a christmas to remember...or try to forget.

Ivar got the flu on Christmas Morning around 1:30 at my folk’s house. We had celebrated Christmas Eve with the Groves and went to my parents to sleep overnight for Christmas Day with the Harringtons.


Unfortunately, it was violent and messy and long lasting. Basically, it was awful. It’s hard to watch your baby dry heave. But I do recommend if you’re a first time mom, try to be with your mom when your baby gets the flu for the first time. Because as a first time mom, you really need a mom of your own to mother you while you act as the mother to your baby. At one point in the night Rory said to my mom, “Margaret, you can go back to bed if you’d like.” And I told him mom was up for me, not for Ivar.

Another handy thing about being at mom’s is that she has an abundance of wash clothes and bath towels which is what we used to wrap our baby in and catch his mess. He blew through his clothes quite quickly and this served as a pretty great system considering how unpredictable the whole thing is.

We came back home on Christmas Day, and my folks headed to my sister’s to celebrate with her and her family. Ivar threw up throughout the day, but babies are funny and sort of bounce back between episodes. So we opened Christmas presents by the tree, watching the Yule Log and laying very low. I felt really ill after such a terrible night of sleep.

Monday came and I felt better than I have in months. I sorted my art supplies, switched a book shelf, and my folks came over in the evening to help with more projects. I was so motivated to sieze this new found energy! We swept, mopped, took the tree down (I know, pretty early, but what is the point of sweeping if you are going to take the tree down a few days later?!!) and the Christmas decorations (all three of them I had put up.)

Then my mom got sick. Really sick. 36 hours after Ivar, and she was down for the count. They left our house with bucket in hand and three hours later my dad caught the bug too. An hour after that Rory and I were hit. It was like war. This flu bug was picking us off one by one.

Monday night will not soon be forgotten. All three of us in this little home were violently ill and it was terrible. Terrible.

Tuesday came as a slow recovery day. But Ivar still threw up Tuesday night and then again last night. We took him to the doctor today and the doctor thinks the last three nights have been formula related with his system having trouble digesting the lactose in his bottles. So we’re onto soy formula and hoping this might be the key.

Did I mention that Annika’s little baby Svea got it too? And now Sonna has it. That family is like domino’s about to topple over and I am so, so sorry for them.

My dad is out grocery shopping for us right now, restocking the essentials: bananas, apple sauce, gingerale, saltines and bread. We’re a sorry sight here on Girard. Wouldn’t recommend coming too close.

Just thought I’d check in before the new year. Sorry if this is all too much information. I sort of just wanted to write it out so that years from now we can read it and thank our lucky stars it isn’t the Christmas of 2011.

cookie swap 2011

Monday was the Great Lisa Groves Cookie Swap 2011. It's my favorite event leading to Christmas, and even though the thought of making twelve dozen cookies made me gag, I decided to partake.

I got my game on. Thursday I mixed three batches of batter for the Sugar and Spice cookies. They're my favorite, and ginger cookies seemed like a good and smart idea for this pregnant lady. On Friday my mom came to help me bake them all. The first batch came out flat and greasy. They looked like this:

Mom started asking questions. Questions like, how much butter did you put in each batch of dough? To which I replied, "well, it calls for 3/4 cup butter, and I used three out of the four sticks in the box." I knew my error as I said it. I looked wide eyed at my mom and she sighed, "Oh honey, you are so pregnant."

And then she proceeded to spend the rest of her day in my kitchen whipping up three new batches of dough, attempting to resurrect the double butter batters with oatmeal, which sort of made them taste like greasy gingersnaps with oatmeal, baked all 12 dozen cookies from the new batter, cleaned my kitchen and went home after it was all over.

Can we get three cheers for my mom?!!

The cookie swap was, as always, fantastic. I love this gathering. I am very much included only because I am a sister-in-law. The rest of these ladies have been friends for over 20 years... they started out having babies together and now are sending them off to college. They have done plenty of life together and it is a privilege to get to listen in, watch the friendships in action, get to be a part of the stories told, the heartache shared and the deep laughter.

And it's always nice to come home with twelve dozen different cookies. Rory might love this event even more than I do, if that's possible.

rub a dub dub

Confession: Ivar hasn't been the most hygienic baby for the past six months. At some point around six months old, he decided he didn't like baths. (I'm realizing that this probably was because I was still bathing him in the kitchen sink in the baby tub because our bathtub is really high on the sides, a claw foot that sounds fancier than it is. The sides are really high which makes it hard to kneel and reach the baby...) As a result, bath time has been a wrestling match, usually ending with me as the soggy loser and both of us tuckered out. It's not terrible, but it's not fun either and leaves a mom a bit unmotivated to get the baby in the bathtub.

But something changed recently and we've got a little fish on our hands. He loves bath time. And I am realizing that the mom's who make bath time a part of their bedtime routine are really just trying to save their sanity. Because bath time comes at fall-apart time. The time when everyone needs to go to bed, but it's still just too early.

Bath time turns 6:00-7:00 into splashes and happiness, and mom's get to sit on the closed toilet seat and rest their weary selves for a moment. It's such a win win. Ivar looks nicer without crusted oatmeal in his hair and I get to sit in a steamy, humid room with a happy baby.

advent and preparation

We have a tree up with beautiful white lights on it. And I have a fisher price nativity set my mom gave us a few years ago that Ivar likes to play with (and by play, I mean throw the shepherds and wisemen around). But other than that, I haven't put up one single decoration. Oh, except the barn to a nativity set that I brought upstairs a few weeks ago...but I haven't unpacked any boxes to find the people, so it's just a barn. No peeps in the stable.

I just don't have it in me this year. I'm tired. I'm queasy and I sort of don't think I can handle adding more clutter to our stuff. As it stands our house is strewn with brightly colored toys and tupperware and it already feels full. More decorations just seems like it would be too much.

In an effort to comfort myself, to give permission to this years lack of tradition-making, I have been on a quest for fun advent ideas. And I found this post and wanted to link to it so that next year, when I'm feeling spry and energized, I can be the supermom I know I can be. Just not this year.

So check out this link of fun ideas for the 25 days leading up to Christmas. She has great ideas for family outings, special nights at home, service projects for others and then writes about that super fun idea of wrapping up all of the Christmas books at the beginning of the month and then letting your kids unwrap one book a night all throughout December and reading it before bed. I love this idea.

egg in the hole?!!

I am working my way through Pioneer Woman's cookbook and thought it was so odd she put a recipe in there for a piece of bread with a fried egg in the middle. Her cooking is always a bit more complicated than that.

But last night, as a last ditch attempt at supper (we're low on everything...) I decided to give it a go.

And oh my goodness, it was good. It wasn't just eggs and toast. It was like something different, with some egg baked into the toast, and the toast in ready position to sop up the runny egg. I don't even usually like sunnyside up eggs, but with enough salt and pepper I am a believer in this SUPER EASY and hey-that-felt-like-a-real-dinner recipe.

Here's her "recipe." I have a feeling I am really behind on this one. My guess is that many of you were raised on this, but egg in the hole is a new find for me, and I couldn't be more happy to have found another easy-peasy supper to add to the mix.