Survival of the Fittest!

Well as the title of this post suggests, we survived!  I'm not talking about the end of the world, I'm talking about Christmas.  This was our first Christmas with a monkey of our own.

We celebrated Christmas four days in a row with a lack of sleep for all three of us, and now, we are paying for it.  We spent an evening with M's family, and all eight of the grandkids were there, as well as all of M's siblings that live within a short driving distance; this is something that doesn't happen very often.  It was wonderful to see everybody (almost) at the same time.  We stayed up late, playing UNO with
the kids and Grandpa.

We spent a day with my dad's family, which is always enjoyable.  My cousins, siblings, and I are all growing up; most of us are in college, graduated from college, and/or married.  Some of us live out of state, so the only time of the year that everybody is likely to be back at the same time is for Christmas.  It's great seeing everybody, but this year was difficult for me because I was busy running after a monkey, which made it more difficult to visit with everybody.

We spent literally all of Christmas Eve day with my family.  Mom and I made breakfast for everybody who wanted to come, and M even made some of his homemade cinnamon rolls.  Our little family hung out there until it was time to go to church, which is very late in the evening.  Even though he was in jammies and had been asleep for a few hours, the little man stayed awake during the entire hour-long service.  I love Christmas Eve service, but I was so tired that it was pretty pointless for me to be there; I usually don't feel that way after the service, but of course, this is the first Christmas that I had to chase around my own monkey.  It was late when we got home of course, and we had to unload everything - something I dislike very much.  After all that, we had to set out our presents for YY and leave cookies for Santa - I'm sure he didn't have enough cookies before he got to our house.  We were all so tired that we didn't even hear Santa in our house.

We had a wonderful Christmas Day.  M got to be home most of the day, a rare thing, and Monkey Man enjoyed playing with his wonderful new toys.  He got big fire truck from Grandma and Grandpa that lights up, has a siren, moves, and plays music (loves it) and a big 'ol John Deere ERTL dump truck that Santa brought for him (loves it too).

Did I mention that YY was also sick during all of this?  We almost skipped a day with family.  He is feeling better now, but it still a tired little babe.

On Wednesday, we could finally rest.  I was fortunate to get several days off from work.  Since I actually had some time to work with him on learning new skills, it is amazing how much he has learned in a week.  He has now mastered (or almost) walking, waving, standing up without giving himself a boost using a chair or something, and has even started to run a little.  I can't believe how big he's getting, and he's growing so fast.  He's also so darn cute that I can't help but kiss those squishy little cheeks.  However, I must add that he has mastered biting and hitting people when he gets mad at them, something that is bad.  I hear parents say things like, "Well, Joey learned to hit and bite from Little Johnny at daycare."  My child doesn't go to daycare.  He spends more time with adults than he does children.  Therefore, hitting and biting isn't necessarily something that children learn from each other; they simply learn by doing it because it is a natural thing.  As the parent, it is my job to correct the bad behavior; this is something we are trying to do already, but it is difficult because he's so young.  There are many things in this world that he doesn't understand yet.

Our refrigerator broke on us last week, just before the thundersnow storm hit the midwest!  We have only had it 17 months.  Fortunately, we still have the old one out in the shop that we could fall back on; the freezer on it doesn't work and the fridge is much smaller than one we have in our house now, but we managed.  Fortunately, we had the deep freezer to fall back on as well.  It just sucked when we had to put on our shows, quickly run out into the freezing cold shop to grab the things we needed from the fridge, and we had to do it all over again to put everything back.  Finally though, it is fixed.  For a while, we were afraid that we were going to have to buy a new fridge or pay $800 for a new compressor.  Thank God it turned out to be an easy fix because we didn't have the resources to do either.  I just can't get over the fact that a major appliance like a refrigerator only comes with a one-year warranty.  How ridiculous is that?!

I tried not to overindulge too much on food over Christmas, but since then, I'm doing a pretty good job with eating until I'm just satisfied.  Unfortunately, I'm snacking... A LOT!  Until we get to the store, chips is about all we have for snacks.  I take that back, we also have Christmas and Halloween candy.  My mom gave us in our stockings a few truffle chocolate squares and LINDOR Milk Chocolate candies.  Both are HEAVENLY, but I haven't ate just one in a day; I ate at least two of them plus some of the other candy we have (like Snickers Miniatures Candy) in a day.  That is bad!  So very very bad!  M isn't much for sweets, but we have both been "fighting" over them.  There are only two of the Lindor chocolates left, and Monkey and I are the only ones at home right now.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to not eat them both right now?!  I am trying to exert some willpower right now, so that M an I can each have one, at the same time, later when he is home.  Did I mention that there are also some Gummi Bears sitting on my counter, two of them?  I almost ripped them open once today.  The day isn't over, yet!

The next celebration we have to survive?  Our baby's first birthday.  I have mixed feelings about that one.