December

Every year, it seems like the holidays come and go so quickly. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are always so busy that, looking back, they are a blur. Thanksgiving must not have been too remarkable because I don't have any pictures! I took the boys home to my parents' house. It was just us for dinner but my mom did a great job with the turkey and other Thanksgiving must-haves.

Right around Thanksgiving is the start of hunting season, so I always joke that I'm basically a single mom until the week before Christmas. Not really a convenient time, as it is always the busiest time of the year at work, and I can no longer do Christmas shopping when Connor's with me. Thank God for Amazon.com! On one of the days Ryan was hunting, I took the opportunity to torture have a little photo shoot with the boys for our Christmas card. 

On December 6th, Ryan and I took a bus trip to NYC. My parents accepted my offer to spend some quality time with their grandchildren, so we met halfway the day before. New York was very fun, but very wet. It poured all day long. The bus dropped us off in the Times Square area and it was a madhouse. We had to buy $5 street vendor umbrellas and it didn't take long for me to get enraged by the crowds, mostly because I was tired of getting my eyes poked out by other people's umbrellas. After a quick stop at FAO Schwartz (we left empty-handed, pretending that we just didn't want to lug huge bags around the city all day but knowing full well we really couldn't afford anything there anyway), we took a cab down to the Chelsea Market area. It was much less crowded and we had a great time eating and drinking our way back up to the bus for the next several hours. Sorry boys, your college funds are gone. 

Connor and Grant had a great time at my parents' house. My mom and dad were crazy brave enough to dress them up, take them to the mall, and wait in line with them so they could get their picture taken with Santa.

That's obviously not Santa whose lap he's on.

That's not Santa, either, although he probably could be.

My mom said that Connor was really excited to talk to Santa but right when they got up to the front of the line he got shy. I'm not sure if he talked to him or not. The picture is cute - neither one looks particularly happy, but neither one is having a meltdown either so I'd say it was a successful first visit. Santa visited daycare a few days later and Connor told me he "sat on his lap and gave him a high five!" so maybe he just needed to warm up to him.

Daycare has a Christmas program every year, but this was the first year that they included the two year olds. It was on a Tuesday evening in the auditorium of the hospital. We almost didn't make it. I picked the boys up after work and knew that I would have just enough time to feed them dinner, change diapers, and get Connor's outfit on before rushing back out the door to make it in time for the show to start. Connor conveniently decided to throw an epic tantrum just as I was about to get him changed. He didn't want to wear that outfit!  He didn't want to put on his coat! He didn't want to sing Christmas songs! He didn't want to see his friends! Ryan works late on Tuesdays and I'm pretty sure I was wishing I was still at work but I somehow managed to get them both in the car and get there in time, although by the time I dragged both kids through the parking lot and dropped Connor off with his teachers, I was sweating profusely. There were only about 7 kids from Connor's room there, and their performance took about 90 seconds total but it was very cute. I stayed for the other performances but hightailed it out of there as soon as it was over before they handed out candy canes to all the kids.

He was really impressed by his brother's performance.

Halloween

It's been so long since I posted (again) that I forgot where I left off. I was secretly hoping I had at least put up pictures of Halloween, but no such luck. CC, thank you for your occasional not-so-subtle texts about the status of this blog (about a year ago - Colleen: Sorry for your loss. Me: Thank you, but who died? Colleen: Your blog.; and a more recent one - "Is your blog dead?"). I'm sure my kids will thank you someday when there are old enough to see that I only update once every three months!

So, Halloween seems like forever ago, probably because it was. I was thinking that this might be the last year I get to decide what Connor will be without any opinion of his so I knew I wanted to have the boys' costumes coordinate. I searched Pinterest for ideas and had several cute ones from which to choose. In my head I forgot that I work full time and have zero creativity and craftiness, so most of my ideas were really unrealistic. Connor really likes fire trucks and a couple weeks before Halloween the local fire department came to daycare for a presentation and he talked about the fire truck for several days afterwards, so I decided to have Connor be a fireman and Grant be the fire station Dalmatian.

Neither kid was thrilled to have his picture taken, in costume, at 6:45am.

They had a little party and parade for the kids at daycare. By that time Connor realized you get candy on Halloween and both of them had perked up a little. 

The week before Halloween, I took the boys to one of the local assisted living centers to trick-or-treat from the residents. My friend Adrianne also took her kids. It was a nice, easy, warm, and short introduction to trick-or-treating. On Halloween, we pretty much just stayed at our house. Connor enjoyed sitting on the front porch helping Ryan hand out candy (and toothbrushes/toothpaste). By far, the highlight of his night though was when the police car pulled up in front of the house and started hang out candy to the trick-or-treaters. I walked him down the steps to get some candy and he screamed "Thank you, Police!" and then talked about the police car giving him candy for three days.

Honestly, Halloween isn't really my favorite holiday, and I wasn't disappointed when we ran out of candy about an hour after we got our first trick-or-treater (well, okay, I was disappointed by the fact that Ryan didn't save me any!) but it was really fun to see Connor and his little friends enjoying all the activities. However, the day after Halloween I was pretty much ready to break out Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" and drink hot chocolate!