2013, I'm ready for you!

And we're back from a very busy and wonderful time away for Christmas! We went up to Edmonton the weekend before Christmas to spend some time with Brian's family, and then on Christmas Eve we made the trek up north to hang out with my family for a few days. The drive was so good - we had been on the road for 4 hours when Brian and I looked at each and wondered what was wrong with our kids because they had been so quiet! And not because they were sleeping, because apparently the car seat is not the right place to sleep, even for a baby boy. We were just thankful he was pretty quiet:). We had a great time visiting family and some friends, and we were back on the road on Friday. The trip home was not as smooth, but not the worst. Saturday morning our kids had their Christmas morning! It was great fun:). Adam seemed to love his bus and Lynsey was thrilled to have an art easel where she could finally unleash the creativity inside her:). Nathan didn't care too much, but he does seem to like his table! Yesterday we headed out to Brian's aunt and uncle's to have our Penner Christmas gathering. The kids did pretty well, although I think Nathan especially is just done with traveling and just having tons of people around all the time. Adam had his moments, too, but over all he coped very well through all our traveling.

Today we get to celebrate our little Adam turning 3! We are having some cake later (will post those pictures later tonight hopefully) but we already gave him his bongo drums which he seems to like:). Unfortunately, like with most of his toys, he showed some initial interest and went back to shaking his bubble stick. I would love it if we could get rid of these toys that he just shakes and doesn't really play with, but he would just find a substitute so there's no point. He is getting better at playing functionally, so I'm hoping the hand flapping will just phase out (fingers crossed!).

At Brian's family Christmas, his Mom asked us to share highlights from our year. It made me think back to 2012 and some of the stuff that happened, and I realized that it's actually been a pretty hard year. We did have our wonderful little Nathan back in February which is obviously a highlight, but the months that followed were very difficult months. Adam grew increasingly harder to deal with as his frustration at not being able to communicate properly grew, and Nathan was just not a content baby. This was the first summer since the kids were born that I didn't go out with them most days because it was just so much harder with 3 (even though Nathan had become much happier by this time) and I found myself feeling a lot less connected to friends then I have in the past. This fall was dominated with Adam's assessment and learning that he did indeed have Autism as we had suspected for a while, and scrambling to get him into a preschool program so we could start his therapy ASAP. I do feel like I am getting a bit of a better grip on things now that Adam is in a good program where he is doing well. Nathan is in a really high maintenance stage, but he'll be walking soon which will really help him. Lynsey is such a sharp, wonderful little girl that loves school. We're in a good place I think. When I look ahead to 2013, I feel like it might be a year of change for us, but it will (hopefully) not be quite as hard as this year has been. I guess we'll see what it holds!

Happy New Year everyone!