Christmas Day

I was very excited for Christmas this year. Nate is understanding the idea of wrapped gifts and it is so fun to watch him open them--although he doesn't have amazing expressions yet when he sees the toy, but he is very happy and that shines through. I had to wait awhile, though, to see this because we decided not to open presents until after his nap. He's not at the age yet where he understands the idea of Christmas and Santa and all that good stuff, so timing really didn't matter. Church service was at 10am, and so we decided it might be better to open them when he has more time to play with them and avoid a meltdown. Some days he hates leaving the house, let alone when there's new toys to play with.So we waited until after he woke up and when he came downstairs he went right to the gifts (hard not to when one of his big gifts was a tool bench). He doesn't tear into the gifts, but slowly peels away the paper, examining what is underneath. He was very happy to see the bench and some play tools. He loves when Daddy has his tools out working on something so I knew this one would be a hit. He continued to open some smaller presents while Michael and I exchanged our gifts. When he was done, he headed towards the kitchen (that's where we put his trampoline). When he saw it it's like he knew exactly what it was for: jumping, his number one activity. He got right on and started jumping and I don't think he's stopped since. No, he does play with his other toys, but he sure does love to jump. Even so much to the point it makes him sick and has thrown up a couple times on it.
I didn't make a big Christmas dinner since I make a big holiday meal when we get together with the Toppes, so we decided to "Christmas Story" it up, and headed to Chinese buffet. It was awesome. Not exactly like the movie, but still fun. May be our new tradition every year. We will see.

Christmas Celebration #2

On Christmas Eve we always go down to Mitchell to celebrate Christmas with all the extended family. This year, we decided to go to the annual Briscoe family reunion. It was good to get in that extra time to visit with family, however, our kids did not agree. Nate, of course, wanted to get into everything he couldn't. But Maddie, our normally so good child, decided that on the night she was going to meet everyone she was going to cry all night. I don't know if it was all the new faces or the big open space or just her mood that night (tired, not feeling good??), but she was completely out of character.

The night definitely smoothed out once we got to Michael's aunt's. She has a playroom in her basement so Nate could play with toys and Maddie was much happier there. So after gifts, lots of snacking on goodies, and visiting, we headed home. It's always nice to see family and spend time together. I always look forward to this time.

Painting

The more we are stuck in the house and cannot go outside to play, the more I try to come up with fun things to do with Nate. He has never painted before so I thought we would give this a try. Bust. It was going fine for the first minute, but then he wanted to hold the paint jar (up to that point I was dipping his brush in the paint and handing it to him) and I could see paint flying everywhere so that was a no, and he hates no's. I thought he might like to finger paint but he did NOT like the paint on his hand at all and I had to wipe it off right away. So our "fun" art time ended in a crying and screaming meltdown. It has been noted that we will not attempt to paint again for awhile.

Christmas Celebration #1

Dividing up the time we spend with family makes it much easier to get in quality time (and more of it!) because we don't have to rush around to everyone's houses within a day or two. So our first Christmas was with Michael's parents this past Saturday. His sister, Christy, and her family were supposed to come too but her daughter was sick. So it ended up just being us, which is okay because we will be able to see the Bunch's Christmas Eve. Nate is getting more into unwrapping presents now that he is learning that new toys are underneath all that paper. He had a good time opening his gifts and would have probably been content with just one as he stopped to play with it and left the rest of the presents. But he did come back for more and Mamaw and Papaw really spoiled him. All of us, really. It was a really good visit and a good kick off to the holiday week ahead.

The Wall Comes Down

The wall that divides the front room and the living room has been my nemesis for awhile now. It has made the living room much too small and bringing baby equipment back in makes it much smaller, if that was possible. It has also allowed Nate to be mischevous in the other room while he knew I was busy with the baby and could not see him. So tearing down the wall would create this bigger, open space where no man or toddler could hide.

The project took about 2 weeks, starting mid-November. The demolition went rather quickly but then we ran into little snags along the way. Neither of us has done any type of remodeling on our own. I remember helping Dad when I was younger with his home improvement projects, but without Dad here telling me exactly what to do, it was much different. In the end we got it done, and while it's not perfect, it is done. That's all that matters to me. We worked hard and long and had late nights, and after the carpet is installed today we will finally be able to sit back and enjoy it.

Here is what we did:

Kitchen: removed the wallpaper which also pulled up some of the paint in many areas so I had to go back and fix the walls, prime, and paint/installed all new light fixtures (ah, the ugly flourescent is gone!)/took down the blinds & we will be hanging curtains

Living/Front Room: tore down the wall which then created a sag in the soffet so we had to put in reinforcements, drywall, paint, repair the baseboard, put in new light fixtures, and install new blinds

We also scraped the popcorn ceiling and repainted it. We wall mounted the tv to get it away from little fingers as well.