It's Gobbles Time!: Emerging from Hibernation

Now that life has gotten back to normal, it's time to dust off the ol' keyboard and jot down what I remember from the last 6 weeks. Never in my life could I imagine just how hectic the holiday season is with a ~~baby~~ toddler. Yes, I know the Gobbler was around for last Christmas too, but that December consisted of me sitting on my ass and making gooey-eyes at the new baby while my mom cleaned my house for me and gave me food....probably the reason I was forty-two lbs heavier starting 2010 than 2011... (thanks again weight watchers)

Anyway, this year, after getting back from Florida, the holiday season was in full swing. Between unpacking, wrapping gifts, decorating & tree trimming, cookie baking, 2/3 of our family getting sick, cleaning the house, hosting a much needed ladies night, and playing catch up at work in order to make the end of the year scramble, we could barely keep it together before we had to pack our bags, dogs, and child to head up to Hubs' hometown to celebrate the holidays. I love you Gobbles and your birthday is so important to me, but we're never going to Disney in December again.... or at least as long I'm a working mommy.

Christmas weekend itself was a fantastic whirlwind of family, presents, puppies, and more presents. Our little guy is the only grandchild on both sides, and with each of the three Christmases he celebrated, he came away with more loot. I don't know how we'll ever travel for the holidays with a second child, because the SUV was packed full coming home, there'd be no room! And that doesn't include all the love and hugs and kisses he got that don't take up any room. Between his grandparents and aunts, Gobbles is one lucky kid. I think the only way for us to ensure that he doesn't come out a little too spoiled is for one of our sisters to have a kid too... just sayin'...

Oh yea - I know the other reason why everything was such a blur those weeks - being on vacation completely ruined Gobbles' schedule. And he was cutting 3 teeth. He spent like 10 days in our bed after Florida kicking us in the face while trying to sleep. When he finally got back to his normal crib / sleep / not crying routine, we dragged him out for Christmas again ruining his schedule. I can safely say that he's back to sleeping through the night happily but wow did I feel like a zombie for so long!

I was lucky enough to have two days off the week after Christmas, and we spent it reorganizing and purging the basement of all that we don't need. I don't understand where all of this stuff comes from - every year we haul off at least 5 bags / boxes of stuff to goodwill, and the following year we'll come up with a half dozen more!

This year the big losers were:
(1) My first cd player (I hate to say boombox because it's pretty small compared to those big monsters), complete with long defunct local skateshop CHAOS bumper sticker adhered to the front.
(2) My husband's Mr. Beer kit, a cheapo homebrewing thing I got him years ago and he used once
(3) My college notebooks. I don't know why I was saving them since I still have my textbooks, but I guess I thought I had use for the notes I took on hydraulics or the doodles I made of the strip-club to be called The Full Romanian (we didn't have confidence in our engineering careers back then so we came up with some alternates, just in case)
(4) My engagement, shower, and wedding cards. More specifically, the ones that didn't have any personalized note in them, I am way to sentimental to toss them all. We of course kept the response cards (in case we want to know what everyone ate 50 year from now). They had all been sitting in my giant card box that I had made out of 11x14 picture frames. We had no room for this box so I took it apart and just kept the frames and the special cards.
(5) Nintendo games. We don't have a game system, yet we have all these games. Huh?

Holdouts include:
(1) My fondue set. It's been on the same shelf in the basement since we moved in (... 5 and a half years ago???), but this, along with a bunch of other kitchen essentials, are just waiting until we someday will have our giant dream kitchen with space for everything
(2) A hand-me-down surround sound system that hubs got from his dad's wife's son. Don't know how it ended up here, but hubs is very reluctant to part with it.
(3) Sega & Games. A man and his video games are hard to part - the Nintendo ones were a struggle, and nevermind that we have a Playstation 2 and 3, but I figured hubs could keep them since my bin of care bears and cabbage patch kids were off limits to even be touched.

And finally - into the attic went yet another bin of my son's too small clothing. We now have two regular sized and one extra large Rubbermaid bin of clothes. From one year of his life. The basement holds more extra large bins of infant car seat / bases, jumperoo, baby swing, bouncer. His upstairs closet a bumbo chair, activity mat, and various pieces of the pack and play that are no longer needed. It is amazing how much stuff has come and gone for one tiny person over just one year. A testament to how much he is growing and developing no doubt. Even his walking fisher price dinosaur has gone from "help me walk" mode to "forget that I don't need help walking - ride me!" And he can't really ride it around yet, he just kind of sits on it and humps it, but enjoys it all the same :)

The transition of toys at home has coincided with the transition at school. As of February 1, my baby will no longer be in the infant room with all of the teachers he has grown to love. He's moving on to what they call first step, where he'll sing & dance more, learn more, and only take one nap a day. The other day I brought all of our unopened jars of 3rd stage food to school and handed them to his teacher - here, maybe someone else can use them. The teacher thanked me an reminded me that I don't need to send a bottle anymore - he does fine out of the sippies (um, but at home he's still a bottle guy!?! How can this be?)

Doing chores at home has gotten easier too. No need to do anything one handed, now instead it's as if having just leg with since son's arms wrapped tightly around them as he stands at my feet. The puppies are no longer curious or shy. Now it's just let me eat my dinner as fast as I can before this guy walks over to my bowl and flips it over. Of course, they know they always have a second chance at dinner anyway when we roll out the high chair - Gobbles cracks himself up tossing half his dinner off the side to see who will catch it.

It must have been during the blur of the holiday craziness, but we have definitely started 2011 with a toddler. A running, climbing, puppy swatting, medicine spitting, tantrum-throwing toddler. I can't wait to see what this year brings. (... ahem, since this year is two weeks old, so far it's brought some downtime at home, an ear infection, and fun in the snow! but that's for another post....)