life with a new baby
Posts tagged christmas
Time Keeps on Slipping
Dec 30th
Well, Paul’s nice two-week Christmas vacation is slowly coming to an end. Time is quickly slipping away, but we have really enjoyed this time together… so much so that we have been spending pretty much every waking moment together.
And I love it!
Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave me with much time for blogging. I know, I’ve not been posting as frequently as I would like. Heck, I haven’t even had time to do my Yoga, which sucks because I can feel the Christmas Pounds piling on slowly… like I’m walking in mud and each step is a little harder to take because mud keeps caking on my shoe.
Only, IT’S NOT MUD I’m actually talking about.
Doing Yoga is fun, though. I have this DVD that came with the Yoga mat Paul bought me. It’s a mixture of Yoga and Pilates… and let me tell you, if you are out of shape like me, it’s HARD! I mean, there are all these crazy poses I’m trying to figure out. Stuff that I can’t even pronounce. But dang it, Internet, I am bound and determined to lose this weight. So I will do as many Cobras and Downward Dogs as it takes.
Even though I am quite sure I look more a spastic mouse in a blender than someone doing Yoga.
So as soon as the holidays roll over, I’m going to resume my Yoga and hopefully, and I am saying this with all my fingers and toes crossed, I will see results soon.
Nathan’s First Christmas Part I
Dec 27th
So this story will be told in two parts. The first part covers what happened right before we showed
Nathan how to open the presents. The second part covers him actually opening his presents and taking part in his very first Christmas.
We took a ton of pictures of him sitting in front of the tree (which, by the way, thanks to our cats
with their Go-Go-Gadget-Arms (click here to read the catnip story), we couldn’t have any ornaments dangling on the lower branches.
When we got up Christmas morning, I put Nathan in a Christmas-themed onesie and plopped him down in front of the tree for some pictures. He wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about and his boredom became quite obvious. He kept looking at me like I was a total goon for sitting him in front of a tree with no ornaments on the bottom part.
So I did what any good mother would do to brighten her child’s day.
I HANDED HIM THE REMOTE.
You know, the remote that is coated with germs. The remote that is off-limits to little baby teeth and slobbery fingers that go straight to baby’s mouth. Of course, I sanitized it before handing it over because I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF.
At first, Nathan was a little confused as to why I handed him this Mysterious Gadget.
He slowly ran his little hands over the remote, turning it over and over in his hands. At first, he wasn’t quite sure why I handed him something that was usually off limits.
Then, once he realized that I had handed him the remote on purpose and he could play with it all he wanted, he became a happy Nathan.
So happy, in fact, that he couldn’t stop laughing.
To him, holding the remote was WAY COOLER than opening those presents. Who cares about the Ultimate Coolness residing under all that colorful wrapping paper? To him, nothing could possibly compare to playing with the remote.
In fact, he was so excited that he somehow managed to fling the remote out of his death grip. He strained like there was no tomorrow in an effort to retrieve this new-found awesomeness.
Got it!
He raised the remote triumphantly in front of his face, looking as happy as a clam with his trophy back in his hands. I imagined if he could speak, he would be all like, Look Mom! All by myself!
He wasn’t interested in his presents and wanted to play only with the remote, but we couldn’t let that happen. It was his first Christmas and I was ARMED WITH A CAMERA. I was going to take pictures! Of shredded wrapping paper! And big, toothy grins!
I started making funny faces and he dropped the remote into his lap, temporarily forgetting about it as I started hauling the colorful presents out from under the tree.
He decided that unwrapping presents is way cooler than playing with the remote after all!
The Sneezing Marathon
Nov 30th
This year, it took us three days to get the Christmas tree decorated and all our Christmas decorations laid out.
Last year, when I was six months pregnant, it took six hours. This year, we have a nine-month old little guy who insists on having our undivided attention. That means that nothing is worthy of stealing Nathan’s thunder.
Christmas tree included.
We started putting the tree up on Thanksgiving evening. Paul hauled the Christmas tree and all the decorations in from the shed. We started pulling out the limbs for assembly when we noticed something peculiar.
Something was awry with the limbs of our Christmas tree.
For once, it had nothing to do with baby poop. But it was something else that was equally disturbing.
Something that had left clumps of insulation throughout a handful of limbs.
A MOUSE NEST.
Yes, a mouse had built a little home for itself in the bowels of our Christmas tree limbs.
Expensive Christmas tree limbs. This is the kind of tree you can’t just throw away because of some mouse. Not that our tree is some grand, magnificent sight… but for three people living off of one income, it’s magnificent enough to not just throw away.
Fortunately, the little home was abandoned. There was no mouse to be seen. Just tufts of insulation embedded in the limbs of the tree, a grim reminder of the MOUSE THAT ONCE WAS. The mouse that lived (and I’m sure died) in our shed.
Remnants of a happy life once lived.
So we spent the entire Thanksgiving evening with bottles of Lysol and paper towels, sanitizing the shit out of each and every Christmas tree limb, peeling off wisps of mouse nest from in between the fake plastic pine needles.
But then there is my allergies. Apparently, I am allergic to Fake Christmas Tree Dust and Abandoned Mouse Houses and I had a pretty severe allergy attack. My rapid-fire sneezing has been non-stop since Thanksgiving. Every time I walk into the living room, my eyes start to swell, my nose starts itching, and my chest starts that familiar I’m-going-to-suffocate-you burn.
It feels like my body is TRYING TO KILL ME.
Because apparently, when we were hauling fake plastic Christmas tree limbs out from their temporary coffin, we let loose a cloud of Danger Dust. The kind of dust that accumulates on things outside, even things that are in a shed… a dust composed primarily of leaves, pollen, and mouse-house allergens.
So I’ve resigned myself to deep cleaning the entire house. The dust has gotta go.
I banish it.
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem as if Nathan has my allergies. Thankfully. The kid isn’t even phased. He likes looking at the twinkling lights on the tree, reaching out for the ornaments, and laughing at Mommy’s multiple sneeze marathons.
Recent Comments
Yes! A personal maid would be perfect! Oh, that would free up SO much of my time!!
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