Christmas in NY

After the visit with Mariah and my dad's family on Sunday, we enjoyed a family dinner with the Pecorino's and Aunt Kerry and Uncle Philip on Monday night.

On Tuesday, Debby and I surprised my mom by bringing Brennan to her classroom. Brennan got an early peak into what kindergarten will be like! He seemed to enjoy the story that was being read to the class. That evening, my grandparents and Aunt Rosie came for dinner. My mom's cousin and aunt also joined us, which was a nice surprise.

On Christmas Eve, we had a quick visit with my Uncle Lou's family and had lunch with the Monacos. Maimouna and Kylian flew into town that day too. You can see the matching pajamas my mom bought them. Gary, my friend from high school that I hadn't seen in over a year, also came over to meet Brennan.

Thank you all for your generous gifts! Brennan is going to be the best dressed baby on the block! And, Brennan seems to be enjoying his new toys! During the week, we practiced sitting up a lot and he seems to be mastering this new skill, which has been useful for playing with the toys. I think that crawling will be next!

We used the week in NY to get more serious about feeding him oatmeal or rice cereal every day. He seems to have taken quite well to it. I think he prefers to the oatmeal to the rice. Now that he is sitting up on his own, we started using our high chair that Mama and Poppy bought us. So far, so good!

We were in NY until the day after Christmas. That morning, Mariah and the twins came for another visit, as did Alissa! What a treat! We drove back on the night of the 26th. Brennan did great in the car. We left after his last meal of the day, so he slept the entire way through without waking up once!

The picture below is one of my faves from Christmas day - Brian, Brennan and Poppy all in matching style hats.

Meeting the Twins

We made the trek up to LI on Friday night. Despite the snow NY was getting, we only had rain in the DC area, so we hit the road around 7:20 pm and hoped for the best. Our first stop was in Baldwin at Mariah and Howie's house. We arrived a little before 12:30 midnight, so we had to wait until morning to see everyone. We had a great visit on Saturday with Mariah and Howie, and their beautiful 6 month old baby girls.

After the visit, we headed east and are staying with Brian's parents for a few days. Last night, we had a family gathering with my father's family at my mom's house. It was wonderful and I was so glad that all of my cousins came. In September, my grandmother, Nammy, took a fall and since then, hasn't been doing very well. My Aunt and Uncle brought her to my mom's house for the party. She seemed very happy to meet Brennan and we got some wonderful picture of her with the baby, with all of her grandkids, and with the entire family. I'm not sure if we'll have another Christmas all together, but I'm grateful for having everyone together yesterday.

One of my aunts was hoping to see Brennan laugh yesterday. He did very well at the party and was quite amenable to being passed around, but he hardly said a thing and we couldn't really get him to laugh. After everyone left, I started changing him into his pajamas and we got him going. I had never seen him crack up like this before. Debbie R, this video is for you!

The Routine

While in NY, our routine will likely be a little different, but on a normal weekday, I get up around 5:30 and hop in the shower. The little guy is awake by then, but he's content, so I don't go into his room until 6. Once I get him up, I change and dress him, then he eats breakfast. After he eats, we usually read together. Brennan's favorite books are Dr. Seuss's 'Foot Book', 'Brown Bear Brown Bear' and 'Are You My Mother?' I encourage him to hold the books himself as seen below, but that usually results in him closing the book and chewing on it! After a few books, he is usually ready to doze off and I finish getting ready.

I drop him off at daycare around 8 and Brian picks him up around 4. It gives Brennan two hours of Daddy-time everyday, which is nice. Brian tells me that they usually do tummy time together, with Brian doing push-ups to make Brennan laugh (as seen in the video below.) I am normally home around 6, in time to feed the little guy and put him to bed by 7. Then, we get prepared to start the routine all over again the next day. It may sound mundane, but I am really happy with how life is working out for us!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Prior to Thanksgiving, I was having trouble getting my head around Christmas shopping this year. With a baby, full time job and a house to maintain, when was I supposed to find time to shop?! But, I started hitting the mall at lunch, trying to knock out a gift a day and I actually did pretty well. Between my mall runs and online shopping, I am just about done. At the urging of my neighbors, I put lights out on the exterior of our house, but we took the lazy route this year and did not put a tree up. Oh well! Next year, Brennan will be more aware and we'll do a tree. One of our neighbors had a Christmas party on Saturday night and we had a babysitter come to watch Brennan. The babysitter is my coworker's daughter. She did well and so did Brennan. He took his bottle and went to bed pretty easily for her! Speaking of sleeping, here is the little sleepy head in the morning after breakfast. Thankfully, this is how I am usually able to get ready in the morning!

Last weekend, I help collect over 900 ounces of milk from a bunch of moms in DC and Arlington for the baby in Charlottesville that I have been donating to. Now, the baby has enough breastmilk to take her into the new year! I was so excited to see how generous these women were. I think that God's hand is on this baby's life and I am praying that he'll keep donations coming!

The weekend before last, we went to a get together with some of the mom's from the group that I used to attend when on maternity leave. It was fun to see how much the other babies had grown over the last two months, since I last saw them. Here is a little shot of Brennan "playing" with his little buddies.

We are heading to NY tonight. It'll be Brennan's first trip to Long Island. I am really looking forward to everyone meeting him. We are staying at Mariah and Howie's house the first night we're up and will spend much of Saturday with them. I can't wait to meet the twins! I was getting Brennan's bath ready this morning and needed to put him down while I got his towel out of the dryer. I was trying to be quick, so I just plopped him in the laundry sorter... I thought he just looked so adorable, so I had to take a picture. He now is all clean, packed and ready to hit the road!

Thanksgiving, Computer Hard Drives & Blog Guilt

We had a nice Thanksgiving last week. We hosted Brian's parents, and Brian and I did the cooking. Overall, the dinner was a success! We've been eating left overs all week. Brian gorged himself on the remaining stuffing last night :) Gary, Carol and I took Brennan to a holiday parade in Reston on the Friday after Tgiving. Brennan liked seeing the big parade balloons, he really followed them as they went by. It was nice to not have to travel for the holiday. It was the first time I wasn't on LI for Thanksgiving, except for when I studied abroad, so I did miss seeing my family, but it was so nice to be at my own home. And, Christmas is right around the corner, so I'll soon be seeing everyone. We will be on LI for a week at Christmas and litterally have an itinerary for everything we need to do. Hopefully we'll be able to squeeze everything in and see everyone that we want to see!

I've been a little slow on posting in part because I've been having trouble with my laptop. For a while, I was getting an error message that it couldn't find a hard drive when it was trying to load up. That was obviously not a good sign. Brian tried to fix it, but I had 30 days left of my warranty, so we called and Dell came out to replace the hard drive. That was great, but in the end, I didn't have all of my programs re-loaded for over a week, including the picture program I use to remove red-eye (all of Brennan's pictures of terrible with red eye), so I've been struggling to post since I couldn't edit my pictures. Now it seems like that I am back to having a fully functioning laptop (knock on wood!).

I love this shot of Brennan waking up from a nap on the couch, pictured below. These snazzy pj's were a gift from my friend Alissa. By way, Alissa just got engaged - congrats Alis!

This week on the radio, they were talking about Tivo guilt. Basically, its when people record a lot of shows on their Tivo or DVR box and then feel like its a chore or homework to watch it all. It's making TV watching unenjoyable. I sort of understand. I only record shows that I know we'll watch because I feel that I must watch it if its recorded. When our DVR gets full, I feel like we have to sit down and knock it out. It's somewhat crazy. I have similar "blog guilt." When I let two weeks pass without posting a new entry, I feel pressure, knowing that people are monitoring this site, expecting something new. It makes blogging feel like a chore. I know I need to step back and gain perspective, but I am sorry for those of you expecting more frequent posts!

In this picture to the left, Brennan is wearing cute turtle pants from Sara, Kenny and Meghan and a polo shirt from Aunt Kerry and Uncle Phil.