Our Slice of Life

Since Christmas our lives have been bustling with activity, some of it great, some of it not so great (more to follow).  Mattias celebrated another year full of health and happiness (his 32nd) with his family.  Sara and Anton came over early to help me and Linus put together and decorate the birthday cake. 

They chose colors and mixed up the frosting first, then practiced their decorating skills on cupcakes.  Naturally, their was frosting to "clean up" and the kids were glad to help with their tongues.

  The result: one professionally decorated coconut cake with lemon curd and strawberry filling.

The Ternholts were flying back to Sweden that day, and parties are hard to plan with 2 little ones, so we kept it pretty simple.  Grab some KFC and wrap some presents, and we'll call it a party.  Linus was pretty psyched about the presents.

Mattias blows.

We also spent a lot of time with Linus' friend Ellyn, since she was moving back to California.  To help her parents celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, we had Ellyn one evening  so they could go out for a nice dinner.  I got ambitious and thought it would be fun for the kids to make their own pizzas.  When I say "fun" I mean "messy". 

 While the pizzas baked the two drew pretend pizzas on paper.

And did they eat it?  You bet they did!  Ellyn's parents had a great dinner downtown, and Linus had a great time hanging out with his best buddy before she moved away.

Whew.  I can't remember a time when we more more exhausted.  This shouldn't be interpreted as "miserable" because it's actually quite the opposite.  Mattias and I look at each other at the end of the day, when we and the house look our worst, and we feel lucky. 

 

Things are never really perfect by any measure, but we get to come home to something really meaningful and beautiful.  It doesn't feel meaningful and beautiful all the time (like when Linus decides to color on the wall) but there isn't much that can beat bathing your babies and putting them to bed.

Now to the not-so-great news.  When we took Magnus back to the ophthalmologist earlier this month, we were told that the nystagmus is still present and that it will never go away.  What this means is that his eye will always be a little jiggly, and while his vision may be perfect in that eye, he will always have trouble focusing in most of his visual field.  It also means that the limited peripheral vision he has with one eye will be much worse now with the nystagmus.  Sigh.  We don't know if he'll be able to drive a car.  We're pretty sure that he'll suck at sports that involve balls (the rubber kind).  But we know it won't limit his potential much, if at all.

So there it is, our slice of life.  You can see that it's not always sweet, but it is what we make of it.  I think we've made it pretty damn good.