Santa Secrets

I’m more excited about Christmas this year than I have been the past couple of years.  It’s hard not to be excited when a 2 1/2-year-old is running around like a tiny madman, acting as though the lights on the Christmas tree are the most incredible thing ever.

Even more exciting, he’s old enough to get that Santa will bring him a special present this year if he behaves well, which means we get to see that look on his face when he comes into the living room to find out just what he got.  It’s an absolutely incredible feeling.  It makes my heart melt.

Best of all, he’s young enough not to be asking for massively expensive presents.  He enjoys the unwrapping almost as much as anything else, and the smallest things sometimes make him act as though he just received a million dollars.  So when he comes in to find his “good Spiderman present” under the tree, it doesn’t have to be something specific or complicated.  It can be as simple as a lawn chair with Spiderman on it or a Spiderman hula hoop or one of those inflatable bop-it bags, and he’s going to love it.

No matter what we do, I know that with time, that will fade.  He’ll develop much stronger opinions about what he likes and dislikes, and he’ll learn how to express those likes and dislikes more easily and completely.  He’ll start wondering if it’s cool to let his excitement show.  And then gift-giving will get harder.

Until then, though, I plan on thoroughly enjoying every moment of Christmas morning and all these evenings when he starts asking about our Christmas lights as soon as I pick him up from day orphanage, I mean day care.

Coming Down From the Christmas Rush

So, it’s been a while since I’ve updated.  I’d love to blame that on the fact that, since Thanksgiving, we’ve been rushing around in and out of town almost every weekend, but, honestly?  It’s just been laziness.  We have been incredibly busy this year, however, and our (multiple celebrations of) Christmas helped to wind things down and wrap it all up.

Or unwrap it, if the Munchkin had anything to say about it.  Last year, he couldn’t have cared less about presents and lights and trees.  This year?  That all went out the window.  He loved tearing into the wrapping paper to get to whatever was hiding underneath.  Of course, if what was underneath had the temerity to be clothing, he was done and on to the next one.  We made sure he thanked everyone, but it was hard to keep his attention on cute shirts and jeans when he could be playing with Elmo or his new tricycle.

My two favorite memories of the big day?  Him coming around the corner of the couch to see what Santa brought him and yelling out “Bicycle!”  And then later, throwing himself through his new play tunnel, only to come out the other side to look up at Southern Honey and yell happily, “Hi, Daddy!”  It was just so cute that even thinking about it now makes me grin.

His biggest obsession of the holiday season was something I hadn’t anticipated: He has become absolutely passionate about Christmas lights, which he calls “tree lights.”  Whether they’re on Christmas trees, on houses, on bushes, they’re all “tree lights,” and he adores them.  Even now, almost a month after Christmas Day, he still talks about them as we’re driving to daycare in the morning and home in the evening.  Fortunately, what he understands is amazing, and he now talks about how “tree lights all gone.”

And in terms of what he understands — and what he says — he amazes me constantly.  Last night he was busting out six word sentences in the car on the way home.  He’s my little chatterbox, just going a thousand miles a minute.  He has some favorites he recycles, as though he’s constantly reminding himself of fun things he’s done, but then he comes out with these gems out of nowhere that show me that he understands more than I frequently think he does.  It’s a good reminder not to let any unfortunate four-letter-words slip while he’s around.  😛

Busy Weekend and Party Planning

I hear that there are times when people step back, slow down, and maybe even take time to smell the roses.  We, unfortunately, are not the type of people who build those times into our lives.  Except for sometimes, when they’re usually overtaken by events.

Such as this past weekend: My goal was to handle my shopping and cooking for the next month of cooking.  Then a nasty stomach virus reared its head, and we ended up spending six hours at the ER with the Munchkin.  All’s well that ends well, as we came out with a prescription for Zofran and a happier baby, but pretty much no cooking got done, and much sleep was missed.

There’s no time to catch up on it, either, as I’m hopefully having my wisdom teeth yanked out on Friday, and the next weekend is the Munchkin’s birthday party.  I’ve got a lot of work to do for that: finish the menu, get some music together, make sure everyone who wants to come knows the specifics, decide whether to bake a cake or cupcakes and get all the appropriate equipment, and clean the house in case the weather is too bad to have it at the park.

This whole idea of kids’ birthday parties is new to me.  Most of the time for birthdays, we just get together, maybe have dinner or go bowling, and call it a day.  There’s no big hullabaloo over that first bite of cake or chuckling over how cute we are playing with wrapping paper or something.  And we all entertain ourselves talking.  Now I’ll be finding ways to entertain alien beings, I mean small children.  😛

This year is a little bit easier, in no small part because there won’t be very many small children there.  We’re going old-school: Fraggle Rock.  So I’m thinking I’ll set it up for people to be welcome to play “Pin the Tail on the Fraggle” if they want to, have music from the show playing, and hopefully decorate the cake/cupcakes in a Fraggle-friendly manner (radishes shouldn’t be too hard, right?).  I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’m not insane and even half of this gets done.  We’ll see.

On the road

To recovery, I hope, now that we’re finished with our mini-road trip to finish up our final Christmas celebrations.  If there’s anything I don’t recommend, it’s trying to travel with a baby suffering from diarrhea.  It’s just a bad idea.  Thankfully, the Munchkin was already drying up some before we left, so we didn’t get hosed while on the road.

What he wasn’t interested in doing was sleeping overnight.  Although he hasn’t been doing that for almost two weeks now, so it wasn’t really anything new.  Turned out he was teething in addition to nursing an ear infection, so everything just hurt, poor guy!  He’s still working on cutting that tooth, but the ear infection is on its way to being taken care of, and the diarrhea is slowly drying up (he had it to start with and the main side effect of his ear infection antibiotics is… diarrhea *headdesk*).  I suspect that by this weekend, we might all be sleeping through the night.

Dear God, I hope so.

Typhoid Munchkin?

Twice in the past few weeks I’ve gotten hit by a nasty stomach bug.  It’s been miserable.  Absolutely miserable.  Not to mention taking up sick leave I’d have far rather saved for the times when he gets sick and needs to stay home.  

Since the Munchkin is in daycare, I thought he might be responsible, carrying his germs back and forth, doling them out to us at home like candy and generally being a miniature Typhoid Baby.  However, after hearing that my brother got sick, too, and thinking back to last weekend when we were together, I realized I was blaming the wrong person entirely.  This time, at least.  This time, our cousin’s son, who came to the big family Christmas gathering sick, is the likely culprit (poor little guy).

Also, being sick around Christmas sucks.

Christmastime for babies

Babies give approximately zero shits about Christmas.  Really.  They’re like, “Okay, so, there’s stuff and fifty million random relatives I’ve probably never met pinching my cheeks and food I can’t eat yet and people wanting me to stay up way past my bedtime even when I’m cranky as hell.  Why is this so cool again?”

That was pretty much the Munchkin’s reaction to our first Christmas celebrations this weekend.  He just wanted to get down on the floor and play, while everyone else wanted to cuddle him and see him do cute things or unwrap presents.  We had some rather frustrated moments as a result yesterday.  Although maybe it was just his complete disinterest in the shiny boxes or bags — he ignored them completely!

On the bright side, he has some really fun new toys.  And he got to spend lots of time with my dad and the extended family on that side.  Some of my cousins hadn’t met him since he was born, which was entertaining.  We had a lot of fun in between bouts of “ohmigod, give me a NAP!” but I definitely consider myself educated about what it means to have Christmas with a baby.

Christmas Cheer

It’s that time of year: The Christmas gifts have started to arrive, and I can’t wait to open the boxes to see which presents for the Munchkin have shown up on my doorstep!

Today it appears to be a giant box from ToysRUs, which should include some blocks, a ball, and something else I’ve blanked on right now.  Most importantly, it’s a giant box that will be perfect for him to play with and in.  *grins*

There may also be Christmas cards in the mailbox, but it’s dark and cold, and I’m not going outside.  They’ll just have to wait until tomorrow.  😛