Wordless Wednesday - Preparing for Christmas

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house.

Mom, can you help me write a letter to Santa?? ---Evie with the Toys R Us ad

  Apparently, it's inherent that kids know where to find the toy ads and catalogs that come with the Sunday paper.  Evie had no problem finding this, walking around with it pretty much all afternoon, and paging through it when she felt like sitting down.  M and I thought it was hilarious. 

I'll take one of everything!!

 M loves Christmas.  He decorates the whole house, and doesn't even ask for my help!!  (If it was left up to me, our tree probably wouldn't go up until December 23-ish.  It's not that I don't like Christmas, I'm just lazy about decorating for the holidays.)  He even put up our outside lights in the rain on Saturday afternoon.  What a trooper!

Christmas tree, 2011 version

We were worried that we were only going to be able to decorate the top part of the tree that is out of Evie's reach.  :)  But she has been really good about not picking at it. 

I can't believe that it's almost Christmas!?!?!!?!

Post-Partum Hair Loss

Same tract of new hair growth...soooo annoying!!!

It's kind of hard to tell from this picture,
but it's about an inch and half wide
tract of hair above my forehead.
That's where it's the worst.

About 3 months after Evie was born, my hair started falling out.  It came out in clumps in the shower, around my house, in my classroom...I was disgusted!  The hair loss waned after about 3 months, and things were pretty much back to normal, except that I was totally paranoid about leaving a trail of hair behind me wherever I went.

 I didn't realize how bald I must have been until all of the hair started growing back.  At first, it was just a bunch of spiky hairs that wouldn't stay laying flat.  Now, it looks like a layer of my hair that is about 2 inches long, and covers my whole head.  It's too short to pull back into my ponytail, but it's too long for my headband...it falls forward over the headband and is incredibly annoying. 

I can't wait for it to grow just *little* bit longer so that it's not so weird looking.  I can't do much with my hair right now and it's driving me a *little* insane.

Did anyone else have CRAZY post-partum hair loss?  How has yours grown back??

Getting my priorities straight

I was cruising the headlines on Yahoo! and I found this article, Loving the Husband More Than the Kids is Key to Good Life.  I am a sucker for relationship-related articles, and this obviously piqued my interest.  The author supports putting your husband ahead of your kids as crucial to a happy family.  Often, women feel that they must put their children ahead of their spouses (and themselves) to prove to the judgmental world of other women/mothers that they have their priorities "straight."  It's all supposed to be about the kids, right??  She says that if women put their marriage ahead of their children, the whole family will be happier in the long run. 

As a mother/teacher/human being, it's been driven into me that the kids (my students, the starving children of Africa, my own child, etc.) have to come first or I will be a bad person.  Obviously, my child is important; I'd do pretty much anything if I knew that it would help her.  Most of us probably feel that way, right?  DUH!  I'm not promoting leaving your kid to cry in his/her crib in a dirty diaper so that you and your husband can have a quiet dinner, but I do think that creating couple time is essential to a happy family.

As much as I believe that, M and I have been doing a pretty poor job lately.  Before Evie was born, I thought that our first year of marriage was the most difficult.  And it was difficult.  We had lived together before we got married, but something about making it legal changed things for us.  We weren't always very considerate of each other, and we had to find our groove.

About a month after our first anniversary, we were out for dinner one night, and we were laughing and having a great time.  I looked at him and it hit me that we had gotten past the rocky, newlywed period.  I said, "Being married to you is really fun."  He said that he thought so too, and from then on, it was the two of us: married and loving it!!

Of course, we both knew that having a baby would change our relationship, but I didn't think it would take us this long to find our groove again.  I still love being married to M.  He is my best friend, my biggest supporter, the only person I want to talk to about my biggest dreams, and my biggest fears.  After Evie is grown up and living her own life, he's the one I still want to be with. 

Reading that article really made think.  Who have I been putting first?  Have I been giving so much to Evie that I don't have anything left for M?  How must that make him feel???  I showed him the article, and we had a long talk about it.  I hope that it changes the way we think about our family.  I want Evie to learn what a loving marriage looks like, and I want to start putting M first.

16 Months

I can't believe that it's been a year since this:

This is one of my favorite pictures of her of all time.  My dad took care of her so that I could go shopping early on Black Friday last year when she was 4 months old.  Evie was a bit of a crab for him...but he did manage to get this picture.  LOVE it!

But now, Evie is 16 months old!  Crazy how time flies!!!

At 16 months:

• Evie's new words are "no" and "book."  "No" is not exactly a great development, but it's kind of nice when she's not using it to try to scold me.  She will tell me "no" to more food when she's done eating, etc.  That's kind of cool to be able to communicate with her more.
• Walking is so totally last month...now she's picking up speed.  Running is where it's at these days.
• She has mastered blowing kisses in the past few weeks.  This is something M has been trying to get her to do for a while now.  I'm not sure that she completely understands what she's doing, but it's still pretty cute.
• Evie went trick-or-treating for the first time.  We didn't actually ask for any candy.  We just stopped by a few neighbor's houses.  Evie loved walking around with all of the other kids.
• Evie ate her 1st Thanksgiving dinner.  She loved the turkey and the dinner rolls!!  She didn't care for the mashed potatoes or stuffing, but she did like the brownie I shared with her for dessert.  :) 
• She has started throwing more and more tantrums...not a good milestone, but it's all part of asserting her independence.  For the most part, I can distract her or ignore her so that she quits.  We haven't had any serious meltdowns in public yet, but I'm sure our time is coming.  
• Evie is working on animal noises and finding her nose, ears, etc.  Hopefully I can post about some of those milestones next month!!

Playing with the dog last week.

 Each month, she keeps growing and growing, and I am more fascinated with this little person that she is becoming.

Thanksgivings Past

Two years ago on Thanksgiving, M and I found out that we were going to be parents.  M had to work that day, so we couldn't drive to either of our parent's houses for the holiday.  We went to big Thanksgiving buffet at a local country club, and celebrated the holiday just the two of us.  We didn't want to announce our pregnancy until Christmas, so it was kind of nice to spend the time with each other, without our families. 

It's hard to believe that it was two years ago already.  In other ways, it's hard to believe it was ONLY two years ago.  This year, we are going to M's parent's house; Thanksgiving on the farm, as I like to call it.  It will be fun.  I love my in-laws and they don't get to see Evie very often.  But lately, I've been thinking  that it would be fun to tell each of our families that we are going to the other one's house and just spend the holiday here, as our own family.

I could never really do that.  I'd feel way too guilty.  Plus, as Evie gets older, I know she'll want that time with her grandparents and her cousins.  The holidays are so hectic sometimes.  I guess I'm just feeling nostalgic for that Thanksgiving a couple of years ago when it was just me and M.