A Real Activity and Some Short Shots

Yesterday Jacob and I put together a gingerbread house.  My plan was to get one on clearance after Christmas and do it as an activity sometime during our week off.  It took a few days to find one, and then it took until our last day off to do it, but we did it!  And it actually went well!

Jacob's been really into baseball the last few days...can you tell?  He moved right on to baseball before I could even take a picture of him with our finished house!

 Jacob did a really good job putting candy on wherever I squirted icing, and even made suggestions himself on where he wanted to put stuff.  This particular house was a Wonka house, which came with SweeTarts, Bottle Caps, Nerds, and Runts.  We also had some Hershey Kisses, and I bought a clearance candy cane of Rolos to give us a few more options.  Jacob was really into it and seemed to enjoy the project.  And the candy.  Of course.  Here are the views...

Jacob did a lot on this side, including the decorations around the door .  My main contribution  is the "bushes" in the front, made out of Rolos with heart-shaped Runts on top.

Notice my "Christmas lights" along the roof line, made out of Nerds!

I did most of this side, including the Rolo/Hershey Kiss trees (mini peanut butter cups work better than Rolos, but I didn't have any of those)

Jacob added the decorations to the roof on this side and did great!

The house didn't last long, as we finished it up a little before dinner, and dug into the roof as part of dessert.  Oh, well.

In other news...

- It snowed again today, which probably gives us close to two feet on the ground.  I don't even think the forecast called for snow today, but it ended up snowing at least a couple inches thanks to lake effect snow!  I think we already have about half as much snow as we ended up with all last winter, and most of it has come in the last week!  It would have been so nice to be pregnant last winter when it hardly snowed and the snow rarely stayed on the ground for more than a few days.  I can't shovel this year, and I'm afraid of another car accident or slipping on ice and snow when I'm walking outside.  On top of that, we had a week of 80 degree weather in March last year, and that would be awesome this year because it would be lovely to get out and walk the baby in weather like that!  I don't think we'll get a second easy winter in a row, though.

- Today I got a free sample of diapers that I had ordered online.  They were size 1 diapers, and man, they were so small!  Particularly now that I'm so used to Jacob's giant nighttime pull-ups, the tiny little baby diapers look so little.  And these weren't even the newborn size!

- I bought the baby a few outfits this weekend.  I had $10 to spend at JC Penney (thanks to their button promotion over the holidays), and I ended up finding some insanely cute outfits in the baby clearance section, including one that I'm eyeing up as the coming home outfit.  It might be a little big, but I couldn't bring myself to spend $11 on a newborn outfit that he might only fit in for a week or two.  With the free $10, the three outfits only cost $15 total.  At least this baby has a few clothes now!

- I did up a Babies 'R' Us registry for a baby shower that Craig's co-workers are throwing us next week.  The main big ticket item is a new monitor, a video one.  Besides that, I added some diapers, wipes, washcloths, long-sleeved onesies, hangers, diaper disposal bags, sterilization bags, new bottles, and a cuter drying rack, among other things.  It's not much, but I think it filled in some holes pretty nicely.  It's an interesting exercise to go through the registry process this time around.  Way less pressure!

- Jacob is loving his new big boy room.  It's still a bit of a work-in-progress, but he thinks it's so cool!  Wait until his furniture comes in.  I think the bed alone is going to blow his mind!  Of course, many of his animals have migrated with him, and while he's finally sleeping in a bed, he's got a full layer of animals under him.  I don't quite know how we're going to break that habit.

- Jacob is desperately trying to drop his nap.  I knew this time would come, but we're probably lucky he held out as long as he did.  He still naps at daycare but has been fighting it like crazy at home.  He will stay in his room for quite a while, though he almost constantly asks if he can get up yet.  Near the end of our break I pretty much gave up forcing him.  Of course, the one night he fell asleep on the drive to dinner and woke up acting like a lunatic.  Yesterday I told him he just had to have an hour of quiet time in his room.  He asked for a while when he could be done, and eventually he came out so many times that I tacked on another 15 minutes.  He was playing up there contentedly for 15 minutes beyond that, and suddenly we noticed it was awfully quiet.  Sure enough, he fell asleep in his bed and slept for a little over an hour.  So much for not needing a nap!

- I saw some pictures of myself from Christmas and was pretty horrified with what I saw.  I looked huge!  While I don't think I've gained a lot of excess weight, I guess the extra water weight may be adding to my face a bit, just enough to give me some minor jowl action.  Ugh.  But my belly looked huge, too, and obviously I can't help that one much.  Darn, I thought I was doing so well...but multiple bad pictures can't all be bad luck, can they?

Off to bed now...a doctor's appointment awaits in the morning!

30 Week Belly Shot!

As promised, here's the latest belly shot!  I could finally get it taken now that our house is back to nearly normal and the setting I've normally used for these shots wasn't blocked by displaced stuff!  It's only been six weeks since my last one (longer than I wanted, but we've been busy!), but there's definitely a huge difference from last time.  My belly sticks out considerably farther than before...

I think I've hit the stage where I can't believe I'm going to get so much bigger, because part of me already feels huge!  I know I'm not, and I actually like how I look right now, but there are moments where I'm so uncomfortable and I can't quite fathom how I'm going to manage two months of this.  I can't get comfortable on the living room furniture, and sleeping is a challenge.  I don't remember things being like this so soon last time so I'm not sure what's up this time.  Last night I was looking at pictures of myself from last time around--at this point I was having my baby showers--and it's tough to tell how things compare since nothing I wore was form-fitting like my picture above.  But, like everyone keeps telling me, I'm five years older than last time!  

The baby seems to have shifted a bit lately.  He's doing a lot less drifting into my lower right side and spending a lot more time in the upper left.  I'm starting to think it's his shoulders but it's still hard to tell.  Some of the movements are definite body parts (even if I can't recognize them), rather than just general shifts, which is so weird but cool.

It hit me this morning that this whole pregnancy thing has been the defining element of our existence for nearly six months now!  I got pregnant in mid-June, and between waiting to confirm it, waiting to start feeling crappy, feeling crappy for over two months, and then diving head-first into Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, time has flown.  I can't believe this has been going on for so long already, that half the year has revolved around it.  The beginning of pregnancy seems to go so slow, but the end just flies by.  It's crazy.  Add in the needs of a preschooler, and it's overwhelming at times.  The holidays were always a mental hurdle, and now that they're past, we have a whole lot of work to do in two months!

It's going to be a busy year, and no doubt with two kids this one is going to fly too!  I can't believe we may have a crawling baby at this point next year!  How is that even possible?  Here goes nothin'...Happy New Year!

Progress...

We've had a busy few days around here.  We're doing our best to take advantage of this time off to start working on getting this house baby-ready.  Of course, before we can do that, we have to make arrangements for the big boy that currently inhabits the baby's room.  The first step in this whole process was the carpet installation last Thursday.  We needed new carpet in two bedrooms, and we've pretty much known that since the moment we bought this house approximately three years ago.  In fact, we put in the offer on our house three years ago today, which was also Jacob's last day at his old daycare.  Crazy how time flies and things change!

In the time we've owned this house, we haven't had to do much to it.  And really, that was the plan.  Aside from buying a riding lawn mower to manage the big yard and the costs associated with the pool, we really haven't had to spend much on the house itself, which was a big switch from our old house, where we replaced the windows, front door, garage door and opener, hot water heater, stationary tub, basement windows, and bathroom light fixture, in addition to refinishing the floors and getting some minor concrete work done outside.  We could have done a ton of work on the ugly kitchen or ripped out the formerly mice-inhabited insulation and replaced it with clean stuff at a more energy-efficient thickness.  At the time, given the cost of those projects and the fact that the house seemed to small to add another baby to, it made sense to put that money into a house we'd like better, that would fit a growing family when the time came.  And after some looking, we found this one and fell in love with it nearly instantly.  We had the small detail, of course, of selling our house in time, which we did (after a lot of hand-wringing over one lost buyer and a lot of crappy concessions with the one that stuck).  In the two years and nine months we've been here, the changes have been minimal to non-existent, until last week.  The mint green carpeting with the crappy pad in our guest room and the ugly, beaten-down pink carpet in our bedroom had been on the chopping block, but the prospect of moving Jacob into the guest room was really the driving force to make it happen.  And aside from a couple minor hiccups (issues with the floor hardware for the closet doors and the fact that the bedroom doors need to be shaved down by a good quarter inch to stop rubbing on the carpet), it's great to finally have it done.  It makes it feel like a whole new house at times!  I'm in the process of getting new curtains to coordinate with the new quilt I got for our bed last month, so our room will finally start feeling like a grown-up room.  And over the past couple days, Jacob has begun transitioning into his new room.

He was intrigued by the bed we moved back into the room (there used to be two) and made up with his new sports bedding.  After sleeping on the floor for quite a while (most of the last year, in fact), his sudden interest in sleeping in a bed surprised me a bit.  Unfortunately, we couldn't do it Saturday night like he wanted because I needed to pull up the hand-me-down bedrail from the crawl space, clean it off, and figure out how to install it (since we didn't get instructions with it).  I was also hesitant about moving him over since living out of two rooms seems a little crazy.  But...yesterday I managed to clean the rail and figure out how to install it.  Then I put together a shelf we bought Saturday night to house some toys and books.  I picked out a new bed and dresser online and got them ordered.  I moved over his curtains, a lamp, and his monitor, nightlight, and clock.  He picked out some animals, Craig set up some storage for his sports stuff in the closet, and voila...big boy room in progress!

The arrival of his dresser will make a big difference because I can move over all of his clothes and make room for baby stuff.  Once the furniture is in, we can also decorate the walls with the handful of things we've collected over the past few years, and he should be good to go!  But all of the changes last night made the room sleep-ready, so Jacob had his first night in his big boy room and big boy bed!

It took him a while to fall asleep, but by all accounts everything went fine.  Here's a picture of the shelf I put together.  Between this shelf and the underbed storage he'll have, hopefully we can corral a good chunk of his toys...

The turquoise thing on the left is a hanging storage thing we got at IKEA ages ago.  It was in his room at our old house and held a few small stuffed animals.  This room had a hook in the ceiling already so I figured I'd give it a shot and see if it could serve a purpose in this room...

The room is going to be a work-in-progress for a while, but it's nice to be making any progress at all!  We've still got a long way to go before we're ready for this baby, but I'm hopeful that we can keep some momentum going, if only because we're down to less than 10 weeks to go and the ticking clock will keep me slightly panicky from here on out!

In other news, we've got a low key New Year's Eve planned.  Craig is fitting in a couple hours of work right now, and we'll probably just watch a movie and enjoy some sparkling grape juice later.  We did get a gingerbread house kit on clearance, so that should kill some time today or tomorrow, as well.  Jacob seems to be dropping his naps (at home, at least...daycare's have been shorter in general but peer pressure is a great thing sometimes), so that gives us an extra hour or two to work with, assuming we don't waste time trying to force him.  He's not really ready to be without it (he fell asleep on the way to dinner last night and woke up CRAZY), but yelling "No" for an hour or two while he asks if he can get up (despite telling him what to look for on the clock) isn't really my idea of fun, and it will be nice to not have to avoid running errands during that time, too.

I'll be sad to see this nice, long break finish up, but now begins the hardcore preparations at home and work for the baby's arrival, and that's a great thing, too!  We have quite the year ahead!  Happy New Year, everyone!

30 Weeks

Well, we're pretty much at 30 weeks now, which means it's only 10 weeks (or less) until we welcome baby boy #2.  Wow.  I knew December was going to fly, and it has.  And suddenly, here we are.  We have so much to do in the next 10 weeks...it is crazy.  We've had a productive few days around here with the carpet installation in Jacob's new room and our bedroom.  I've been trying to get some elements of our bedroom finished up, though it's not going particularly well...but at the very least the new carpet has gotten me in the mindset of wanting to get things done because I know my time is limited.  Inevitably if I let this stuff slide, it's going to get lost in the shuffle of focusing on the needs of two kids, so it's now or practically never. 

The good news about the carpet is that it forced us to clean most of our stuff out of Jacob's new room.  We now pretty much have a blank slate.  We moved my old twin bed back in there, though I'm still planning on getting Jacob a better bed with storage.  I'll make up the bed with his new bedding in the meantime, though, just because it's one less thing to do and it will work in a pinch.  I'm making it my mission to get his new furniture picked out and ordered in the next few days, because getting him a dresser is really the key to making the switch.  I need to move his clothes over so I can make room in the baby's room for the baby stuff.  I'm coming to the realization that we may need to hire someone to paint the baby's room (it's purple and I'd like it to be blue), because the amount of setup and detail work needed (the trim around the entire room is a medium purple and will take a lot of skillful taping and multiple coats of paint to make white) seems beyond what we have the time, patience, and energy for.  Craig's weekends are going to be spent working pretty much starting next weekend, and I don't want to let this hold us up from getting the rest of the room ready.  So that's on my to do list as well.  Hopefully one of my Facebook friends has a good lead.  Oh, and I need to do some registering ASAP because Craig's co-workers are throwing us a shower and I have no idea what they can buy us beyond a new baby monitor, some washcloths, and some clothes.  Hmmmm.

It's nice to have a week off of work to think about a lot of this stuff.  Unfortunately the holiday and the carpet interrupted things a bit, but in their own way I suppose they increase the urgency to get things done while we have the chance.  We've also been trying to spend time with Jacob since we know how much he values his time away from daycare and our uninterrupted time with him is limited.  I'd like to do something fun with him, like make cookies or do a (clearance-priced) gingerbread house.  The past couple days we put together his big Lego police station, which was very exciting for him. 

What has really struck me this week is how I'm physically going downhill fast.  There's been a lot of temptation the past few days to push myself--to carry things around the house, move furniture, and do miniature home improvement projects.  I spent a while the other night pulling staples out of our bedroom floor since it was one of the few ways I could contribute to the carpeting project.  Craig moved most of the furniture on his own and pulled up, cut, and removed all of the old carpet and padding.  He was amazing.  So, pulling staples was the least I could do.  It wasn't bad, but by the end I was tired and all of the crawling around and trying to stand back up was harder than I anticipated.  I'm pretty sure I'm a little bigger than last time, but I feel like things are falling apart far sooner.  I worked out until I was 7-1/2 months last time.  This time things have been a little more complicated.  Last time I did a couple workouts a week (one class, one cardio), but this time I've only managed one, and apparently it's made a difference.  The holidays came at a critical point this time, because things have been crazy and I couldn't fit in a workout in the last couple weeks...and now I'm nervous about going back.  The past couple weeks have been a little nerve wracking because I've been feeling more discomfort than I remember showing up this early last time.  If I was feeling it, I don't think I blogged about it.  I recall that I never got so uncomfortable that I was in a rush to get the baby out, but at this rate that might not be the case this time.  Today I was having some sensations in my nether-regions that I don't remember having until after I stopped working out (so, at least a month beyond the point I'm at now).  I started getting them during walks and I was convinced I was dilating as I walked.  God forbid that's happening this time, but we won't know for sure for another six weeks, at which point the internal exams start.  It just makes me nervous that I'm already getting extra worn out and sore at times.  I'm very uncomfortable when I sleep, and getting up and around is no picnic either.  Bending is hard, and sometimes I catch myself waddling, which I swear I didn't do last time.  Ugh.

On the bright side, I'm pretty impressed with my belly.  It's big, yes, but I'm still getting a lot of compliments about how the belly's just a basketball and how you'd never know I'm pregnant from looking at me from the back.  Sometimes you almost wouldn't know I'm pregnant from the front either, but it's abundantly obvious from the side.  This time around I really like how fitted clothes look on me, and when I look at my bare belly, I'm shocked at how much I like it.  I still have definition around my ribcage (I still have ribs!), and my belly is perfectly nice and round.  I'm sure no one else would find it attractive, but for whatever reason, I find it much cooler this time around.  The downside of being pregnant during the winter, though, is that my bump is usually hidden under a massive winter coat, so a) I probably just look fat rather than pregnant; and b) I miss out on all of the happy looks and random comments that I got from strangers last time when it got warm enough to ditch the coat. 

As for the baby...well...based on the content of my blog posts this time around, he's already getting the shaft.  I feel like I thought endlessly about the baby last time, but this time he's sort of an afterthought.  Not on purpose, but when you have another lively child to deal with and things like the holidays pop up, it's hard to focus on much else.  We haven't even finalized a name, and like I said, I haven't done a thing to get his room ready.  Sometimes I forget that labor is coming and we'll be plunged back into a life that's run by a helpless newborn within a couple of months.  We've gotten so used to having an independent (albeit defiant) child who can go to the bathroom by himself and put on his own boots (after we tell him 10 times), and we can usually stay in bed (even if we're not sleeping) until at least 8am on weekends.  I have time to blog in the evenings and haven't fallen asleep on the couch in months.  Like it or not, those days are coming to an end.  Perhaps I'm trying to deny reality because I know how hard it all can be.  I'm savoring what I can of this pregnancy despite the discomforts because I'll probably never do it again and this is such a unique and special time.  But the craziness is coming.  It may not seem like it, but this is the calm before the storm.  I know that quite well based on how I felt after Jacob was born, but I can barely fathom life with two kids so once again I'm going into this not quite sure of what to expect.  Let's hope the "caring for a baby" part comes back instinctively and I can focus on managing Jacob and enjoying the entire experience instead.  Wishful thinking, I'm sure. 

Pardon me while I go take some deep breaths now...

A Little More Christmas Cheer

Here are the videos of Jacob's daycare Christmas program. I was a little slow on starting because I wasn't sure I was going to record them both, but you'll get the idea:

 

 

 

 

The fact that these are here means that I have finally gotten all of my videos uploaded to YouTube!  I wanted to do them in chronological order, get all caught up, and then upload new ones in a timely manner so I can post them here at the right time.  I did the last batch while being confined to my couch during our carpet installation today.  The carpet is in and from what I can tell it looks good, but nothing is back in the rooms yet because Craig had to go to Knighthawks practice in Canada today and is on his way home now.  We'll get the house back to normal soon, and then we can start working on Jacob's room.

 

I ended up getting caught in a wave of nesting once the carpet was done, because I decided to take down the old valances in our bedroom, and when I did that it pulled the top level of drywall off in spots (almost like they were installed when the paint was still wet), so then I had to fill in the holes...which led to me wanting to paint the still-unpainted window trim in our room, which didn't go particularly well.  Not bad, just not great.  Needless to say, I am beat now and even dozed off a bit while Jacob was playing with some of his Legos tonight.  We should have some good family time tomorrow, which will be fun..  But for now...I'm ready to head off to bed...which is still in the living room...

Christmas Recap

Well, we survived Christmas...barely.  It has been a crazy few days (weeks!), but hopefully we can settle back into some sort of lower key routine soon.  Just in time to have things totally blown up by a baby, but you know...

So, after the debacle on Saturday night with the bike, we got up on Sunday to do our gifts like we would on Christmas morning.  The tradition in my house growing up was that we had to sit at the top of the stairs for a picture before running downstairs to open gifts.  Well, I decided to try for the same tradition at our house, even if the stairs are in plain sight of the tree and we may not have too many opportunities to do it this way, so here's the result...

As I mentioned, there wasn't really a "Wow" moment but Jacob seemed happy enough with what he got.  He did keep asking for more gifts, but I think he could have had a room full of gifts and still said the same thing.  Not sure if that's just the age, or society, or whatever else, but it does get to be quite annoying and make you feel like you've raised a selfish, greedy little brat.  Ugh.  Anyway...here he is holding a DVD of Rookie of the Year, a movie we've been borrowing long-term from his grandparents that he now has his own copy of.

And here's his new Sabres jersey (a very cheap one I found on clearance at Walmart a while back)...

In this one you can see a handful of his gifts...the little Syracuse football guys (with referee) that I ran out to Kohl's to get on Saturday night after he saw them and really wanted them (and we were running out of options), a bag of mini Twix bars (which he loves), and his new doctor kit.  

Since I usually post a picture of the tree at night, I figured I'd post one with natural daylight for a change.  

After more wrapping and packing and final details, we headed out to Buffalo and arrived around dinnertime at Craig's parents'.  The next day, Christmas Eve, we made a special visit to see Craig's Nana.  We usually don't get to see her for Christmas because our schedules just don't match up, but knowing she doesn't have many Christmases left, we got up early and made it to her place in time to spend a little over an hour with her.  It was really great to see her and deliver our present in person.  Jacob entertained her and one of her friends, and we kept her company while she waited for Craig's aunt to pick her up for the day.  It was a very nice visit and I'm so glad we got to do it.

I had a nice little time to chill and reflect and pray (given the insanity that went down earlier in the day in Webster, NY, a mere 15-ish minute drive from our house, where two firefighters were killed and two more first responders injured when someone set a trap for them) when I dropped off some food ahead of time at Craig's aunt's house.  The drive was quiet and peaceful and I enjoyed the opportunity to listen to Christmas music and take a few moments to reflect and prepare for the insanity that always is our two days of Christmas.

We went to Christmas Eve mass at Craig's parents' church.  It was nice (though very busy!) and Jacob surprised me by drawing little creatures around a picture of the nativity in the program and proclaiming that they were sheep and an angel.  Hmmm. They weren't exactly anatomically correct or anything, but they had bodies and faces, which was sort of a new thing for him.

We headed out to Craig's aunt's house to see his extended family, eat some food, and exchange gifts.  Jacob got a new baseball guy, a cool coloring book, and a Spider-Man figure.  After eating a ton of Christmas cookies, we headed over to Craig's brother's house to exchange gifts with the immediate family.  Jacob was shocked and excited to receive this:

That is the Lego City Forest Police Station, not to be confused with the police station we bought him during the insanity a couple nights earlier.  This one is a bit smaller and differently themed, but he's gone back and forth wanting one or the other for a while now.  He was so excited to see this one, though, and told Craig's mom that she picked the right one!  He gave her a big hug, too.  It was cute.  We still haven't decided what to do with the other one at the moment, but needless to say, he's not getting it this time around!

He also got a cool Poland shirt...

...and some other clothes, a smaller set of Legos, and a couple other things.  The baby also got a Polish shirt of his own!  We ate a lot more Christmas cookies and had our usual late night, but at least Jacob fell asleep relatively quickly.

The next morning we got up, got ready, and headed out to my parents' house.  When we got there, my parents were on Facetime with John, Kristin, Kate, and Max in Portland.  They opened presents while we watched, and then my parents opened a big one that had been sitting in their living room for a few days...

Turns out it was a canvas reproduction of Max's first work of art!  After dinner we opened presents again, and Jacob got a sleeping bag!

He also got a remote control boat for our pool, some clothes, and some other toys.  Later in the evening we saw my extended family, and he got this cool Lego storage box that unzips into a play mat.  It's really cool, but unfortunately Jacob wanted there to be Legos in it, so his reaction wasn't quite what it should have been. He played with his second cousins and a puppy, and I had the pleasure of providing to everyone a family traditional dish, Broken Glass, which my aunt passed along to me this year.  It's basically flavors of jello cut up in whipped cream and put in a graham cracker crust.  It's awesome and some people were very happy to see it.

We had a great few days, until this morning when Jacob decided to have the mother of all tantrums over nothing, which set a not-so-great tone for the day.  I'm sure I'll blog more on that later.  We've had a busy day unpacking and trying to get the house ready for our carpet tomorrow--assuming this crazy snowstorm doesn't impact things.  But for tonight I will leave you with this--our Christmas card this year.  It's hard to see, but the top picture is Jacob learning up against an elephant statue at the Atlanta Zoo, the middle picture is Craig and me on the turf with the Cup the night the Knighthawks won the championship, and the bottom picture is a picture of my belly with our tree in the background.

"From our team to yours...We wish you a blessed holiday season!  Love, Craig, Amy, Jacob, and our Little Player to be Named Later (March 2013!)"

We hope you had a wonderful holiday!  Stay safe if you're in the snow zone these next couple days!

Unspirited

Ugh.  You know, I really felt like I had this Christmas thing licked this year.  We had an extra week thanks to the early thanksgiving, I had a week of vacation, and I had this crazy nesting instinct pushing me to stay organized.  And yet, here we are a couple days out and I have been defeated.  The gifts are all bought and wrapped, and we're in Buffalo through the 26th now.  So, I guess on that front we got the job done, but getting here has been a bit on the soul-sucking side.  I'm obviously beyond grateful to be pregnant right now, but I'm not going to lie--it has not made this season easy.  Up until a few weeks ago I was feeling good--energetic, relatively comfortable, happy to be feeling kicks regularly--but in the past week or two things have gotten considerably harder.  I feel like I'm rapidly expanding, and I have gotten increasingly uncomfortable doing simple things like sleeping, bending, and sitting.  Doing dishes gives me a sore back, and I have to pee all the time.  This week was a very busy week, as expected, but what I didn't expect was having to sit and relax so much because my belly was sore and I was slightly worried I was setting myself up for early labor or something.  I was up late pretty much every single night, and that didn't do me any favors.  Mentally, physically, emotionally...it was not a pretty picture.  I had a ton to do at work, and a lot to do at home.  The Sandy Hook tragedy was on my mind a lot (I would have blogged about it but there just wasn't time--I may still), and all of the rushing around turned Christmas into more of a chore than I would have liked.  And then last night happened.

Friday night I went out after Jacob was in bed to do some shopping.  I bought the doctor kit I wanted to get him (after his fascination with treating the animals at Strong Museum), and then settled on a bike.  I don't know if I had mentioned it, but I dropped the idea of getting him an educational tablet when none of the reviews were glowing, and decided he was at the right age for a bike.  We weren't convinced he'd be totally into it, but it seemed like a good plan.  Given our crazy schedule and the fact that I, the more mechanically inclined one, was in no shape to be contorting myself to assemble a bike, I paid the $10 to have it assembled, with the plan to pick it up 24 hours later.  So, last night after picking up some last minute gifts, I sent Craig back to Toys 'R' Us with our receipts, only to have him call and say that the cashier that checked me out was apparently clueless and didn't give me the right paperwork, so the assembly order was never placed and they didn't have a bike to give us.  They could have had one by noon today, but ummm, we were doing Christmas morning today. 

We never get to do Christmas morning at our house...or really Christmas morning at all.  Usually we're flying home from work and daycare, saying that Santa came during the day, and opening presents as quickly as possible before inhaling dinner and trying to get ready to travel, be it that night or first thing the next morning.  But this year we actually had a weekend day to work with so today was it.  And if there was no bike...well, that sort of took away the big visual we were hoping for.  And knowing that was the big gift, we hadn't really gotten a lot else.  I mean, I had a handful of things, but a lot of them were things Jacob would know were from us, so I couldn't just magically transfer them to Santa.  It was probably somewhere around 11pm at this point, and I was in tears thinking of how disappointed Jacob would be.  I know I had talked about skipping Santa entirely to send a message about his behavior, but at the end of the day I just couldn't do it.  Despite some ridiculous tantrums this week, I know he has been trying harder to be good.  His reviews at daycare this week were very good, and other than those tantrums, he was trying to be better.  Listening is still tough, though.  Anyway, because of that I figured the bike and a few smaller things would be a good mix of "Nice effort, here are your gifts," and "Perhaps there would have been more had you been on the nice list all month," but now here we were without a big Santa gift for Christmas morning.  And before you ask about why we didn't just get one in the box, please understand that Jacob is a visual kid and unless it's something he's already predisposed to being excited about, seeing a picture on a box just wouldn't do it for him.  Unless the bike was sitting there for him to hop on, he just wouldn't get it. 

Craig looked at Target, to no avail, and then came home so I could run out and get something we saw earlier in the evening at Kohl's that Jacob wanted very badly.  I had the coupon and charge account to get it cheaper, so I had to get it.  I knew regardless of everything else he would really like that and we could play it off that Santa must have seen it even before we did.  After I got back, Craig headed back out to Toys 'R' Us (open 24 hours) to try to pick up some Legos we knew he wanted.  The set is obscenely expensive, but they did have a $25 off deal and we had a $10 credit from a promo I used when I bought the bike.  It was far more than we wanted to spend, but we were sort of stuck.  However, once Craig got it home, I panicked a bit.  It was such an expensive gift and was beyond what I wanted to reward him with this year.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, but I decided we should take this one step at a time.  I wrapped it and put it up in our closet.  It's still there.  I decided that we'd see how things went this morning, and if he seemed disappointed (or if his behavior was exceptional over the next few days) we could say that it was one more gift that Santa dropped off on his way back through on Christmas Eve. 

We didn't get to bed until at least 1:30am, and Jacob was awake a little before 8am.  He was excited to see if Santa came, but he was patient waiting for us to get around to getting out of bed.  He opened his gifts with little fanfare.  He was happy with what he got, sure, but we didn't have a "WOW" moment, which was really a first for him in the years he's been conscious of Christmas.  Two years ago it was his hockey net and his little toy hockey rink, and last year was the Batcave.  This year he was excited by the last minute Kohl's gift, and he did enjoy a couple other things, but the doctor kit didn't phase him and most of the other stuff was just okay.  It wasn't that he was unhappy (though he did ask when he gets to open more gifts), but I wouldn't say he was particularly ecstatic, so that felt a little sad.  We had a special treat for breakfast, and then lounged around while Jacob played a bit.  Of course, right around the time I needed to get up to get ready for church I started feeling really crappy...tired and just a little off.  By the time I got all of us moving, I realized it was too late.  I felt so guilty about missing church since we weren't there last weekend either.  And the mess of how Jacob's gifts had panned out was bugging me, too.  I ended up taking a much-needed nap, figuring that the crappiness I was feeling was my body's way of telling me it had had enough.  I've still been pretty tired all day, but did finally manage to pack up and get out of town by 5pm.  Later than we wanted, but quite frankly, after this week I am grateful for even that. 

Most of the time once the gifts are wrapped, the tree pictures are taken and we're on the road, I'm pleased with how things have gone.  But this year...ugh.  I feel like we missed a lot of traditions.  I am not thrilled with some of our gift choices.  I didn't get to do the baking I wanted to.  I'm nervous about the foods I'm making for gatherings over the next couple days.  I'm still wondering what to do with the gift in our closet.  On top of all that, once we get back home on Wednesday, we have to spend most of the day clearing out the rest of our bedroom for our carpet installation on Thursday.  Craig did an amazing job getting Jacob's new room cleared out completely, and he got a great head start on our room as well.  I can't do a lot of the heavy lifting, so he's been on his own for a lot and has done fantastically.  We were so happy to discover that Jacob's room's old carpet wasn't actually tacked down beyond a small spot near the door, so that came up quite easily.  Our room will be a different story, though.

Jacob's been enjoying the hardwoods in his empty room for the last couple days because it makes the perfect basketball court for the mini-hoop that's been in there since last winter.  Hopefully he'll like his new carpet, too, and we can start slowly migrating him over to the new room.  We have no furniture for him yet (I either don't like what I've seen or don't want to pay hundreds for kid furniture), so for now he can use my old (plain) bedframe and we'll hopefully have a couple days after the holiday to look around, for a dresser at the very least.  Beyond that he really just needs a book/toy shelf, and we'll be well on our way to making it a room.  Our room will be able to get a slight makeover too, once the carpet is done.  I have curtain rods to hang (and I guess I've pinpointed curtains), and then we'll just need something for over the bed and it will look like a whole new room...I hope.  Next up after all that will be painting the baby's room blue.  God knows how that's going to get done.

As you can see, I have a lot on my mind right now and Christmas is just a part of that.  It hasn't left a lot of time to focus on the season and now that we're done to a couple days it is really bumming me out.  I'm not sure how I could have done much more given how I've been feeling recently and how busy we've been, but it's still a bummer.  I knew this month would go fast (hello, we're only 11 weeks away from baby time!), but just how fast it went it crazy.  And I am sad that I just haven't been able to enjoy it, baby, holiday, and all.  I'm tired.  My Christmas spirit is lacking.  And whenever I feel sorry for myself, I think about the Sandy Hook parents and realize how petty I'm being about everything.  But still, it's been a challenge.  And I'm praying that some Christmas miracle in the next couple days will strip the bad stuff aside and bring back my joy.  I don't want this season to pass without a chance to sit back and take it all in, to appreciate God's gift and reflect on how it might be different next year with another little boy to enjoy. It's going to be a big year and I'd like to send this one out on a good note. 

Much more to come (including pictures), but in the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas, everyone!