Merry, Merry Christmas!!

I love this time of year. Watching the children's excitement grow as Christmas Day approaches. Destyni and Jonathan were at such great ages this year. Jonathan understood the whole Santa idea and couldn't wait to run downstairs on Christmas morning to see what was left for him.
Like every year, on Christmas Eve we let the kids open one gift before they go to bed. It's always Christmas jammies, but every year Destyni looks and acts surprised. This was Alyson's first gift that she was able to help open.

I remember when we were young my older sister and I used to wake up before five o'clock trying to get our parents out of bed so we could go down and check out what Santa had brought for us. And every year I am surprised when our children aren't up all that early. It was after seven when Destyni and Jonathan came running into our room to wake us up. If only we could capture that excitement and let it out whenever we feel the need to put some positivity in our lives.

And over the holidays Alyson decided she wanted to grow up faster than what I had hoped for. She started sitting all on her own. She looked so cute sitting under the Christmas tree, looking all sweet in her little dress. She's to young to understand the idea of the holiday but loves looking at all the lights from the tree.

It was a great day, filled with love, laughter and lots of new sounds from all the new toys, mostly ones that the grandparents sent over =)

Mom, she's looking at me...

Sibling rivalry. Little fights, arguments, grasping for attention from any parent that will give it. The life of having to share. It's been said that kindergarten teaches sharing. I don't believe it. I think you learn to share as soon as you become old enough to start understanding that word. And sharing is hard, especially if it's having to learn to share your parents or siblings. I remember when my parents brought my younger sister Tasha home, and I have watched my own children adjust to sharing our attention. Even though this adjustment tends to be hard, I wouldn't change having sisters for all the attention in the world.

I have two sisters, younger and older, yep that's right...I have middle child syndrome (and both my sisters would agree to this claim) Even though they would say I suffer from the need more so than the want for attention, but that's neither here nor there! When I was younger you couldn't separate my older sister Tina and I. She was my best friend and I adored her. I still do.

 Her life is busy, she has two sons and a career that she works overtime to stay on top of. Tina is a nurse, I believe that there are some people who were born to their career. She was definitely born to be a nurse. It's more natural to her than walking. And she is an amazing nurse. I have seen her in action, taking care of our baby sister in the hospital, taking care of me in labor. I don't know what I would do without her in my life. She was by my side for two of my labors, and when I found out I was pregnant with my third I lived  away from her. I wasn't sure how I was going to get through the labor without her holding my hand, being my coach. I remember secretly praying that I would go into labor when she came to visit a few weeks before I was due. It didn't happen, but ironically enough she wouldn't have been allowed in with me. One of the things I miss most about living on PEI is spending time with my sisters. But for the times that I can't be there, eating chocolate cheesecake with Tina and laughing at previous holiday snafus, I have fond memories of big wheelers and sandboxes!!!

Relaxing...For Real Real

Right now I am sitting on my bed, drinking red wine and grasping at a thousand thoughts running through my head. This is the first night that I have been on my own since we moved to Ontario. Scott has gone to the airport to pick his mother up, she'll be spending Christmas with us. And I am kind of liking the peace of the house. The children are all in bed and I am relaxing!! Real relaxing, not the kind of forced relaxing that most of us moms try to convince ourselves that we are doing. The sitting on the couch watching TV, folding laundry, picking up toys and making mental lists of all the housework that should be getting done if you weren't relaxing. Nope! Tonight I am "real life" relaxing, and it feels great. I know that there is a load of laundry downstairs that needs to be folded, a bed that needs to be made up and I am sure that I did not turn the dishwasher on, but for this night I am not going to worry about it. The laundry can be put away tomorrow, the bed can be made later and if there happens to be no dishes for breakfast, well that's the bonus of having birthday parties, there is always paper plates left over !

This is putting a nice end to a long week, and not really a great week. The kind of week that kicks your ass on Tuesday and you aren't really sure how you are going to get to Friday, except with a little bit of hope and caffeine, loads and loads of caffeine. Jonathan ended up getting sick at the beginning of the week and it's heart wrenching. He is this child who has more energy than any other child I have ever known. He has a fever that has been going up and down for three days now, and his energy is just completely drained. But being an active four year old all he wants to do is get back into routine. He asks everyday to play on the Wii, or to go outside. It's so hard to say no with no good reason a four year old will validate. Yesterday he came up to me and said, "Mommy, I feel much better. Can I go and give Alyson a kiss now?"--melt! Give her a kiss, hell you can take her out for ice cream, here is the keys to the van, my credit card and anything else you need. Seriously...how do you say no to that?

And yes it's only Thursday, but Scott's work week ended today so mine does as well. Just being able to share the nighttime feedings is enough for me. And yes, we still get up for nighttime feedings.  So for now I think I am going to bask in this short lived peace, finish my wine and "real life" relax!!

Oh Christmas Tree....

Today was all out Christmas in our house!! We went and picked out our tree yesterday and let it settle all night so it would be nice and full for today. That's my only concern when picking out a tree, I don't care what kind of tree it is, I don't care if it drops needles or not but I need a fat tree!! Big, puffy, hardly fit in your front window fat. This tree is a bit thinner than I had hoped for. It took us quite a while to find someone, anyone who was selling trees and we didn't feel the need to go searching elsewhere when we did finally find someone. We could have went to a tree farm, made it a special day for the family, took the camera and made memories but after three feet of snow plunking down in just a few days I had my own  images of what going into the woods with three children in three feet of snow would  look like. 

Scott set the tree up last night after we got home but Jonathan was really in no mood to wait. We had brought down the tree decorations a few days before and his always busy hands found them and he decided that he wasn't waiting for this to be a family event. He wanted to decorate by himself.

But today, the real tree decorating day there was lots of little helping hands. Jonathan started by helping out but somewhere along the way he found some wooden toy soldiers and when I looked over at him the toy soldiers were in some critical dispute about which one of them left the group to go and hide under the blanket. And then there were two.

Alyson was helping out as well, I was carrying her to the tree to place an ornament on one of the branches and just walking around with her on my hip. I thought she was enjoying herself but clearly Christmas decorating is for the seasoned celebrators. And then there was one...

Destyni loves to help decorate for Christmas. She loves searching through all the ornaments and asking if she made it, or how old she was when she made it. A lot of the decorations we have in our home are handmade so they are quite special. And most of them were made by Destyni.

So even though we lost a few cuties to playing and napping, the tree is almost done, the decorating almost complete but we are definitely ready for Santa.