Happy New Year...

When you have two toddlers, your New Year's Eves become wholly different than they were when you were young and unattached.  Personally, I have never been a big fan of the holiday.  It's never as much fun as it's built up to be and you have to pay a boatload of money to do the same things and go to the same places you do every other night of the year.  Of course, Billy threw a wrench in my lifelong quest to be a Scrooge on New Year's Eve by having the gall to propose to me on said holiday many years ago.

Now we rarely go out on New Year's Eve because our babysitters all have better things to do than sit in our house watching Netflix.  Last year, we did manage to stay up until the wee hours of morning.  In all fairness, it was our first night home from the hospital with Baby Will, and not because we were attending some raucous soiree.

This year, our evening consisted of the following:

1.  Jack tried on the pimped out Mardi Gras beads sent by Billy's cousin Nikki, while he and Billy "danced" to music with lyrics that I hope he doesn't understand until he's in college.

2.  Jack and Will discovered that throwing cold spaghetti at each other is possibly the most fun one can have at the dinner table. 

3.  Jack got a kick out of pretending he was a ghost in his new truck sheets.

4.  And, as Billy and I were sitting down to dinner at some ungodly hour like 10:00, we noticed that poor Charlie-dog somehow ended up wearing the Mardi Gras beads. 

It was a great night.


Some might miss the excitement of a younger New Year's Eve, but personally, there's nowhere I'd rather be than sitting with my boys, watching them chuck spaghetti at each other and thinking about all the great things they'll do in the year to come...

Happy Birthday Baby Will!

Usually the final days of December are a little tiresome.  The excitement of new toys wears off and the Christmas credit card bills start rolling in.  This year, we had a break from the post-Christmas blahs because Master Will turned one.  


At one year, Will was 20 pounds and ? inches (considerably bigger than Jack).  While he isn't walking yet, or talking, he has the same ability to point out things in a book if asked.  Most importantly, he now loves books.  For the first nine months, the child wouldn't sit still to read for 60 seconds to read "Moo, Baa, La La La."  Billy and I were flummoxed at his intolerance for reading.  Jack would sit and read with us for hours (seriously) when he was 4 months old.  We read books all the time in this house.  We have multiple bookshelves that are overflowing with books.  How could we possibly have a child who didn't want to read?  My pediatrician, whom I love dearly, talked me off a ledge and told me just to wait a little while.  Fortunately, Will's impatience with books was not a character flaw but merely a phase.  Perhaps he was trying out rebellious at an early age.  Fabulous.


He and Jack continue to love each other more than I thought possible.  Jack has been exceptionally good at sharing with Will, which has become more of an issue now that Will is not only mobile but also actually interested in Jack's toys.  Jack is no saint but his patience with Will is remarkable.  They "share" (by which I mean Jack gives Will the toys that he is not interested in and plays with the more exciting ones himself) and there are very few arguments.  Indeed, Jack has taken to negotiating with Will, cementing my belief that we will have a third generation Reeves lawyer.  Will always listens to Jack's reasoned pleas and explanations with great interest and then goes back to whatever he was doing before. 


To mark the occasion of Will's birthday, I took this shot of the boys (on the left), almost one year after Kelly took Will's  newborn photos. Same chair, same boys, but what a difference a year makes.  Despite how different they look (at least to me) a year later, the incredible love and affection between them is still apparent.  I marvel every day at how lucky they are to have each other and how phenomenal it is that they realize it.

We started the celebration with a birthday lunch at Perfectly Frank with Sabrina and Benji, who had thoughtfully brought party hats.  The babies weren't so much into the hats but Sabrina and Jack loved 'em.

I got an explicable bee in my bonnet about making Will's birthday cake and decorating myself.  Jack thoughtfully lent his support to the endeavor and all, in all, the cake was a success.  And by success I mean it tasted delicious. 

We had a small family celebration (including godparents) at the house.  And I am pleased to report that there were no finger-in-the-candle-flame incidents at this first birthday party.  It's reassuring that Billy and I have managed to learn from our past mistakes. 

The funniest part of the evening came when Will was eating (dare I say shoveling) his cake at the coffee table and accidentally (allegedly) knocked his plate onto the ground.  Rather than become upset by this turn of events or wait for me to pick up the crumbs and get him a new piece, he simply plopped down on the floor and started eating right off the carpet.  It was so hysterical that Jack and Charlie decided they wanted to eat like little piggies as well.  Look ma, no hands...

It is so hard for me to believe how different our lives were a year ago.  And while life with two is slightly more challenging than with one, I could never imagine how much fuller our lives would be as a foursome.  

Christmas redux

Despite the disastrous beginning to our Richmond Christmas visit, things drastically improved when the boys finally got some sleep.  They had a ball reading with Mimi and Pops...

...and playing with aunts, uncles and cousins.  The highlight for everyone was the addition of Rudy, Kennon and Travis' new dachshund puppy!

Charlie, on the other hand, that yet another small person/creature had been brought into his life...

The big day

As expected (thankfully), the train was a huge hit with both boys, and Will loved his tent.  Score one for mom and dad.  There is nothing worse than finding something that you are sure your children will love, only to see the look of ennui on their faces when they see it.  Dagger to the heart.

Santa did have one misstep this year.  Jack really wanted a recorder (or, in his words, a whistle).  Santa excitedly found one, not realizing how LOUD it is.  After 60 excruciating seconds of Jack's solo, it took everything I had not to rip it out of his hands and throw it out the window.  Fortunately, it was time to pack up and go to Lulu and Buster's house.

And here's where the wheels started to come off the bus.  In an effort to make everyone happy, we scheduled every minute of Christmas day.  We woke up opened our presents at home.  At exactly 9:30, we headed to my parents' house to open all of our family presents (which included, among other cool things, a trampoline and a ridiculous amount of trains). 

At exactly 12:30, we ran home to pick up Charlie, throw our 400 bags in the car and head to Richmond.  The boys did not nap in the car as we had hoped.  So by the time we got there, we had two incredibly cranky, exhausted children who had received a million presents but had essentially gotten to play with none of them.  Clearly a flaw in our plan.  And that is why there are no pictures of our children after noon on Christmas Day.  Minus one for mom and dad...

'Twas the night before Christmas

This year marked a departure from our usual Christmas routine.  Instead of spending Christmas Eve and morning in Richmond and then coming back home for Christmas afternoon, we reversed the process.  We really wanted Jack to wake up in his own bed and come downstairs to his Christmas tree and see what Santa had brought.  So we had a Christmas Eve celebration at my parents' house.

In my family, there is always some present (usually from a relative or friend) that is so ridiculously bad that we laugh about it until next Christmas.  This year, that present came from my mother.  One of Peter's stocking presents was some Brooks Brothers cologne.  Only it wasn't cologne; it was women's perfume.  Ooh la la.

My mother, who has never given a bad gift in her entire life, was shaken to the core.  Fortunately, Will managed to liven things up when he locked in on the airplane bottles of booze from Peter and Billy's stockings and wouldn't let them go. Like father, like son...

The boys donned their Christmas PJ's, opened up their stockings and presents from my parents, and would have passed out on the floor from exhaustion had it not been for the 300 cookies they consumed.

Jack got to stay up and have dinner with us and, despite being exhausted, he revved up when we got home, instructing us on how and where to leave the milk and cookies for Santa. 

   

Then Billy and I, equally bleary-eyed, but also as giddy as the kids themselves, got to work putting out the big presents from Santa.  The highlight was the riding train (that I scored at the GUMP consignment sale).  It is fully motorized and comes with its own (irritatingly large) oval track.  Of course I have nowhere to store this monstrosity when it is not in use, but then again, Santa's gifts are never practical, are they?

Cookie Monster

 
Every year around Christmas, I feel the need to bake and decorate perfect Christmas cookies.  And I am far too OCD to let the kids help (although you wouldn't know it from looking at the results), so I typically find myself with my bags of colored icing, hunched over a tray full of cookies in my poorly lit kitchen at 1am, wondering what possessed me to think this was fun.

This year, I was so focused on what I was doing, I failed to notice that Will had wandered into the kitchen and found the small children's table where I had decorated the star cookies with sanding sugar.  The colored sugar was all over the table and Will, not one to pass up an opportunity to eat, started stuffing it in his face, which, as you might imagine, is hard to do.  I could not stop laughing.  Or taking pictures.  So thank you Will, for resurrecting the Christmas spirit and reminding me that Christmas cookies are made to be eaten, not photographed...

This year, Jack was old enough to "write" his first letter to Santa.   Lest the above picture appear misleading, he dictated his wishes and I wrote them down.  But he did draw Santa a very nice picture and signed his own name, with a lot of help. 

I must admit I was expecting a fairly lengthy list from my lawyer in training (not from parental pushing - just genetics).  Instead, Jack told me he wanted one thing and one thing only.  Bertie the Bus, which, for those of you without boys is one of the Thomas the train figures.  A seemingly odd request given that he already HAD Bertie the Bus.  As it turned out, Bertie went missing right before Christmas.  Santa had to work very hard to procure a replacement Bertie on such short notice.  Thank you Ebay...

I saved the letter because I couldn't bear to actually mail it.  I wanted to look back at it one day and remember how wonderfully simple life is when you're 3 years old and you want a toy that you already have...

Christmas Pageant

Let me start by saying that I still believe in Santa Claus. I know that a fat man in a red velvet suit does not come sliding down my chimney, but there is something magical that happens at Christmas. The world gets ... kinder. People care more about other people. And while there is the occasional fist fight at Walmart ('nuff said) over the toy du jour, by and large, people seem to focus on love, compassion and charity (in the informal sense) more than at any other time during the year. If that's not magic, I don't know what is.













Always appreciate of this phenomenon, I have never "lost" the Christmas spirit. But having children reintroduces you to the giddiness of the season. So for me, one of the true highlights of December was Jack's school Christmas show. It was short and sweet - 15 minutes max. But nothing puts you in the Christmas spirit more than watching little kids shake their bells and shout (I do mean shout) out "Jingle Bells."


Jack had been singing his class' Christmas songs for weeks but at the pageant, he chose to watch all the other children instead of singing himself (that's Jack on the right wearing the red shortall). I loved him for that. He too was taken in by the sheer joy of Christmas, entranced by the wonderful sounds that only a preschool choir can make.

The real treat for Jack was having Billy, Kennon and Lulu in the audience. They even got the always hilarious preschool "shout out" while he was up on stage.

And of course there were the celebratory cookies and lemonade shared with his two best buddies. As days go, this was a pretty good one...

Santa

Nothing frustrates parents of small people more than the elusive picture with Santa.  As you might imagine babies are terrified of being placed in any stranger's lap, much less one with a beard and a giant red suit.  Older toddlers who like the idea of Santa are also often wary of getting too close.  Jack for example loved to wave at the mall Santa but when asked if he wanted to go talk to Santa would reply matter-of-factly, "No thanks.  I'll just watch him from here."

I tried to walk a really fine line with Jack on this one.  On one hand, I was thrilled that he wanted to keep his distance from a seemingly jolly, but nonetheless strange man.  But I really wanted a picture of him on Santa's lap.  It's the holy grail of children's Christmas pictures.  I didn't even bother taking him when he was 12 months.  I knew no good would come of it.  When he was 2, we took him to see the famed Miller & Rhodes Santa who is now in residence at the Richmond Science Museum.  See previous post describing that fiasco.  This year, I was determined to have a pleasant experience and if that meant that Jack didn't want to sit on the fat man's lap, so be it.

At our club's Christmas party, Jack and Charlie sidled up the stage on which Santa sat and watched him with the other kids for a long time before deciding that maybe they'd have a go.

On a whim, I decided to add Will to the mix (he is a second child after all) to see what happened.  Will took one look at the beard and the glasses and lunged for Santa.  Some men are boob men; some are leg men; my Will is a glasses man...

Once Santa reclaimed his glasses and Jack was added to the mix, Will suddenly realized that maybe he'd been tricked into something unpleasant and immediately tried to escape.  I managed to get this one shot documenting the moment before giving up and heading to dinner.  That's victory enough for me...

Then we headed upstairs with friends and their children. 8 adults tired from chasing after their kids and 8 kids all hopped up on cookies and lemonade enjoying the "game" of hide and seek with their parents.  Fun times. Billy and I didn't even bother ordering for ourselves.  We just fed the kids and got out of there before the sugar high wore off... 

Winter Wonderland

One of our favorite traditions is a visit with our friends to the old Coleman Nursery collection, now housed in Old Town Portsmouth.  The Winter Wonderland features animated skaters, elves and woodland animals, running trains and, of course, the animated sleeping Santa.  I remember going to see it as a child and it's even better as a mother. 

At lunch afterward, Will got a little lovin' from his godmomma and godsister!