwing, holding, etc..That said, here is an update on some of your other favorites: mirrors (these never seem to get old…making faces and loud giggles), rattle ball, straps of any kind (great for chewing evidently), blankets and burp cloths (for chewing, snuggling and waving), and the ring holding your key teethers (ironically, the ring gets much more chewing action than the teethers themselves).

Some gifts require explanation. Their first Christmas together, Daddy got Mommy a large container of coins (mind you, with a necklace box buried in the coins). Mommy was very happy because she is a little OCD about sorting things.

This Christmas, Grandpa Don gave Mommy 4 jars and a small box tightly packed with dimes. The dimes came with a piggy bank. You see, 17 years ago, great-grandma Majorie gave Grandpa Don the piggy bank to collect spare change. Shortly thereafter, Grandpa Don began charging Daddy and Tia Antje a dime for every time they left a light on after leaving a room. Those dimes went into the piggy bank.

Mommy and Daddy have decided to name the ~$420 worth of dimes the “energy efficiency fund”. Their first purchase with it will be some thermal curtains for the drafty apartment bedroom windows. They plan on adding to it by charging you a quarter (inflation) for leaving lights on and other energy wastes, and using the money collected to someday purchase a tankless water heater, solar panels, etc.

To you, Chirstmas Day wasn’t much different than any other day: eat, sleep, play, cry, digest. To the rest of us, here are some Brewer traditions you observed:

Christmas breakfast, for the last couple years, has consisted of Brewer Chirstmas bread (a sweet milk-based dough wrapped around almond paste, almonds, spices, candied fruit, and marchino cherries), Scottish eggs (hard boiled eggs wrapped in breakfast sausage and breaded), and mimosas. With Tia Antje as our private barista, lattas and mochas were also on the menu.

Daddy’s great aunt knitted red, green, and white stockings for each member of the Lorimer family up to Antje. You and Mommy don’t have stockings of your own yet so Mommy borrowed Betty’s (i.e. great-grandma Lorimer’s) and you borrowed Wayne’s (i.e. great-grandpa Lorimer’s). Tradiationally, these stockings contain mini oranges, chocolate coins and candy canes…plus small, quirky gifts that Grandma Lois (and other family members) find. We go around the room, with each person taking out a gift at a time until he or she reaches the oranges.

Gift opening happens in two stages: in the morning of just Brewer-Brewer exchanges and in the afternoon, when Grandpa Tom, Grandma Carol and Uncle Caleb arrive for Christmas dinner. Like the stockings, we take turns opening them. Someone, this year Grandpa Don, plays elf, handing out the presents. The presents are wrapped with paper to match Grandma Lois’ decorating theme–this year multi-colored nutcrackers–with a tag that includes a clue about what the present it. You have to guess before you can open the present.

Christmas dinner was beef roast, Stilton (a stinky, strong blue cheese favored by the Brewers—except Mommy) sauce, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, creamed spinach (Mommy’s favorite), salad, sparkling apple cider, and red wine. Before dinner are shrimp dip (Daddy’s favorite–lots of garlic), crackers, cheese, and more cheese. Dessert includes shortbread cookies, tarts, and port.

Christmas afternoon concludes with Grandpa Tom napping by the fire, games/movies and general, hanging out. A fire is kept going in the living room, to which we periodically add wrapping paper/wood/boxes and which you loved watching.

When Daddy and Mommy go home to Seattle for the holidays, there are tongue-in-cheek custody “negotiations” every year: Gumms’ or Brewers’ first? when to switch? car transportation responsibilities? etc. This year, as in the last two when we were able to go home for two weeks, we made the move from the Gumm’s downstairs guest room to the Brewers’ downstairs bedroom (formerly Daddy’s old bedroom) on Christmas Eve day so that we could give the working pastor and pastor’s wife fewer responsibilities at a busy time, and be in place for Brewer Christmas breakfast and stockings the next morning.

We took you to your first ever Christmas Eve service at UPC, the church where Mommy and Daddy were married. We arrived early to get seats (as you will learn, being early is a Brewer tradition), sang carols by candlelight and listened to readings, then Daddy took you to show you off to people he knew from working at UPC as a sound tech. Then home again for the difficult task of falling asleep before Christmas morning. (You don’t even know what you have to look forward to yet Christmas Day and already you don’t want to sleep!)

We rejoice in our Christmas gifts from God: the birth of our Savior and your presence with us these last 6 months.

Saturday nights are special: they are “games” nights and one of the reasons you were born. You see, Daddy and Uncle Caleb went to the same high school and had many of the same friends. Nearly every Saturday night, and many Thursdays, these friends would gather at someone’s house for a variety of geek pastimes: GURPS, Settlers of Catan, Magic, etc. Since Uncle Caleb’s parents (i.e. Grandpa Tom and Grandma Carol) had the extra space, “games” was often at the Gumms’; it was here that Daddy met and flirted with Mommy.This evening you got to meet the games guys, many of whom were in Mommy and Daddy’s wedding. Ten years ago, if you had told these guys that they’d be meeting you, they might not believed it…in ten years more, maybe you can join the Saturday night festivities.

As of last night, you have now met all of your immediate family: great-grandparents (3), grandparents (4), aunts (2), uncles (2) and, of course, parents (2). Great-grandma Betty, Mommy’s dad’s mother and wife of your namesake, George Gumm, got to hold you, bounce you on her lap, and show you how to make new sounds. All day, you, her 9th great-grandchild, showed her your tummy time moves, smiles, giggles, and “singing.”

Not that you got to try any…for dinner, Grandpa Tom spoiled Betty and Mommy by making them a seafood pasta with shrimp and scallops: two of their favorites and biggest things they crave when they come to Seattle.