Deck the Halls

Oh dear me, it is December!

Our Elf the Shelf, Lightning McQueen, showed up and on the second night I almost forgot to move him. Might be a long month of this, especially now that the Lady and her girlfriends text each other photos of their elves.

Moms--you are killing me! I am doing the bare minimum of remembering to move this thing at night and now I have to scroll through the Lady's texts to make sure that Lightning is up to par with Chippy or Lulu or Buddy! I am literally putting this elf on a shelf. And really do they need clothes? What a freaking racket!

After the stress ball that was last December with packing and moving and trying to get it all together, I was thinking that come December 1, I would unpack my carefully organized Christmas decorations and deck the halls.

This is what my mantle/fireplace looks like right now.

A few things you may notice:

1. Lightning McQueen in a vase
2. A Halloween pumpkin painted like a black cat that hasn't started rotting yet so I haven't tossed it in the woods.
3. Two gingerbread Turkeys
4. Some fall artwork by the Little Lady
5. Two out of our 5 Advent calendars (I have a really cute wooden one in the attic)
6. QT and the Little Lady's school photos (yes, the Little Lady is wearing a leather jacket)
7. Some Uggliest Pet Shop dogs, which are disgusting but very important to QT
8. The shattered hopes and dreams of a mom with three kids who thought that she would be living with a garland draped mantle and cinnamon-scented air

Oh well, I guess I could get it all out tonight.

Have you started decorating for the Holidays?Fa la la la la. . .

Find a Penny, Pick it up, All Day Long You'll Have Good Luck. . .

. . .Unless of course you have spent the last three days sifting through the poo in your 2-year-old's diaper trying to find the penny he swallowed on Sunday night.

I guess it was good luck that I actually found it, clearly we tried to drive home the message of not putting anything in your mouth, and Lord knows this mamma needs a little luck in her life, but this wasn't quite the way I was looking to find it.

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It is full on holiday time and this year I wanted to be organized and ready to go. I had my Christmas cards ordered and delivered by mid-November, I made lists for gifts for the kids, cousins (and even myself) prior to Thanksgiving and had an Amazon cart full and ready for purchase come Cyber Monday.

Not wanting to dive right into the Christmas season and bypass Thanksgiving, I decided that we would get all the decorations down post-Turkey day.

We had a busy four days. We were all over the place and we had a great time seeing family and friends. However, by the time we got back to our place on Sunday around 2:30 we were all done. I tried to ignore the list of things that needed to be done.

Number 1 on that list? The Elf on the Shelf.

Here is where the mommy mind melt kicks in. I have a vivid recollection of talking to my husband about the fact that we had to put the Elf on the Shelf away last year. He was still hanging around post-holiday tree take down and I wanted to make sure the kids didn't discover him on my husband's dresser.

I also kind of remember putting it in a bin.

Fast forward to 8:30 Sunday night, we were about 2 hours post-penny swallow and the kids were in their beds but not quite sleeping.

I sent my husband out to bring down the decorations from the attic of the garage as I tried to decide the best place to put the Elf. He called me from the garage to let me know he couldn't find it and he had looked in "a lot of bins."

I love my husband. He does a ton for our family, but less than 24-hours earlier this conversation happened while he was looking through our diaper bag in order to change QT.

Sweet Husband: Where are the wipes?
Me: They are in the bag.
Sweet Husband: I don't see them, are you sure you put them in here? (Add some tone to this.)
Me: Yes. They are in the bag.
Sweet Husband: They aren't in the bag.
Me: Ok. I am sure there are some wipes here. (We were at his sister's house and there were like 10 kids there)

One minute later I look in the bag and there are the wipes. I am not saying he didn't look for them, I am just saying maybe he should have looked a little harder. So, I was a bit skeptical that he couldn't find the Elf on the Shelf.

The next morning the Lady came down looking for the Elf. I did some quick thinking and said that he didn't come because we didn't read the book first. She bought this as an excuse and I told her he would come that night.

I got home from work and headed straight to the garage. I looked in the Christmas bins that my husband brought down. No Elf. I looked in a lot of bins in the attic of the garage and guess what? That's right we have a ton of stuff that we don't need and don't use up there. There is also a ton of stuff that I would love to use if we just had a little more room! Also, no Elf.

We put the kids to bed, I pulled on a heavy sweatshirt and headed out again. 40 minutes later. . .no luck. WTF? Where was this Elf? Was I going to have to go out to Target at 9:30 p.m. and spend another 30 bucks on this thing? Ugh.

My husband said he would go pick up a new one, but first maybe we should look under our bed. Lo and behold, there he was in his box, hanging out for a year or so, just waiting for us to remember that we never even took him out of the house.

Victory was mine that night and the kids couldn't have been more excited to see him the next morning. Please remind me to move him tonight though!

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This is an actual conversation that took place last night as the Little Lady was once again on our bed a full hour and a half after bedtime. My husband was watching some sports talk show on HBO about the documentary "Trophy Kids." They showed a clip of the doc with a little girl golfing. Here is what followed:

Little Lady: Do you remember when Tiger Woods cheated on his wife?
Husband and Me: Um. . .yes
Little Lady: That wasn't very nice of him and now she doesn't even want to be around him anymore.
Husband: Yeah, he wasn't very nice.
Little Lady: I think she went and moved in with her dad.

Actually Little Lady, I am pretty sure she knocked down and rebuilt some huge palatial home in Florida and is dating her neighbor, but I am sure her parents wouldn't have minded if she moved back in. 

Christmas Wrap Up

Was everyone else ready to send their kids back to school yesterday? The Ladies once again doth protested. The Lady thinks school is "boring" she wants to be chauffeured there in the morning and home again in the afternoon and hates the bus again.

Speaking of the bus, you know that one that drops off everyday at 4 p.m. sometimes not until 5 after. Yesterday it showed up at 3:45. Guess who wasn't at the bus stop waiting? Me and our new sitter who needs to know when and where to get the Lady off the bus. Thank you kindly to the very nice mother who walked the Lady home. Can you say total parenting fail on my part?

Below are a few photos from our very busy couple of weeks. The Ladies went to see the Nutcracker ballet the Sunday before Christmas. They thought sunglasses were appropriate attire. They did have a great time and it did allow me some time to wrap some gifts.

We headed up to my in laws on Christmas Eve and headed home with the beginning of all the loot these kids would receive. I will admit that this year I went a little overboard for them. Add that to everything they got Christmas afternoon at my sisters and the Christmas Eve haul and these kids made out. So much so that my husband actually went out and bought a shelving unit with bins to store all the new crap. We probably should have removed a few things from the house before we brought anything else in but I am hoping to sneak around their room one night hoping not to break my neck on any small pieces of plastic that might be strewn about the floor and gather up some old toys to donate.

My hubby had the kids all week and he did get them out of the house for a bit. We celebrated the Wild Man's 5th b-day and hung out with some family. Overall it was busy and full of arts and crafts and cars and trains.

Here are a few pics:

The Ladies on their way to the Nutcracker! Thank you Aunt Stephie and Aunt Courtney!

Christmas morning. Santa brought scooters for the Ladies. The Little Lady was unhappy that she couldn't ride it outside. I explained to her that even though she was wearing the appropriate safety gear she wasn't wearing any clothes.

Poor QT. Soon they will be applying sparkle face cream on you as well. The Lady created her own Salon, complete with an open/closed sign. You should have seen the botched nail job the Little Lady did on me.

The big kids Christmas afternoon.

QT "ice skating" in silly socks he took from his sister's drawers. I have to love not only his commitment to cars, blocks and balls but to pink socks and princess legos.

Holiday Pics

The Lady at her concert. Note the bar behind them, about ten minutes after this was taken, as they were all sitting down, the Lady slammed her head on it and spent the rest of the concert singing the songs from her father's lap.



The Lady, The Little Lady and the Big Guy after their sleepover.



Decorating the tree. I made her put this robe on so that I could have some photos of her clothed.

The Little Lady loves to decorate.

The angel on top of our tree.

In Brooklyn for our playdate. Have to love the 6 ladies and one little man!

The Night Before Christmas. I couldn't resist, I mean really, look at the Little Lady's face

Santa brings the Lelli Kellys!!!

Iron man and the Lady at my in-laws.

Happy Third Birthday Wild Man!

Seriously Little Lady? I spent 10 minutes opening that box so you could play with the Little People inside and instead you feel the need to actually play inside the box?

Snowed In!

Treats and Presents and Candy

Christmas came in full force to our house this year.


The Lady woke up Christmas morning telling me that she didn't hear the reindeer's bells, but was incredibly overjoyed with the dress-up clothes that Santa left her, the ballet outfit she will be wearing to her ballet classes starting next week and the candy in her stocking. (I had a small crisis moment, standing in Target on the 23rd of December at 10:30 pm, trying to figure out if I should put candy in her stocking. We never had it, but for some reason she got it in her head that she was getting the aforementioned treats, presents and candy. I settled on one piece of candy, with the hope that next year, she will forget all about it. A mom can hope right?)

Anyway, had we stayed at our house the entire day, I think that I would have been able to handle the influx of items that have come into our house. However, we headed out and what we came back with the next morning not only took over the already crowded and cluttered space we live in, but has forced me to rethink why I even bothered to buy anything for my own kids.

We left home at noon on Christmas Day, opened presents with my family at my brother's new place, had dinner with my sister-in-laws family (on lovely Christmas china, with beautiful centerpieces and an overall Holiday theme that I can only hope to replicate one day, when I actually have a house that can fit more then the four of us.) We left there around 6:30--which in Christmas Day time felt like 9:30 and headed up to my in-laws. When we finally got around to opening presents at 8:30, I knew that the car would be more then over-crowded on the way home.

Due to an ice storm, we made the decision to stay over, where I slept in the t-shirt my husband had worn the entire day, because the Christmas pj's I got had a top so sheer that I am pretty sure you could see the stretchmarks through it. The four of us slept in one room, The Lady in her new sleeping bag and the Little Lady in the crib. Can someone say Christmas Miracle? The Little Lady slept through the entire night! Thank you Baby Jesus, Santa, and the Sandman.

The only problem was that at like 7 am, my boobs were so full and hurt so much that I couldn't sleep. I just tried to lay very still so that I didn't have to move and waited for her to wake up. I then spent the rest of the day in that same t-shirt, now stained with breastmilk and still smelling like my husband, dealing with some wedding drama with his sisters, until we finally loaded up all the stuff we got and headed home.

Good times.

Three nights later we were back, dropping off the ladies and heading out to Chicago for New Years wedding, which was a lot of fun.

I just have to get through my SIL's wedding this weekend and hopefully, I can find some time to relax a little. Or at least try to focus on myself for a bit. My main goal for this year is to fit in the me time, so I don't end up like the moms on the BL, screaming in Jillian's face and 250lbs.

Counting Down the Days

My husband arrived home last week and I couldn't have been happier. It is just a lot easier to have an extra hand here and there with the Ladies.

The Lady was very excited and has spent every morning since calling her daddy down to change her diaper. This frees up my mornings some!

We are in full holiday swing at our house and actually got a tree that isn't potted this year. The Lady was very excited to trim it and only broke two ornaments. Needless to say most of our more fragile ornaments are still wrapped up and packed away.

I still haven't finished shopping, but I am almost done. I wanted to be super organized this year, but as usual, things have been left for the last minute and finding the time to actually get out has proved more difficult than I thought.

Also, wrapping gifts takes considerably longer when the Lady helps put the "sticky tape" on.

I am trying to take a few extra deep breaths and I am also trying to stop shoving as many baked goods in my mouth as I can. Oh, the Holidays. . .