Merry Christmas

Christmas was so great this year! Busy, but fun. My entire family was in town, so my mom had a very full house. This is the first year where the cousins have all been together and been old enough to actually enjoy playing with each other. The girls, especially "lil sis" really liked looking at "the baby". It was very cute.

I was very pleased to have a white Christmas this year. I was getting a bit nervous, but our weather pulled through and we got dumped on pretty much the whole week before. For me, it's just not Christmas without snow.



The highlight of my gifts from Jay was an MC Escher calendar. "A measly calendar?" you ask? This is no ordinary calendar. Jay shrunk down pictures of our family and cut them out and glued them in about 2/3 the dates, and the other dates have lovey quotations hand-written in.

I'm a sucker for homemade presents :)


The Frog also gave me the best possible present... he slept in! I couldn't believe it! It was the first time that I got to wake up naturally since he was born. Yes folks, I slept in until 10:20. I thank my family for wearing him out :D

Finally, we cheated and waited to buy a fake tree until the day after Christmas (50% off!) and put it up then. We don't have a ton of ornaments, but I think it's pretty cute anyway :D

Merry Smithmas!

Well, the Christmas Chaos is in full throttle- the whole fam is in town, cookies are in the oven, snow is falling, and the presents are mostly all wrapped. (Oh, I take that back. Snow was falling) I just love any excuse that gets the whole Janet-clan together :) And if that's not good enough, we get to have Jay's family in town this weekend, so we're surely busy.

We couldn't wait to give the Frog his Christmas present, so we already opened it for him. It's the famous Bumbo! Sadly, they only had 2 left at Baby's R Us, and they were both pink, so our little man will have to prove his feminine security by using a pink seat. I think it will be good practice for later.

The Frog has been mighty busy at other things as well. Nanny gave us some wrist rattles that I never really used much because he didn't really get that all his flailing was making that rattley noise, so I figured, what's the point? However, I discovered that if we strap them to his hands instead of his wrists, he enjoys sucking on their faces (one's a monkey, the other an elephant) without having to constantly hold on to them. (i.e. without me having to constantly stick them back in his hands) so that's been pretty fun for him.


Probably the most exciting thing, though, is today he finally pushed up on his hands!! I think it may have been a fluke, though, because we tried to get him to do it again, with my camera hovering, and he never did it again. Got close though... You can see him last week in his red sweatshirt, and then today in white. Maybe he's saving it for a Christmas present :)

PS Happy Birthday Joseph Smith!

The Tiny Tie

Sunday was quite an eventful day for the Frog. He wore a collared shirt and tie for the first time-- thanks Eva for sending it to us! He looked sooooo handsome. (Yes, I took this shot during church. I was going to wait to get a daddy-son shot, but the Jay pointed out that he might spit up on it by the time we get a chance, so I did it right then. Notice the typical Mormon pew in the background :D) It's still a bit big on him, hence the rolling back of the sleeve, but I just couldn't wait any longer for him to try it on.

I love how he looks like he's being reverent in this shot. ;)

Eva found this little number at H&M--ohhh how I wish we had them in Utah or could at least order things online. I haven't seen any ties for such a little guy anywhere else and I am inspired to try to make my own. We'll see...


The other big event on Sunday was that the Frog got to spend time (awake!) with his best friend Caleb. (even though he doesn't know it's his best friend yet...) They were born a day apart and have similar tastes in clothing-- they were both wearing Tigger outfits! The Frog swears they didn't even call ahead to check with each other, and I believe him. (Mostly because he hasn't quite learned to master the telephone yet.) The two boys are unaware that they spend over an hour together almost every day while their moms walk together, usually one or the other is asleep. Yesterday, though, they spent a whole evening together while their parents made/ate pizza and played Arkham Horror. (or Arkham "harrer" if Jay is saying it :p) We had a great time!

You Stocking Me?

The stockings are done! Not sure if they'll be our permanent family stockings, but they'll be great for a few years at least. I'm amazed at how quickly they worked up!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

My my, time flies...

We had a fun, but small Thanksgiving up at my mom's this year. Realizing that I have never made a turkey on my own before, and commenting to Jay that I would be very nervous to attempt my first one under the pressures of the holiday, he suggested we buy one and try to cook it on a normal day- sans pressure. So we did.

I had full intentions of making it, but as it turns out, Jay pretty much did the whole thing.  (to the surprise of his mom ;) Jack needed to go to sleep right when I needed to be prepping it and putting it in the oven, so Jay took out the neck (we couldn't find the giblets until after it was cooked. oops), rinsed it, patted it dry, and stuffed it. The frog was finally asleep in my Moby Wrap Baby Carrier (I love this thing BTW) so I had a free hand to brush the turkey with olive oil and then Jay put it in our oven bag and put it in the oven.  

So turns out that it's not all that involved to make a turkey, but I guess I can't technically say because I didn't really make it.  I think it turned out really well!

Jay carved it and we ended up with 3 plates piled high with turkey (the 18 pounder was the smallest one I could find) and we each had about one slice.  Needless to say, I froze 5 quart size bags of cooked turkey and am probably going to end up making turkey enchiladas, soup, curry, etc until it's all gone.  Suggestions welcome!

Other than that, we've been pretty busy with the Frog's "schedule"- meaning as soon as I feel like I'm understanding his sleep patterns, he does something really unpredictable and gets it off kilter.  *sigh*  At least he regularly has a 7 hour time stretch between feedings... now if I could just get that stretch to be while I'm sleeping, we'd really be doing something great!

I've put up Christmas lights all around the house and on the front of our yard, and gave in and bought some decorations before the post-Christmas sale, though we may not buy a fake tree until after Christmas to get a good bargain.  Kind of sad, but Jay and decided not to do presents this year anyway, on behalf of saving for a new washer and drier, so it would be depressingly empty underneath anyway.  We are going to fill each others' stockings though- which means we need to own stockings.  I've picked and cut out fabric and some decor for our stockings and I'll hopefully get those made up by the end of the week.  Pictures to follow :)