abc family

Christmas Continues

Happy Seventh Day of Christmas!

We had a whirlwind of a week last week, with my parents and four unmarried siblings in town for seven nights, and a wonderful Christmas.

I know I am getting older because by far the most exciting part about holidays for me is getting our family together.  I took it SO for granted when I was sixteen (and really just wanted all my pesky siblings to *leave me alone*) but now that I am twenty-six and all my siblings and my parents and I are only in the same place a couple times a year if we're lucky, I really treasure that time.  Having all of us together was the best part of the week.

Also I got totally spoiled having so many people around to help out with Camilla.  Yesterday by the time Bryan got home from work I was feeling noticeably tired and stretched, and couldn't figure out why... until I realized that it was the first day in ten days that I'd been solely responsible for Camilla's needs.  Her grandparents and aunts and uncles read to her, and got her snacks, and played with her.  I hardly had to lift a finger the whole time they were here.

So having them around was definitely the best part of the week, but a very close second was the fact that it was Camilla's first Christmas where she understood what was going on. 

She loved the rituals of Advent from the beginning, and would have had us reading her the verses from the Advent calendar non-stop if we'd let her.  She was also totally pumped every time she saw "pretty lights" from her car seat, so much so that we took several evening drives around town before Christmas so Camilla could enjoy all the lights.  You can imagine how excited she was when we put up our own Christmas tree and had pretty lights right there in our living room!

We don't do Santa, but we talked about Christmas ahead of time and what the family would celebration would look like, how people get each other presents and we get to go to Mass and have a special breakfast (with cinnamon rolls, which she loves).  Camilla got to help with some present wrapping and other preparations.  By the time the 25th rolled around, she was pretty pumped, enough so that when she woke up at 7:00 that morning and Bryan asked her if she knew what day it is, she did a little hop and said, "It's Christmas!"  And that was before we even took her into the living room to see all the presents under the tree.

I was proud of Camilla and Daniel because it was hours between when they first saw all the Christmas presents and when we started opening them (family tradition - we always open stockings, say prayers, have breakfast, and go to Mass before present-opening time) and they were incredibly patient about it.  Yes, Billa was a little more full-of-beans than usual at Mass, but it was extra-long (1 hr 40 mins instead of the normal 1 hr 10 mins) and she's two, so I'll take it.

And she LOVED her presents.  Every time there was a new one for her it was like she couldn't believe her good luck.  "You mean I already have a fish puzzle AND new coloring books, and now there is something else?  This is the best day ever!"

I adore the young-child innocence which embraces and enjoys gifts with such abandon and enthusiasm, and makes no distinction between the $1 and the $50 presents.  To Camilla it was all unexpected, all free, all absolutely delightful.

There's a useful metaphor for life in there somewhere; I'm sure of it.

I was proud this year because I had managed to get Bryan a GPS, a gadget he's been coveting for a while now, and I was so sure that I would beat him in the present race.

Okay, that doesn't sound quite right.  I know it's not a competition, and I really appreciate my darling husband's generosity.  Still, you can imagine how I've felt in the past, when I've stuck within our Christmas budget and managed to get him a fairly nice assortment of books, iTunes gift cards, DVDs, and the like... and he's presented me with: a new Macbook.

Well, of course I felt really, REALLY excited to have a new Macbook.  But also I felt sorta bad to have given my husband small token gifts while he gave me a shiny beautiful new piece of expensive technology.

The reason this can happen is because, although our finances are shared and we don't spend money outside the budget without consulting each other, Bryan keeps track of all the income and expenses for our household.  And he clearly considers gift occasions to be an excuse for ignoring that whole "don't spend un-budgeted money without consulting each other" rule, and time and again he manages to finagle the budget so that he can get me something that is WAY nicer than anything I can afford to get for him.

But this year I had some special money and I bought the GPS and some other things I knew Bryan wanted and I was so sure that this would be My Year.  I knew the state of our finances, see, and that state was: Perfectly Healthy, But Definitely Without Room for Large-ish Extra Purchases.

I don't know why I am so clueless.  I should have learned my lesson by now, that lesson being that when Gifts and/or Surprises are at stake, my dear husband will always Find a Way.  Which he did this Christmas, with an unexpected windfall that he very purposefully did not tell me about.

The result of all this is that on Christmas morning I gave him a GPS and he gave me an iPod touch.

And he wins again.

But I am not unhappy about this, for two reasons:
1) I have finally figured out that I am married to a man who is made happier by giving than by receiving, and that the most gracious thing I can do is to allow him that happiness, and to show lots of real appreciation for the thoughtful and generous things he does for me.
2) An iPod touch is a really awesome thing to own.

As I told Bryan last night, this is the gadget that I didn't realize how much I wanted.  It is not only pretty and shiny, it is also endlessly useful and amusing.  I am especially psyched to have it when Billa's Baby Brother (as he's known 'round these parts) makes his appearance somewhere between 4 and 8 weeks from now.  I have distinct memories of trying to balance my laptop on one knee so I could read blogs and email while Camilla nursed, and this time I will not have to do that - I can just surf one-handed on my little mini-computer.  It's perfect.

Incidentally, I remember when my dad used to bring this enormous heavy box home from the office that was a new-fangled (for the mid-80s) *portable computer*!  My sister and I would entertain ourselves by playing Paint on its grainy black-and-white screen.

Camilla uses my iPod to draw pictures, in color, by dragging her fingertip on a screen that is sensitive to her touches and also to the angle at which she holds it, on a computer the size of a few credit cards stacked together.

My mind boggles at the thought of what technology will look like by the time she is my age.

...and I'm officially rambling.  Quick!  Here's a cute picture to distract you from that fact!

May the rest of your Christmases be as delightful as the first part of ours has been!

Belly

I hope that our second child never decides to compare his parents' love for him and for his sister by the relative thoroughness with which my pregnancies with them were recorded.  Because I will not know what to tell him.

This pregnancy has felt so different all the way through from my pregnancy with Camilla.  I had my first ultrasound with her at 4w6d because I was bleeding so heavily that they wanted to check to see if I'd miscarried.  With this baby I didn't even realize I was pregnant until I was about 7 weeks along.

Because of the early ultrasound and because I'd been paying attention to my cycles so carefully, I knew Camilla's due date was exactly correct.  This baby, on the other hand, will hit forty-weeks gestation somewhere between February 2nd (the midwives' official due date based on the very fuzzy ultrasound they took near the end of the first trimester) and February 15th-ish, with my own guess being the 10th.  Mentally, I'm going with the 10th as my due date, which means my charts say I am 33 weeks pregnant today but I'm thinking I am 32 weeks pregnant tomorrow.

But the really unconscionable thing is that I have made it to 32 weeks pregnant without taking a single belly shot.

Well, almost to 32 weeks.  I finally got around to getting some this weekend.

And since my hand is sort of obscuring the shot there and I also turned at a weird angle, here's a picture I took in the bathroom mirror (seriously, how do people get good at taking pregnancy photos of themselves? I am completely hopeless with a camera and a mirror) that gives you a fuzzy but better-angled shot of how I look right now.

For the sake of comparison, here's a picture of me at 32 weeks pregnant with Camilla:

...and I'd been going to make a derogatory comment about my hair in those first two photos, because it is desperately in need of a cut right now, but never mind.  Let us not even talk about what my hair looked like two years ago.

I think I'm starting my nest-y phase a little earlier this time than last time.  When we put up the Christmas tree and decorations on Saturday I kept having this compulsion to clean different areas before we decorated them.  It made the decorating take way longer (10 hours from start to finish!) but on the other hand the house looks really good now.

(You can read my take on the process of actually obtaining a Christmas tree over here.)

All the extra exertion meant I had to lie down and drink lots of water yesterday because I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions at more than the rate the midwife said was okay (four per hour) but they slowed way down and I think I might have had, like, eight total today, so we're back on track on that front.

Also there is almost always a foot or an elbow or some other body part poking into my ribs, but I don't mind.  It's all very much worth it.

Time to go eat grapefruit for dessert.  I don't care if it does give me extra heartburn, because I love that stuff.

Let's Pretend This Conversation is Ongoing...

So.  The reason life was so horrible in the days leading up to Thanksgiving was that Bryan was working on a big project at work and I was basically single-parenting it for days on end.  PLUS on Tuesday night - which was the day before Bryan's project was due and thus the night during which he stayed at work until 3:30am, came home and slept for an hour, then showered and got on a plane to go deliver the project in DC - I came down with a stomach bug.  Which meant that on the day before Thanksgiving I was so sick I couldn't keep food down at all for almost twenty-four hours, AND Bryan was in an entirely different part of the country, meaning that my weak and dehydrated self also had to pack up our stuff and get Camilla and me to my parents' house all on my own.  It was pretty awful.

But then Bryan arrived safely back from DC and made it to our parents' town by very late Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning I was feeling way better and could actually eat, and we were all together as a family for the four whole days of the Thanksgiving weekend and it was quite a good vacation after all.  Thanksgiving itself, that is.  The part leading up to it was awful to the point that I'd like to never relive it again, thank you very much.

And I'm not sure why I wrote that all down, except perhaps as a reminder to myself not to be such a baby about little things like heartburn or whatever.  Also to remind me to be sympathetic and pray for all the single parents out there.  (It really blows my mind.  HOW do they do it?)

We are trying to keep Advent better this year so I haven't played a single note of Christmas music in our house (not one, really, and actually it's sort of great because I'm finding Advent music I like) and we haven't put up any Christmas decorations yet either.  I thought about waiting until the weekend of the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the 20th and 21st, but that is the weekend that my sisters and my parents will be arriving to stay with us over Christmas (my brothers are staying with my sister and BIL) and I knew I'd be incredibly stressed if I left the decorating until then.  So we are getting our tree tomorrow and putting up all the Christmas stuff this weekend, and I'm so excited.  I love Christmas decorations.

Plus this year Billa is obsessed with "pretty lights" and I know she is going to be thrilled by our tree and everything.  She gets a pretty big kick out of the candles on the Advent wreath, for heaven's sake.

I am really loving having a child who is old enough to understand and get excited about things.  Last Saturday we celebrated St. Nicholas Day, which wasn't a tradition in our family growing up, but was in my BIL's and we've decided to continue it.  "St. Nicholas" brought Camilla some candy and a little ball that lights up when you bounce it and a mini magnetic doodle pad, and the amount of excitement with which she reacted to this makes me wonder if she might actually start hyperventilating on Christmas morning. 

I'll let you know how tree-getting goes.

Easing Back In

Since I did NaBloPoMo last year, I decided to mix things up a bit by basically ignoring my blog in November this year.  I think I was pretty successful.

I'm going to give my frustrated-perfectionist self a break by easing back into this whole blogging thing with a couple of pictures.  Then next time I'm thinking about posting, I'll be like, "Well, your last post was just some photos!  Anything is better than that!" and I'll be much more motivated to write what I really want to write instead of feeling I need to beat my last post.

(Yes, my bizarro brain really works that way.)

Thanksgiving weekend was good, which was a relief after the horribleness that led up to it.  More about that later if I feel like depressing you.

At one point over the holiday weekend my father-in-law actually told his granddaughter, "You can do anything you want here at Grandma and Grandpa's house!"

She took him up on it by rolling up a rug.

She may have a future in the rug-rolling business, assuming there is such a thing.  She did surprisingly well for a 26-pound person.

And of course, the only thing funnier than what happens when you tell two-year-olds they can do whatever they want is what happens when you tell them to smile.

I hope your Advent is off to a blessed and joyful start!  Read about how I'm approaching it this year over at Faith and Family Live!