Survininin 2024
It’s that time of the year again! For the holidays, for the cards, the myriad bad Christmas movies, and for an update from the Karleskys! This year was another one for the books, as we are in the intense years of parenting small children as well as having aging parents with advancing medical conditions that require varying levels of emotional and physical engagement on our part. We are the sandwich generation, and ours has extra spicy peppers some days.
Stories about Toddlers
The biggest development this year for Emmy and Aiden, who turned 2 in July, is in their speech. They were delayed in their verbal communication at our 18 month well check in January. Their receptive language (what they understood) was measuring closer to 2 years, but verbal skills were closer to 15 months. They could point to everything in the dining room—from the smoke detector to the chair rail, to the pendant lights, so we knew they were understanding. We worked with EarlyOn, the state of Michigan’s early intervention program, to teach us how to help them explore and expand their verbal communication. Basically, we got to have a speech pathologist come to our home every week and coach me and Michael on how to encourage their words. We were very graciously told that we were talking too much and too good at anticipating their needs. Giving Emmy and Aiden more space to speak and as for what they need would help them. Speech has exploded, and now they are both so expressive! It’s (mostly) a blast as they communicate their strong thoughts and opinions with us. Some of our favorite toddler pronunciations are:
sweet potato: see-po-PAY-do
food processor: GEE-tah-tah (no idea how we arrived at this one)
ice cubes: eye-SKOO-bees
tall lamps: tall LAM-pez
smoothie: FOO-boo
the suffix -ing: in-IN,
snowing: SNOW-in-in
spinning: SPIN-in-in
blinking: BWINK-in-in
humidifier: HOO-mee-fi-yer
Aiden is a sweet boy, who loves hugs from his sister, reading books (BOO-kez), picking berries off our tree, and walks outside. He is so tender toward his sister and is usually the one to happily give Emmy a toy if they’re fighting over it. If you pick him up to give comfort when he falls and skins his knee, and, he will cry that he wants to keep walking by himself.
Emmy is an empathetic soul. She gives amazing hugs, and can tell when someone is sad and really needs one. To date, she’s has made three grown women cry with her tenderness, myself included. If you pick her up to give comfort when she falls and skins her knee, you will be carrying her all the way home and discussing the detailed play-by-play of the boo-boo for the rest of the day.
Aiden loves things that spin and kitchen appliances—fans, ceiling fans, the food processor, and especially blenders. He has two toy blenders and he makes the appropriate sound when he makes pretend smoothies. In accurate representation, it’s nearly impossible to have a conversation while his blender is running. If you’re lucky, he’ll make you one with garlic and hand soap (trash remains undefeated as the best toys). I recently got a Vitamix that came with a tamp to help keep things moving. Aiden is obsessed with getting it out of the drawer when we make smoothies, and he uses a paper towel tube in the playroom as his own version. He calls it the “blender stick.” He’s improved in his pronunciation of the “st” sound, but for a couple months, it came out as a “d” sound… If you do the math, blender stick sounds like blender dick. It caused several raised eyebrows from visitors before being explained. He took it the next level narrating how the tamp is used: “take middle out, put (st)ick in.” To make the situation even more colorful, he would drop the “r” in crock pot…
We suspected from early days that Aiden was going to be our comedian. He had bits of physical comedy even back at 7-8 months old. As his speech has developed, so have his comedic bits. His best running joke yet started before he turned two. The Setup: I wear several rings every day—my wedding set, a family heirloom from my grandma/mom, and a gift from a friend, Ellice. Both kids like to point to each ring and say who gave each one to me. We took a family trip to Costco, the kids’ first time, over the summer. (Side note: Costco has the biggest and best ceiling fans, aka: “big big big fan.”) Emmy held the receipt during the exit inspection. I noticed the name tag on the worker and told her to hand the receipt to Dave. We carried on with our day. The next day, I had the following exchange with Aiden:
Aiden: See rings!
Me: Okay, who gave Mama this one?
Aiden: Nana!
Me: This one?
Aiden: Ellice!
Me: And this one?
Aiden: Dave!!! (said with a knowing smirk)
Me: Whaaattt?!?! Dave? No it was Daddy!
Aiden: No, Dave!!! Hahahahaha
Dave has been a running punchline from both kids for months now. The next time we saw him, we told him that he’s famous in our house and he drew a self-portrait and signed our receipt.
Proving that you can pretty much do anything with a baby on your hip, she will putter about the playroom with her favorite doll in an affectionate chokehold. She used to protest at Aiden’s loud blender noises, and we even put noise cancelling head phones on her when he wouldn’t stop. It’s become an “if you can’t beat them, join them” situation, and her blender noise matches Aiden’s in decibels these days.
Emmy is in her snowman era. She loves to find snowmen in books, listen to Frosty the Snowman, and wear her favorite snowman pajamas. Imagine her delight when after the first snow, we made her first snowman! I had the foresight to make the snowman with clear sight lines from the windows, but this also meant that we checked on the snowman from every window at every opportunity. We had to explain how snowmen melt and then had to explain that they don’t reappear when it snows again.
Our little girl is really into helping Mama. Wherever I go, she wants to come. She wants to hold a printed recipe if I’m going over cooking plans with Kayla. If I’m chopping veggies, she wants to chop with her knife in her helper tower. If I need to use the bathroom, she wants to come too. If I’m vacuuming, she’s running to get the toy vacuum to join me. Above all other things, I think the favorite task to help with is unloading groceries. “Help Mama. Do GWO-swees!” Both kids love to frantically endanger produce and their own toes as they race each other to pull cans, jars, and boxes out of bags and help put them away.
The Yearly Summary
Michael continues to work for Thingamabyte doing contract software/project management and developing their own products. The beginning of the year brought the longest drought the company had seen in 9 years. Thankfully, these days, there is more work than there are hours in the day, so the challenge is getting Michael the working hours with all the life that is happening week to week. We’ve been playing catch-up financially for the lost time, and Michael works so hard to keep us in the black, while also making sure the kids and I feel loved and cared for.
I continue to run our household and make sure everyone is well-fed and stays alive. I started playing volleyball on Tuesday nights with my sister, Sarah, the Winers, and other. It’s been a delight and so good for my mental health. The first time playing in over 4 years had my forearms red and bruised for a week, but I wore it as a badge of honor.
Our nanny/helper, Kayla, comes several times a week, and we don’t know how we’d function without the extra help. Emmy and Aiden adore her and her daughter. When asked what Kayla’s last name is, the kids, say “Karlesky!” and Kayla doesn’t deny it. She feels like part of the family—she gets our weird and we get hers.
We had an heirloom chair reupholstered in February by a local expert, Joe. It was a chair that was in my dad’s grandfather’s home. He remembers sitting in it as a kid. We chose a new fabric (and in the process tackled the daunting task of deciding our living room redecorating color scheme) and Joe essentially rebuilt the chair from the inside out, and we adore the result. Joe also took an antique kids rocking chair gifted by my late grandpa to repair and reinforce at no charge to us! He claimed he wanted to do it for the fun of it.
My parents, Paul and Claudia Schulte, were here visiting from Texas in March. We got to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday with our family with some silly games and good food.
March was a turning point for Michael’s parents’ health. His mom, Jan, was hospitalized after a stroke. She woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t move, but waited 8 hours to seek medical care. After a lengthy hospital stay, confirmation of a stroke (and a previous stroke), and a diabetes diagnosis, she was discharged with limited mobility and increased resistance to conventional medical care. This is when her paranoid delusions started happening. She began expressing that her daughter is practicing witchcraft against her and that the local medical system is “trying to take her out.” Neither of these are true. Communication has increasingly become more difficult, as she believes the house is bugged and people are spying on her 24/7. The burden of care for Jan fell on John, Michael’s dad, and it took such a toll on him that he was hospitalized for a night. The silver lining of all the of health issues was that moving them out of their home of 60 years was finally a discussion that they were willing to have.
“I think we are on the glide path to destruction,” Michael would say. He has spoken with so many experts to understand what Jan’s condition might be, how to manage it and engage with her, and what options and avenues we have for caring for her. There was a rapid decline, after the stroke so we thought we might need to get the courts involved with a conservatorship, but after learning more, realized that was not our best course of action. Of course the need for Michael’s help happened right as billable work came in for his job, adding to our collective stress. Jan’s delusions have been relatively stable throughout the summer and fall, so we are hoping to get them relocated to a senior community near us before anything worsens.
For Easter, we took Emmy and Aiden to Frederick Meijer Gardens to see the butterfly exhibit. They each had an informational booklet with pictures of all the butterflies that they carried around. After a little bit, they sat their little butts down on the pathway near a waterfall, and just looked at their booklets.
The eclipse happened! We were close to the path of totality, but not on it. Kayla gave us some eclipse glasses, and Michael and I got to view the eclipse and play with shadows for a little bit while the kids were napping.
For Michael’s birthday in April, he was feeling the weight of the world and didn’t really want to celebrate. I decided I knew better (less dysfunctional than it sounds) and made it my mission to celebrate him creatively with as little money as possible. My sister, Sarah, babysat the kids, we met up with the Medemas for pastries at Wealthy St. Bakery, I got museum passes from the library, and I surprised Michael with the Lego exhibit at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, since Lego is such a part of our history. The exhibit was a bit underwhelming, but we did have a blast doing the Lego minifig scavenger hunt all over the museum.
Michael generously gave me a spa day for Mother's Day that was the most luxurious experience that I’ve had. It was a proper spa with everyone in robes and slippers with a fireplace in the waiting room.
In June, Amy Cesak came to visit from Virginia. She and I visited Saugatuck, and she saw Lake Michigan for the first time. Our family took her to Reed’s Lake where Emmy and Aiden saw ducks swimming for the first time. We’ve talked about duck butts ever since. Emmy and Aiden really enjoyed Amy, and the spare room was dubbed, “Amy’s room.” Amy is pleased that despite multiple other visits from other friends, it has retained her namesake.
We had work done on the crawl space under our back room, currently the play room, at the end of June. For multiple days, our poor children were a mix of fascinated by the workers out the window and traumatized by the loud banging under their playroom floor. Michael asked the foreman about what kind of crazy things he’s seen in people’s crawlspaces, and he told a story about a woman who had mentioned to him, “Look out for my horse.” Sure enough, there was a dead horse in the crawl space! After the workers left our house, we started having an infestation of black house flies. For a week, I was killing 20 house flies a day! I started to think we had dead horse in our crawlspace! It was infuriating and disgusting, and I deserve some kind of black belt for my accuracy and efficiency with a fly swatter.
July started with learning that my mom was hospitalized with heart issues. She needed a pace maker and medicine for Afib. She was discharged and then experienced a rare but known complication from the pace maker and almost fainted in the driveway due to fluid around her heart. Hurricane Beryl had knocked out cellular communications, so they couldn’t call 911, but my dad and a neighbor got her in the car and back to the hospital. She spent over 2 weeks in the hospital in 2 separate visits. It was quite scary, and her recovery has been slow and difficult.
We took the kids to the local 4th of July parade—the Hollyhock Independence Day Parade, the longest running independence day parade in Michigan, and it happens to be spitting distance from us! We missed the beginning, but we made a memory.
On July 6th, we drove to the Liebenthal Cottage, near Kalamazoo. Priscilla and Marc hosted a group of college friends and our families at Marc’s parents’ lake house. In a first for either of our kids, Aiden got car sick and threw up as Michael was getting him out of the car upon our arrival. We shared food, laughs, and let the kids play in the sand. Marc called me mid-afternoon, trying to get a hold of Priscilla, to let her know they ran out of gas while tubing with the big kids. Lucky for me, I got to snuggled 6 month old baby Annie while Priscilla attempted to get another boat started to make the rescue. The drive home had us some cranky toddlers, and we called in reinforcements by calling Nana and Papa. Papa played the harmonica as we finished driving the home stretch.
The following weekend, I got to hang out with some college girlfriends at Kelsi Archibald’s family’s lake house. It was a treat to spend the day eating yummy food and catching up. Phil and Ellen West came over to visit with Michael and the kids during a long day of solo parenting.
The morning of July 19, just after 7am, our smoke alarms started blaring! I was upstairs getting dressed and Michael was downstairs making coffee. I ran to Emmy and Aiden’s room and hoisted two confused and scared kiddos out of their cribs. Michael came up and we were trying to figure out what was wrong. There was no obvious smoke or fire, so we were worried there might be carbon monoxide (our neighbors’ lives were saved due to CO alarms last year). Michael called 911, and I took the kids downstairs and outside. The fire department came to check everything out. Turns out, smoke detectors need to be cleaned or they can be triggered by dust. Emmy and Aiden were shaken up about for days and weeks and still talk about it months later.
The last weekend of July marked the culmination of months of work to get the kids’ room toddler-proofed in preparation of moving them out of their cribs. There are height limits from safety regulations that Aiden was reaching, but more importantly, Aiden had gotten tall enough that his head and his toes were touching the inside walls of the mini crib when he stretched out. Who would have thought that we’d have such tall children? (oh, everyone?, yeah, okay) From constructing a door to block off bathroom plumbing access in their closet to securing dressers to walls, mounting yards and yards of cable channels to the walls, making bedding and lighting purchases, and cleaning, sanding, and painting their toddler bed frames, we were ready to move cribs out and new beds in. They called it their “new room” for months, and they still refer to their beds as “new beds.”
Our amazing sleepers struggled for a couple weeks to not let gravity get the best of them. Michael and I would hear a loud thud, look at each other, check the monitor, and wait to see if the fallen child would find their bed again in the pitch black room or cry out in despair for assistance. One time, Aiden fell out and was either too tired or too disoriented to climb back into bed. We watched his head disappear as he just laid down between the bed and wall on the hard wood floor, accepting his fate. (We went in and helped him back into bed that time.)
Emmy and Aiden turned two on July 29. We celebrated with Michael’s parents that weekend, and with my siblings in early August.
With the toddler-proofing complete, I moved on to my next major project, which was touring senior living communities in Grand Rapids for Michael’s parents. I have been amazed at how many styles, pricing models, and options there are.
Kayla came over to babysit for my birthday in August. Michael and I got ice cream at Jersey Junction and sat by Reed’s Lake. When we came home, I was shocked to see that instead of watching Ted Lasso like we had recommended, she had spent the entire time excessively decorating for my birthday. It was so sweet and so festive. The balloons with my age, 3 and 9, are still taped to our dining room wall! They are apparently going to live forever.
Later that week, I unfortunately came down with a vertigo spell. I thought my jaw treatment and braces had fixed the issues causing the dizziness, so on top of feeling sick and limited, I was also disappointed and frustrated. I saw an acupuncturist and tried some Traditional Chinese Medicine. It resolved in about 2 weeks after it started, which is consistent with every other time it’s happened, so I don’t know if the acupuncture helped or if it just ran its course.
In a moment of feeling like we could handle maybe a little extra yard work (before the vertigo), we asked my friend, Kacy Houseman, if we could borrow her edger for our unruly driveway and sidewalks. Instead of letting us borrow it, she offered to come over and do it for us. Who does that?! She proceeded to spend 2 days edging, trimming, and cleaning up our yard. Emmy and Aiden got to clean up some sticks and thought it was awesome. I was still dealing with the vertigo when she came, and it was just so beautiful and humbling to receive such a gift of time and labor. Love you, Kacy!
Toddler proofing: a reprise.
The one thing I didn’t quite finish back in July was the windows in the kids’ room. The towels and binder clips providing a blacked out sleeping environment proved too tempting, and Emmy and Aiden skipped a nap in favor of playing with the window coverings. Frustrated, exasperated, and with an aggressively early bedtime goal, Michael got the over-tired kids up and I ran to Home Depot to buy materials to fix the problem. Standing in line, I get a call from Michael:
M: Hi. Did you leave the diaper changing supplies in the playroom?
J: Maybe? Whyyyy? What happened?
M: I thought they were just playing nicely. They got into the diaper cream. They’ve smeared it all over each other and their teddy bears, and it’s in the carpet.
J: (Speechless. Heart sinking) Oh no. I’m so sorry.
M: Just get home and we’ll deal with it
I got home, threw a frozen pizza in the oven and handed supplies over to Michael who was literally jogging from the garage to the kids’ room to get things done. I fed the kids dinner and fed Michael bites of pizza as he passed through the kitchen.
I realized I could only be mad at myself, as Emmy and Aiden were only reenacting being cared for. I spent several hours rescuing the stuffed bears, cleaning carpet, and being thankful it was diaper cream, and not poop.
One day in September, I was in the kitchen with Kayla, who was washing dishes. I heard her quietly ask, “Sorry to interrupt. Can you get me a band-aid?” I look up and see blood in the sink—she had dropped a knife on her thumb! Before running upstairs to grab the first aid kit, I looked at it and decided I wasn’t sure a band aid was going to be enough. I texted a photo to Justin Houseman, an ER doctor friend and husband to Kacy (of the yard work generosity). I asked him if it looked bad enough to warrant medical attention (note: I had been told this was okay to do). He confirmed it did, and OFFERED TO COME OVER TO TAKE CARE OF IT! Justin was here 30 minutes later, fixing a freaked out Kayla right up with a butterfly bandage and the calm of someone who has seen much worse. After meeting Amy, Jeff, Ellice, Kacy, and Justin, Kayla has decided that Michael and I have amazing people in our lives, and we whole-heartedly agree.
Jeff Boone and Ellice Lee came to visit us in late September. (Remember how we introduced them to each other via text during the pandemic, and then they got married 6 months later? It’s in the 2020 letter, if you want to revisit the story.) Ellice and I grabbed lunch at Yesterdog and visited Frederick Meijer Gardens together. We got some quality time at the house, had the Nettis over for dinner one evening, and got to be home base for their visiting of Jeff’s strong connections here in Grand Rapids.
My parents, Paul and Claudia, rented a condo in Grand Rapids for October and November to visit with their kids and friends as newly retired folk. They currently live in San Antonio, TX, but that will be changing soon. They worked with our amazing realtor, Kristine Dozeman (shameless plug for her if you are looking to buy or sell in GR), and found a condo they love. They will close on it in December and move after they sell their home in Texas. They gave us a couch for our playroom (so they had a comfy place to sit with the kids), and babysat several times. While they were here, Emmy and Aiden got to see their Nana and Papa nearly weekly. Papa would always act so surprised when they did their loudest blender noises for him after he suggested they be really quiet.
The photos on our Christmas card were obviously professionally done. We are honestly very impressed with ourselves that we were able to pull ourselves together to look so cute. Thanks to my parents for the gift of the experience, to Kayla for coming with us on a Saturday to help wrangle stuff and children, and to Larabar for making the snack that brought a very cranky, very hangry Aiden back to life 25 minutes into the 60 minute session.
We took Emmy and Aiden trick-or-treating this Halloween. No costumes, just pumpkin themed shirts, but we didn’t receive any complaints. After I sent a text message to our street group chat about the timing of our outing, we had 2 families stop by our house to reverse trick-or-treat. What is reverse trick-or-treating, you ask? It’s when people bring candy to you because they won’t be home during the door-knocking interval, but they care about your kids. How heart-warming is this neighborhood?
Amy came back in November to cement the label of “Amy’s Room” on our third bedroom in the hearts and minds of our toddlers. We had her for a long weekend. Her visit coincided with my sister, Sarah’s, murder mystery birthday party. Amy and I received character assignments and dressed our parts. Super fun! Amy planned the timing of her visit to overlap with my folks, since they have a lot of affection for each other. We had dinner at our place and enjoyed catching up.
Melissa and Jason Childers came from Houston, TX to see us the weekend after Amy. They got to enjoy the last bit of fall weather. Neither of them had ever seen Lake Michigan, so I took them to Tunnel Park in Holland, MI for the dramatic reveal. The look on Melissa’s face was priceless—shock, wonder, and “but that looks like the ocean!” Jason and Michael got some guy time on Saturday, and Melissa and I had girl time on Sunday. Melissa and I celebrate our friendiversary, which happened to be that weekend—7 years! My parents came over one evening, so that we could get some time as the four of us. We went to a unique grocery store, Horrocks, which had live “music.” It was so loud and so bad! Michael described it as, “a freight train of musical instruments derailed.” We made a memory. At least we picked up some awesome local snacks, pear cider, and cherry wine to redeem the outing.
Thanksgiving was originally going to be the whole Schulte clan. My parents left Michigan early to get their Texas house on the market, so they were out. Then, the day before we were going to gather, our twins spiked some fevers. One of my sisters was sick, and my nephew can’t afford to miss any more school, so the whole thing ended up canceled—but not before I roasted an 18 pound turkey for the event. We have some good turkey leftover recipes if you ever need them. I was really bummed it didn’t work out, and we hoping Christmas has everyone healthy.
It’s the countdown to Christmas and we are looking forward to seeing dear friends and family. We plan to host the Schulte sibs on the 22nd. I will get together with Priscilla Liebenthal on the 23rd, since she’ll be in Michigan from Rhode Island. And we hope to have an epic toddler dance party with Kim, Josiah, and Sam Clemence on Christmas Eve.
We wish you a cozy and warm holiday season. As we celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas, we are holding on to the hope of Immanuel—God with us. We may struggle to show the same grace to the world that we have been shown—amazing and unending, with all the pain and injustice around us. It makes us wonder at the love that subverts power and that
Previous Years’ Entries:
2016: 2016 Was Insane
2017: What a Year
2018: Never got around to writing this one
2019: Hey We Live Here
2020: Blursday
2021: Twenty Twenty Two Point Oh No
2022: Twinsanity
2023: A Moving Experience