All things Christmas

So our Christmas festivities went much better than I could have imagined. Way better than the horror I imagined in my previous post. Bodie was very well behaved in Chruch. Although he spent most of his time sitting with Grandpa, which I think would make any kid behave well. I didn't even have to pull any distractions out of the bag until mass was more than half over. And mass was only about an hour and a half. I think I had confused Christmas Eve with Easter Vigil, which is very long. I did try to feed Bodie before we went but he really wouldn't eat. He more than made up for that later, putting away pizza, bread sticks, spaghetti, cookies, and some candy at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Bodie was very much into opening gifts this year. With each package he unwrapped he exclaimed, "what's that." Although the way it came out sounded much more like "Wuz up" so I just cracked up every time he said it. As always, my parents were very generous with the gifts they gave, and we had fun spending time with everyone.

Today we opened the gifts we received from Curt's family and the ones the boys received from us. Curt and I didn't exchange. Instead, he gets to go to 2 golf tournaments next year and I bought myself a new camera and I'll also get a new purse and pajamas, as soon as I can find ones I like.

Grandma bought each grandchild a Santa hat. Unfortunately she couldn't figure out how to get them on so there is no photo of all the kids wearing them, as she'd imagined. Curt came to the rescue and put Bodie's on, and he wasn't taking it off.



We bought Bodie a football outfit (helmet, shoulder pads, pants and jersey). He wore the helmet but didn't want anything to do with the shoulder pads. Thankfully Barrett had no opinions on the situation.

A Christmas-time Vent

Before there were any grandchildren in our family, we typically would get together for Christmas Eve mass and head to my parent's house for pizza and presents. Since the kids have come along, my brother and his wife have been attending their home Church's service and then coming down afterwards. Last year we went to mass on Christmas day, and I had figured that would be our routine for the next several years, at least until the boys are old enough to sit through a longer mass. Well this year my brother and his family decided to come down for Christmas Eve mass. Since they are not even Catholic, and are coming to mass at a Catholic Church, we are pretty much expected to go as well. I am soooo not looking forward to this. Do they remember how long the service lasts. That it goes right through dinner time (obviously not a big deal to me but I'm just thinking of the kids). Maybe their 1 and 3 year olds are very mature and can sit for 2 hours. I know my 2 year old cannot. I fully expect someone will be spending at least half the time with him in the back. And then my mom decided to order pizza for dinner tonight. Fine. Except the pizza place closes at 7 so she'll be leaving mass early to get it. Really? How does that even make sense? At least I told her she can take Bodie with her if he is misbehaving. I'm about ready to say we will not be going to church and they all can go themselves. We can just go tomorrow. I guess my strategy will be to feed him a meal before we go (still tough given we don't have our fridge yet) so it will be fish sticks and easy mac. Lots of distractions for mass - books, colors. Maybe we'll make it and I can get past my debbie downer attitude. I'd so been looking forward to the holidays this year, I'm hoping this won't ruin it for me.

**Edited to say: I was going to run off my aggressions on the treadmill, which is now apparently broken. So that's just great...

What is this, a blog?

My blogging has taken a back seat to life over the past few months. Back in October, Curt broke his leg officiating (he had to correct me when I wrote refereeing in our Christmas letter) and I got super busy at work. I won't dwell on all of this, but things were very crazy at our house for a period of time. Thankfully Curt was off his crutches by Thanksgiving and we are slowly returning to normal. Or normal for us anyway. I don't think I've really cleaned our house since before the leg breaking incident. I was able to keep it unembarrassingly tidy until this past weekend. I knew I was off work the next 2 weeks and am focused on organizing and cleaning, so I didn't bother to pick up a thing this weekend. And then my mom came over today. Yikes. I warned her it was messy, but I could still tell she was shocked to walk in. Cleaning is definitely a big focus of my tomorrow. Today was spent finishing the Christmas shopping, wrapping, and assembling a new shelf to hold some toys in the basement. Also we are without a fridge right now because the compressor went out on our old one yesterday. We have a new one that is scheduled to be in on the 24th, but we are unsure when we'll actually get it. We thought we'd borrow my dad's truck and pick it up, but he is working that day. Curt called tonight to see if we could switch to delivery and, after calling several different numbers, someone was supposed to be calling him back. That was several hours ago. We might see about borrowing a friend's truck that day. We really don't want to wait until Friday to pick it up as it is a huge inconvenience to not have a fridge. We've tried keeping some of our goods in the garage and they just end up freezing. Tonight Bodie had what he dubbed "apple juice ice cream" which he was actually very excited about eating. Good thing too, because we could whip that up again tomorrow night for snack.

I guess the point of this post is to say I'll be back blogging with some regularity. Hopefully my posts will be a little bit more focused than this on is :)

Four Months

Barrett had his four month doctor visit on Monday. He is so good at the doctor, really calm and lets the doctor do his exam without fussing. It is a huge contrast to Bodie. Barrett seems to be doing great. He does have a little eczema but we got a script for some ointment that should clear it right up. I guess both of my boys inherited their daddy's sensitive skin.

At four months Barrett's stats are:

Height: 26 inches - 89th percentile

Weight: 15 lbs 12.6 oz - 74th percentile

Head: 16.5 inches - 45th percentile

We will wait another month or so before we begin Barrett on solids. I know Bodie was over 5 months when he started so that is our plan with Barrett also. Of course Curt thinks maybe we should think about starting sooner if Barrett keeps waking up during the night. He had been doing so well sleeping through the night, until the past few weeks. He did sleep through last night so hopefully the trend is returning on its own.

Potty Training... or Lack There Of

We thought this nice, four day weekend would be a good time to gauge Bodie's interest in and readiness for potty training. After 2 days I've decided his interest is about a 5 and his readiness is about a 2 (he can sit on the pot with out falling off, usually). Yesterday morning he asked to wear his underwear (I'm guessing because we had talked it up so much all week). He had it on and we took him to the bathroom about every 15-20 minutes. He went willingly and sat on the toilet fine but would never go. Then we were enjoying a snack and I thought I felt something warm against my leg. Of course I didn't think it would have been Bodie peeing in his pants, but right after the snack we went to the bathroom and he was wet. He hadn't even phased him when he did it. I knew that couldn't be a good sign. He insisted on wearing underwear again so we let him until his nap. He managed to stay dry the rest of the morning, but never did go on the toilet.

Then today we decided to try again. Since Bodie and I were going shopping in the morning we waited until after his nap to bring out the underwear. I'm not sure if I would consider what happened today more of a success or failure but he ended up with 2 accidents and no peeing in the toilet. The only success I can make of it is that he was clearly bothered each time he peed in his pants. That has to be better than Friday when he didn't care at all. I think we are going to wait another month before trying with him again. Maybe by then my fantasies of Bodie waking up one day magically potty trained will come true!

A Thursday evening conversation

Me: Bodie, guess what tomorrow is.

Bodie, excitedly: Tuesday!

Me: Noooo

Bodie: Your Birthday!!

Me: Noooo, it's Friday!!

Bodie, disappointed: Oh, Friday.

Random thought from our trip

• How do you avoid weight gain from your mother-in-laws cooking - vomiting! Not advocating an eating disorder here but Sunday morning was a little rough for me. Thankfully I got it all out of my system before we left for home, but it made the trip home even longer than it was.
• Bodie loves garlic german sausage. He gave up his pseudo-vegetarianism to down this stuff like candy Sunday morning. I wasn't at the table to see it but Curt said it was a crazy display. When we got home Sunday evening we went to my parent's house for dinner and Bodie took 2 bites of his hot dog without us asking. Insane!
• Curt thought it would be great to leave around Bodie's nap time so he'd sleep in the car for part of the drive home. Unfortunately Bodie stuck to his strict no sleeping in the car rule and stayed awake coloring and watching DVDs. Thankfully he is pretty adaptable on no nap and was well behaved considering his lack of sleep.
• Barrett is evidently a chunky baby. We went to visit Curt's aunt on Friday and the first thing out of her mouth was "he's a fatty!". Then when we went back to school yesterday Barrett's teacher commented on how he looked more "filled out". I had to go and buy him size 3 diapers yesterday because he has leaked out with every single poo for the past week. They are labeled to be from 16 pounds and I have a tough time believing that Barrett would weigh that much now, but I don't know why else he'd be leaking out of his diapers so much (we had him in 3 different brands and he leaked out of all of them).
• Barrett was a great traveler - sleeping or staring at himself in the mirror toy for most of the trip. It was a refreshing change from Bodie at that age, when he wouldn't sleep much and would scream a lot.