Pumpkin Pie Is Not Quite Airbourne
Merry Late Christmas! Ho ho ho! With the children home from school, the computer is being used 24/7 so I haven’t been able to update or check things at all. Today everyone is away at a family birthday party, so Mike and Erik are napping and I am eating the last of my pumpkin pie. I would share it, but I need the vitamins. I woke up with a sore throat and nasty cough, courtesy of my darling snot-nosed son, and am desperate for some Airbourne or even a little pinch of vitamin C. I knew we should have brought a couple rolls of the good stuff because I hate hate hate drinking juice and I always get sick when we travel. For now, the pumpkin pie will have to suffice. Something tells me it is not going to suffice very well.
There are no fruits or vegetables to be found around these parts. The fridge is full to bursting with all sorts of Christmas leftovers, but I’m probably going to starve to death the next few days. The meatballs have all been eaten, so the only thing I can tolerate is the Christmas ham. I am very, very tired of Christmas ham. I think I’ll end up eating cereal for dinner.
Aren’t you glad I’m such a happy, positive person?
Being a cynic has actually served me well this year. Most Christmases end with me crying and depressed, but this year I was just fine. I knew how things would be and things were like I thought they would be. When you don’t have hope you can’t be disappointed. Erik was hilarious to watch with all the paper. He couldn’t care less about presents, but give him a roomful of crinkly paper and the boy’s in heaven. I wish we would have been able to get some good pictures, but Erik is just too busy these days to hold still for a picture. The Christmas pictures are a little strange anyway because he’s shirtless in most of them. We bought him a little Santa suit and he hated it. The shirt was just fastened with Velcro, so he had it off about three seconds after we put it on. What bad parents are we, letting him run around half-naked.
He is such a social little creature that I hate to take him away from her. He is totally in love with his 18 year old cousin and screams and cries whenever she leaves the room. He is even willing to sit in her lap for minutes at a time, something he usually doesn’t do at all. What a little flirt.
Personally, I will be glad to get home and have a few days of peace. Mike’s family is really nice and I’ve been having a good time, but there are just soooooo many people. Counting Erik, there are usually 11 people at every meal. That’s a lot of noise to deal with every day. Erik, of course, loves it.
I will also be glad to be home and able to deal with Erik on my terms. I hate feeling judged as a mother, but I think every mother is judged when she has babies by both her family and her in-laws. I am very tired of hearing about how little Erik eats. He eats fine! One day he ate way more than usual and my sister-in-law said to me with much, much relief “ah, good, he finally ate something.” She also thinks it is weird that we don’t give him a plate to eat off of. We have a placemat that sticks to the table and he can eat off that. When we give him a plate he throws it. Same with spoons and forks. I always let him hold a little spoon in his hand and he tries to use it but he just isn’t good at it. And then there is the sleep issue. I’ve decided not to talk about the sleep issue publicly because I hate hearing about it. I know we could have done things differently, but we did what we did and things are how they are. She is always telling us that we must go put him to bed, which is actually kind of nice because then I can go and read while he runs around downstairs. Ha! There is no point in trying to make him sleep before he is ready to sleep. Been there, done that, it never works. I hate hate hate when people tell me “you must MAKE him do it” because I simply haven’t figured out how you make a baby do anything. We teach him not to do things and that’s pretty easy, but teaching him to sleep when he’s not tired? Nope. I don’t know how to do it and frankly I don’t want anyone to tell me how to do it. I’ve read all the different baby sleep books and thus far they just don’t work. Erik is more stubborn than the most stubborn of mules.
Now that the family is gone, I am going to go invade the kitchen and make cookies! I just have to wake Mike up so he can tell me what he did with my big bag of ingredients.
Hope you all had a great holiday!