2007 Holiday Newsletter

Merry holiday greetings from the Wendts! We hope this finds you all well and that your year has been good.

Aside from buying our first home in January, our year has gone on at an even keel. Jeremy likes to say we are "still." He's still in graduate school, I'm still a homemaker working on my bachelor's degree, and we still have one great kid. But life is good!

Okay, not everything is the same. Jeremy began a summer internship in May at a computer graphics card company (NVIDIA), and it went so well that he stayed on when the semester started up again. He enjoys the company and his coworkers very much. In school, Jeremy recently jumped the last hurdle before his dissertation, so all that's left for him is to research and write! In church, Jeremy is "still" in the Elders' Quorum Presidency. The biggest thing he does in that position is coordinate moves (in a college town, there are many). I hear he's pretty expert at moving-truck-Tetris.

I've started working more intensely on my degree now that John is older. It's great to have an intellectual outlet in the midst of motherhood. While I was in college I could never find a major that seemed to fit, but now I am loving American Studies. In church, I am in the Primary Presidency (children's Sunday School) and thoroughly enjoy contributing there.

John is busy with gymnastics class, playing with friends, and the preschool group we do with three other families. Each mom takes a week to teach preschool twice a week in her home. The kids love it, and so do the moms. I surprise myself with how fulfilling it is to lead 3 year-olds in a craft project. Some of John's favorite things to do are play with his cars, dress up, ride his bike, read books, and pretend. He has a great memory and is good at puzzles and mazes. He's pretty articulate, but a couple of his cuter words -- which he says all the time -- are "tecause" (because) and "Oh, sansks" (thanks).

We feel very blessed at this holiday time and thankful for our companionship with family and friends. We wish the best to each of you in the new year. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Morning

We were able to get a bit of video this morning when John first woke up. We followed the tradition we found in one of John's kids' books: Stockings were left near beds. So, John was able to open his stocking in our bedroom and show us all of the presents in it.

Although I tried to get downstairs before him and get the lights on so that we could get his reaction on video. However, he would not be deterred, and he saw the presents before I was even to the light switch. He shouted, "Oh. There's presents under the tree!!!" I was a bit upset to have missed that shot, but the above video is quite cute also.

We just wanted to share a little bit of our Christmas morning with all of you. We hope you have had a very merry Christmas. We miss and love you all!

Scissors and tags

The above video was just a couple of cute minutes at home this afternoon. Although Heather and I understand John just fine, we've provided subtitles for those who don't speak monkey.

Heather taught John the correct way to hold scissors a little over a month ago. Since that time, his interest in cutting things has not abated at all, and his frequency of cutting things up has increased. When he took his scissors to some of his play-things this week (feathers, a few inexpensive, dress-up hats, etc.), Heather decided to let him because she wants to make space for new things on Christmas.

You'll note in the above movie that the scissors were sitting out on the ground (after Heather and John had finished cutting up the pieces for "Christmas Bingo"), and the reference to the "cutted" hat -- John's handiwork, of course.

However, we're a little concerned that he might have cut something up that he'll be sad was cut. Heather warned him when she saw him with the scissors about to cut. One of John's blankies no longer has a tag. He holds these tags every night as he sleeps. When we asked him why he did it, he responded that the blanket was too big; all he wanted was the tag. We'll see how bedtime goes this evening.... (Later on: Just fine, in fact.)

John wants to finish this post up by "typing letters". Here goes:

poiuyttrewqlkjhgfdsazxcvbnm

While the above might seem like a random group of letters, you'll notice that they actually follow the keyboard layout exactly. He carefully pressed each key once (I think the "t" key on this keyboard is broken -- that's why there are two t's). He also appears completely uninterested in the punctuation keys and the numbers.

John went to Primary for the first time!

He's been going to Nursery for more than 2 years now, but will transition into Primary in mid-January. His nursery class has sat in Primary for the past two weeks for a few minutes of sharing time, but John was too sick for church for the past two weeks.

So, today, we told him that he was going to get to go to Primary with his class for a little while, and he was so excited! We weren't exactly sure why he was so excited, but assumed it was because he thought he was getting so grown up.

When Jeremy dropped him off at Nursery, his teacher immediately said, "Should we go to Primary now?" and John responded with a hearty "YES!" Jeremy watched him drag his teacher down the hall toward the Primary room, with all of his friends following in a disorganized line.

Heather serves as the secretary in the Primary Presidency, and she tells John each week after Sacrament meeting that she has to run off to her Primary class. It turns out that John expected that he could sit next to Mommy the whole time he was in Primary. He was quite upset when he found out that Mommy spends most of her time organizing people in the back of the room and finding people out in the halls. He didn't get to sit next to Mommy at all! It broke Heather's heart to see him crying sad, sad tears in his little seat.

Now that we know why he was so excited about going to Primary, we can help him to get a more accurate expectation about what to see in Primary next time. While we think he will have more fun in Primary next Sunday, it may be that he will never be quite so excited to go again...

"Dark-day"

John got sick late Sunday this past week. It was exhausting on Monday and Tuesday when he had the worst of the flu. His fever was quite high and didn't break until Wednesday morning. We officially deemed him "all better" Thursday evening, so he got to go visit his friends on Friday morning. On Friday afternoon, he slept for three hours in the afternoon (and he never naps any more). Saturday, it was official: He was sick with a cold now. His nose has run nonstop for two days; he's not eating; and he is very sad. His nose has become quite chaffed... Poor guy.

Today he couldn't watch his favorite show (Cars by Pixar) because it's Sunday. He watched most every church video we have. Then this evening at dusk, he asked me if it was "Dark-day" now. It took us a minute or two, but we realized that if there's a "Sun-day" then "Dark-day" should follow.

Meeting Santa

Yesterday we took John to see Santa, who was making a special appearance at Walmart. Kids are often scared of Santa, so we tried to prep him as much as we could. He was fully planning on sitting in Santa's lap, telling him his name (and how to spell it), and telling him what he wanted for Christmas...until he got one look at that beard. When he told us it was "the beard part" that scared him, I couldn't really blame him -- I mean, Santa could be hiding anything behind that huge mass! I think Jeremy may be planning on a second try....

Christmas Season begins

As is the Mansfield tradition, we bought our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We didn't have an opportunity to decorate it until today, but it's nice to have it in the house now. I made some hot cocoa to enjoy while admiring our work, followed by some divine turkey pot pie from Thanksgiving leftovers. By the way, we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, with two other families over. John may have been extra hyper with all the excitement of these past few days, but it's been nice to be together and share tradition.