Why I start decorating in November...

It's not at all an exaggeration to say that it took me the entire month of November to decorate my house for Christmas.

Between two trees, twenty boxes of stuff (because I have been collecting for awhile, now), and lighted garland that we had to put together ourselves, because we bought the cheap stuff during the last Christmas season, and we only garlanded (shut up, it's totally a real word...) half of our staircase after Steve decided he just didn't want to deal with winding two strands of thin garland together to make it look nice and full, then adding lights, once we'd finished only half of the bannister, with the added bonus of working around that pesky job that takes up too much of my time, and along with the help (which isn't helpful, at all) of the resident two-year old, it takes some time to get everything looking the way I want it to look.

But, despite what Steve might have you believe, I think it's all worth it...

 

 

 

A Little Friday Fun...

Last week, when Steve was down with the plague, and I was too exhausted to fight Brigid on the bedtime front, I let her wear herself down with a little pre-bedtime dress-up activity.

I'm pretty sure that night was the easiest she'd gone to sleep in a month.

Dress-up for everyone!!

St. Nicholas

When I was growing up, on the evening of December 5th, we'd leave our shoes out in the kitchen for St. Nicholas to fill with a small (usually sugar-laden, because I am a sucker for some good holiday sugar) treat or two. But in Steve's childhood, St. Nicholas filled stockings.

Did you know stockings are bigger than shoes?

And can hold an entire package of holiday Oreos?

(Even if my shoe could hold an entire package of holiday Oreos, I don't think I'd want it to do so. There has to be some lingering foot thing on the cookie packaging, right? And I HATE feet things...)

Plus brand new Rudolph slippers?

So I guess it goes without saying that we went with Steve's childhood on this one, right?

 

Christmas List, Check Two

So, in addition to watching Rudolph and looking at lights around the neighborhood, my Christmas activity list included our annual viewing of Charlie Brown Christmas when it was on television on Monday night, because I can remember, as a kid, hurrying through my bedtime routine, just so I'd be ready to watch it right when it started at 8pm. It was a big deal.

It still kind of is...

This was back in the days before DVR, of course, because now it's actually better to start the show a little late, so you have some room to fast forward through the commercials. Also, here's where I tell you that we never got a TV Guide at our house, because we only had about 5 channels (country living = no cable), so we didn't really need to know when anything was on, but we'd always pick one up in December so we'd know when the Christmas specials were on.

Again, it was kind of a big deal.

I had some good childhood Christmases, you know? I hope Brigid says the same thing some day.

And I hope we're off to a good start...

Zoo!

In all of the time we've been having trouble getting Brigid to bed at night, we've tried a zillion different things to make her realize that going to sleep isn't really that big of a deal, except that it is actually a really big deal, of the good kind of really big deals.

Turns out, our 'sleep is awesome!' logic only seems to apply to exhausted parents, and not toddlers with endless energy.

Go figure.

So, as Steve was putting her down Sunday night, he kept telling her she needed to go to sleep, because when she go up on Monday, I was going to take her to the zoo. And that did the trick I guess, because Sunday night was one of the first nights in a long time that didn't involve crazy screaming at any point in the evening.

And when I got her up on Monday morning? I was greeted with a cursory 'hi.', followed by a much more excited 'zoo!!'.

Translation: Yeah, whatever, glad to see you, mom. Now take me to see the animals, woman!

So, I did.

We met up with the awesome Jen, who is a fellow Style Lush writer that happens to live only about 45 minutes away from me, as opposed to the rest of the lovely Style Lush ladies, who all live in states that are not Georgia. Sadly.

Jen brought her adorable three-year old daughter Elizabeth along, as well as her friend Leslie,and Leslie's equally adorable son Zachary, and I think all of the kids had a great time wearing themselves out in various locations around the zoo.

What you're missing in this picture is Brigid shyly waiting until Elizabeth and Zachary finished with the giant bird nest, before she got in herself. Socialization...it's not exactly her strong suit, I guess.

By the end of the visit, though, I'm pretty sure she'd have gone home with the other kids and left me in the dust, given the opportunity. I mean, Jen and Elizabeth came with homemade peppermint bark, for crying out loud. Chocolate is not something that I can compete with, in Brigid's eyes.

 

This summer, on any one of our many zoo trips, Brigid wouldn't get near the big gorilla statue. The mom/baby combo on the other side, she was willing to hug. The big guy?No way.

Things change quickly, don't they?

Ditto for the carousel.

And the train.

Where did my baby go, exactly?

(Jen has some more pictures from the trip posted here, because she is the smart mom who brings her camera along on outings, while I just bring my phone. Thank goodness for other people's cameras, honestly. I don't think we'd have a single non-camera-phone picture of Brigid if it wasn't for them...)

Having A Wonderful Christmastime...

I really wanted to do a daily Advent calendar of Christmas activities for Brigid this year, but I didn't start giving it serious thought until the last couple of days in November, and by then, trying to put together a list of activities plus finding the time to actually do them seemed like much too daunting of a task to attempt.

So, I didn't.

But that doesn't mean that I don't have a list of things that I want to do with Brigid in these next couple of weeks.

We've already been to see Santa (which she seemed ambivalent about) and drove through the Christmas lights on Lake Lanier Island (which she slept through, unfortunately) and we have plans to visit the Children's Museum in Indianapolis when we're up in Indiana for Christmas (they have this winding staircase that they turn into a snow slide,and I'm kind of pumped about it...). We'll do a second Santa visit with my sisters, to get our picture taken all together. And we may bake cookies at some point. Because Brigid loves to bake, and I love cookies.

Our family. It works...

One of the things on this unofficial list in my head was an after-dark walk around the neighborhood to look at the neighbors' Christmas lights, and we crossed that off last night.

Rudolph came along for the ride, of course.













I'd say a good time was had by all. As long as you don't count Steve in the all, since he thought it would be nice to bring the dogs along on the walk, and walking those two maniacs together is never a good idea...

Other than that, though, hearing Brigid say 'oh boy' at every new set of lights was definitely worth it.

We may just have to do this one again...

The Plague, Part 2

So, I've recovered from the plague, just in time to see my mother-in-law and husband both go down with it.

Fun times in the household, let me tell you.

And, because when one person is suffering from the plague, we all suffer from it, I'm following through with my threat from yesterday...

Presenting Peyton, the squirrel!





She looks thrilled, doesn't she?