Sheaffer Family Update

Somehow, it’s the middle of February. I’m not sure when that happened. I figure it’s about time for a Sheaffer family update. I wish I had a super clever, less discombobulated way to throw our current lives into words, but alas, it ain’t happenin. Good thing I don’t teach writing or anything.

Addie’s favorite past times are still mostly school, doctoring, and outfit changes, something she is now infamous for among those who spend more than 5 minutes at our house. While she fervently loves her fashion, socks with shoes is apparently The Worst, which is particularly annoying on cold days when we must both demand socks be worn and get to school on time(ish). At least the weather has been consistent for us. LOLZ.  Speaking of climate change, Adalyn also recently discovered science experiments (Thanks Uncle Jordan/Tia) which coincidentally are really fun for adults too. Underwater volcanos that change colors?? Yes please! Additionally, Sheaff has learned nearly all the words to at least 3 Hello Dolly songs, a current favorite movie (thanks Uncle Ty/Aunt Casey!).

One of Adalyn’s latest hobbies is running up to any human and yelling TAG YOU’RE IT, and zooming away. If you tag her back, she laughs but kind of wanders off about a minute later. Impressive attention span. During down time, when she’s not writing letters or drawing monsters or treasure maps, she’s doctoring her babies/animals, who don’t seem to be too bright and keep breaking their legs. We work on m&m bingo and puzzles a lot these days, which is a cool thing when you see that your kid actually has a semi-functioning brain inside their head. High five! She has a lot of awesome catch-phrases these days like “Oh, don’t you worry mama!” and “You bet so!” or very frequently, “Bria made that mess.”

Bria’s latest excitement has been attempting talking. She has a rather hysterical communicating system that sort-of-consists of sort-of-words. However, she’s very sure of what she’s saying, and I’m certain volume is a key element in her language equation. While her cousin, Gracie, has a vocabulary that is definitely more bigly than certain-tweeting-orange-numbskulls-holding-office and probably most of Congress, Bria tends to ere on the “Tim the Toolman” grunt from Home Improvement side of things. Her actual words thus far seem to indicate that her priorities are people, dogs, concern for dirty things, Elmo, and food. She loves to dance, gallop, climb anything leading to snacks, unload every board game we own, and wrestle Wallie, who rewards herself with unguarded graham crackers regularly. Bria follows Addie around and copies nearly everything she does, which is fairly adorable until Adalyn starts taking every piece of clothing off the hangers in our closet to try on. Then I have to hang, you know, all 4 of my fancy clothes back up.  

Adalyn and Bria are both passionate about painting, popcorn and half-time chase at LC games in which Bria runs around with a ball trying not to trip while Addie dances around her playing “defense” and picking wedgies. While making dinner, we’ll frequently hear “GUUUUYS! TIME FOR THE SHOW,” involving what might be construed as tap dancing and singing by while Bria yells and spins in circles and Adalyn has a minimum of 6 outfit changes. Bria also has become super obsessed with babies, both real and toy, and trying to take care of them.  This makes my heart ache for Abram sometimes, but I am thankful she’ll have a new tiny cousin to love on [read: torture] if Gracie will let her. With her current “bay-bay” crew, she holds them, puts them under 700 blankets, and smashes play food on their faces. A gentle nurturer, this one. Sorry in advance, Pumpkin.

Sheaff had a conference this January, and we decided to make it our first ‘grown-ups only getaway’ since we’ve had kids. Seriously. It was SO weird. We finished multiple sentences in a row. Walked through a shop with some breakable items on low shelves. Ate meals at a normal pace, without having to take knives from kids or get up 5,000 times to help or cut meat into annoyingly tiny pieces. One meal, I nearly licked the plate, but apparently that’s more farmhouse behavior, not so much at the Homestead. (#shecanbetaught!)  We got to dance (They even played Shout!), hike, and Sheaff may have slipped while getting into the quiet, relaxing, meditating hot springs, spurring an irreverent giggle attack on my part where apparently, you’re supposed to be silently calm and tranquil. We had some seriously intense checker games and even watched Netflix in the middle of the day. At some point, mid-trip, I realized clothes actually stay clean when your kids aren’t painting you in peanut butter, snot, goop, and dirt. I also re-realized high heels were not designed for human feet and should be outlawed.   Needless to say, we had fun but were pretty pumped to get back to our peanut-butter-covered, interrupted, chaotic world of parenting.

And of course, the weeks have passed with learning how to walk through the grief of losing a baby. I have moments where it just feels heavy, like this shouldn’t have happened, and all my heart wants is what we had imagined for Abram and our family. Acceptance may be one stage of grief, but re-accepting happens on a daily basis. And that’s hard, that there is No changing what happened, but it also makes you push through to find peace in the small ways you can. We went back for a doctor’s appointment at Uva, and the last time we were there was when we found out everything. The trip back was surprisingly okay, maybe just because it’s one of the few places we actually saw Abram, even if it was on a screen, sucking his thumb and grabbing his toes. His memory was very present, but in a warm, soothing way. Just recently, I finally picked out a scrapbook to begin putting pieces of the story together, and it was weird buying it like we do everything else.  I wanted to tell the person checking us out, “This is important; this is for Abram.” We planted one of the trees from Abram’s gathering in our backyard. Addie put a birdhouse beside it to keep him company, and they love to show it to people who come play back there. We look at his pictures when we need to, and I journal. I’m thankful for our people who are remembering Abram all the time too, who let us talk about it all however is needed at the time.  Someone very dear told me once not to feel guilty when we’re happy, and I get why she said that now. Like when life feels normal and just plain ole good, there’s this pang of “You shouldn’t be feeling happiness.” I’m still grateful for her reminding us to give ourselves permission to still love life. 

At any rate, that’s the update here! It would appear that our kiddos are still lovers of routine, makers of messes, champions of chaos and our reminder of how much we are grateful for. Our world is a nutty one, but it is still spinning, still beautiful and still loved. Stay tuned!