A Fine Family: Merry Christmas to all...except for us!

When was the last time I've blogged? A month? Maybe more? I have never felt so busy. Nothing has changed, but I swear I never sit down these days until I get in bed. The last few weeks I had so many errands, many of them had to do with the holidays. I don't ever remember feeling this holiday stress before-but I was definitely shopping and wrapping and baking and mailing and needing to go back to the store for one more thing I forgot every day. It was stressful! In a fun exciting way I guess but still, no time for sitting still for more than a minute so therefore no blogging. And is it just me or does packing lunches and unpacking backbacks take up the majority of the night? I swear I come in every day after picking them up with 10 times the amount than I send them with. It takes multiple trips to the car just to get them in the house with all of the stuff. I love that Max can write his name now but, I get it, we don't need any more construction paper with MAX written on it. And speaking of my genius child, he knows 12 sight words (more than many of my first graders know) and he is going to kindergarten in the fall for sure when I always thought we might hold him back since he has a late birthday. Remind me why I was ever worried about him?

(loving his Max shirt from Aunt Eileen and Uncle Richard!)

Hanukkah went pretty well for the first few nights. Max got everything he wanted (well, besides a real phone) but these walkie talkies came close

This was the first year he asked for things and knew they were coming and really got the whole routine. This is a normal thing for a 4 year old to want right?

And he did get his wish!! A real thermostat (AKA meat thermometer). It does the trick in his mind and a bonus is that it sticks to the refrigerator. He also pointed out to me that it has his name on it (Min/Max) and I didn't even realize. I
knew we named him Max for a reason.

Mallory enjoyed her gifts this year too and she finally gets it that its not a birthday party when we light the candles. The first few nights she sang happy birthday as soon as they were lit. Now she points at the menorah says "norah! norah!" and then runs into the living room and says "presents"! She's got it.

She got many Dora themed presents this year.

She is finally "getting" alot of things that I never thought she'd get, like colors and body parts and all of those things I've been testing since she turned 1. She just takes her good old time but then once she has it, she has it. She is also amazing with naming the letters and numbers. It's kind of a party trick at this point-I write them on the magnedoodle, she shouts them out and anyone in the room watches in awe. :)Its pretty impressive that she can completely differentiate between say an S and a 5 or a G and a 6 if I do say so myself.

So the week continued with a night with my family (Gigi, Poppop, Uncle Brian and Aunt Missy), a night with Uncle Josh and a night with Grandma and Grandpa. We saw the lights in Hamden on Christmas Eve.

We had our Chinese food and I was all ready to settle into to a week long break with the kids. Maybe some trips to one of the bounce places, maybe some play dates, some baking, some playground trips. Nope. This is where the except for us comes in.

I wake up on Sunday morning, Christmas day, Mark took the kids downstairs so I could have an extra hour or so in bed. A few minutes later, Max is in my bed saying his stomach hurt. He's shaking and kind of moaning. I let him lay there for a minute and before I know it hes getting up, getting off the bed and I'm rushing him to the bathroom because I know whats coming. But we didn't make it and you can use your imagination to picture the rest of the morning and the whole day ahead. It included alot of laundry. Merry Christmas!

So we really haven't recovered from that and I think we all have some form of a little bug although Max has it the worst. It has turned into a cough and fever and he's just miserable. The past few days have been spent in doors and while I do love that Max is extra cuddly and kind of quiet, I would like to be able to go do something while I am on break. But I am being productive and today I have already gotten rid of all of our baby bottles and my pumping supplies (yeah that took me a while to say goodbye to that stuff and they were just sitting in my kitchen cabinet unused for over a year and a half). I am in the process of doing the annual switch over of toys and leaving the new ones in our main living room/play area, moving the older ones to the basement and throwing away every little tzatchke/happy meal toy/gumball machine prize/goody bag toy that we have accumulated in the past year. It feels good. I am about half way through and should be very organize (or somewhat more organized than this morning) by the end of the day.

Something else exciting is that my brother and sister in law got me this:

I'm definitely a cake ball girl but i have yet to try the actual cake pops and definitely have never decorated mine more than a few splatterings of white chocolate over dark chocolate. I really want to go to Michaels and get all the decorating supplies so I can make some of these for new years but I am not shlepping both kids there especially when one of them is sick. Which brings me to my next topic.

I love Kelle Hampton and I admire her and read her blog every day. She is amazing. But I do not understand how everything just works out. I mean fine, she has had many unexpected things happen to her in her life and she makes the best of them. But just the daily stuff that she does with her kids and the parties and play dates and ballets and crafts and Christmas mornings and all the other stuff. It just works out every single time. Everyone has fun, everyone looks good, noone is jumping out of the shopping cart or having a tantrum in the middle of target. I can't even GET to the store to get the craft supplies and the baking stuff and whatever else without some kind of catastrophe happening. There was a very narrow window of time where I could take both kids out by myself and things were ok. I think it was around when Max had just turned 3 and Mallory was 1. It lasted about 6 months. Then it all went downhill and now I can't leave the house again. I went to Target yesterday with both of them (to exchange the first "thermostat" that broke after Max dropped it one time) I RAN to the "thermostat" section, grabbed a new one, ran through a few other isles to get milk, eggs and juice boxes, ran to the customer service line to do the exchange and then hurried to the regular line to buy the rest of my stuff and we JUST made it in time for Mallory to have a melt down because she wanted to climb out of the cart onto the conveyor belt. And that was WITH a bag of goldfish, 2 candy canes, an ipad, an iphone, and a few lollipops. So ok, I guess I can make through Target but it takes alot of effort and we have to run. Kelle can just go do whatever she wants with her girls-take them to tea parties, any store, the beach, a party, the ballet, it just works. She can just like peruse the isles at Michael's and get whatever she needs and it's fine. I on the other hand, have been wanting to go get my candy sticks and sprinkles and candy melts for my cake pops since Friday and can't get there and I wake up on Christmas morning to a boy throwing up in my bed! It's a good thing we don't celebrate Christmas because that day was anything but merry and this "break" has been anything but that so far. Here's to a better end of the week! And a look back and our Hanukkah's through the years...

Max's first: