2014 Christmas Fun

Here is my one sentence summary of celebrating Christmas with a toddler: It is infinitely more FUN but infinitely more EXHAUSTING. It was so neat to see Brooklyn get excited about some of her presents this year. Last year, she was just too young to really care, but this year, she actually helped open her gifts and wanted to play with some of them right away! At the same time, it’s hardly a relaxing time when you’re dealing with an almost-2-year-old who is hyped up on sweets and casseroles and isn’t on her typical schedule. Add traveling and attempting to sleep somewhere other than your own bed/crib to that, and whew! I guess the days of relaxing go out the window when you become Mom and Dad :)

We went down to Trussville last Monday and stayed in town through Wednesday afternoon. It was a fun couple of days! Brooklyn definitely loves being with Paw and Rae Rae. Travis and I were able to celebrate our anniversary on Monday night, and we had a pretty lazy day around the house on Tuesday. On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), Mom made a delicious brunch for us, Aunt Jenn, and Uncle Chandler, and then we opened gifts after that. Then, we headed to Greenbriar to see Gran and Dadaw and then over to the Palmers’ house for a late lunch. We managed to make it back home just in time for church Wednesday night, so it was a busy but fun day! Here are (probably too many) pictures from our Christmas Eve:

Actually interested in her gifts! :)

Those curls! Right after she tore into this gift, she kept repeating “Open? Open? Open? Open?” until Paw managed to get all of the pots and pans out :)

Paw and Rae Rae also got Brooklyn her first Cabbage Patch doll…her name is Reese (Brooklyn’s middle name!).

One of Brooklyn’s favorite gifts was this baby doll stroller from Aunt Jenn and Uncle Chandler. At first, she thought the stroller was for her…haha :)

Another big hit (also from Uncle Chandler and Aunt Jenn) was a “doctor” kit. Brooklyn loves the thermometer, stethoscope, and medicine syringe the best!

Brooklyn caught about a 10-15 minute cat nap on the way to see Gran and Dadaw, and that was it until we headed home around 4:30 PM! I couldn’t believe it!

Excited about her new book from Gran and Dadaw :)

The best picture we managed to get of the three of us

This was taken after our late lunch at the Palmers’, so Brooklyn was definitely already tired! Can’t you tell?

Family picture :)

Me and my tired girl!

Group family picture–it’s rare for us to all be together at the same time, especially with Claire and Cecil living in NYC. Of course, we were missing Uncle Bill and Aunt Gale!

So, we were pretty tired by the time we finally got back to our house around 8:30 PM that night, but Santa still managed to make a quick appearance that evening. He brought Brooklyn a kitchen and some play food and a set of blocks. She also got some small books and stickers in her stocking. As luck would have it, she woke up around 1:30 AM that night and ended up in our bed for the rest of the night. (We’ve gotten much more cautious about letting her cry too long in her crib for fear that she’ll try to climb out and fall on her head again). So, none of us slept that great. Oh well!

*Side note: I’m SO mad at myself…I accidentally deleted several videos off my phone today while I was transferring them to my computer, and we can’t figure out how to get them back without “rooting” my phone…whatever that means? Travis says it’s complicated and might cause other problems. So, I lost my videos of Christmas morning, Christmas at Cici’s, and several videos since then. I have a couple of videos from Christmas Eve, but that’s it. I can’t believe I did that :(

So, here are some pictures of Christmas morning. Since I lost the videos that I took, you can’t tell how excited she was to open the box of food. “Open! Open? Open! Open?” Everything has to be done “yesterday” for a toddler, apparently :) At least she was into it!

All of the gifts from Santa–wonder how that kitchen fit down our chimney? :)

Santa should have known better and opened up that food instead of leaving it in the box!

We were a little late getting to Cici’s that morning, but we made it over there a little after 10 AM for brunch and gifts afterwards. We ended up spending all day over there eating and playing games in the afternoon/evening. It was a lot of fun! Brooklyn, of course, didn’t want to take a nap while there were people around to entertain, but she finally passed out around 4:30 PM that afternoon and slept for 2 hours on the couch. She wasn’t quite as interested in her gifts that day, and I think it must have been because she’d opened several already the day before. But, we still managed to get her interested enough to open and look at most of them. She got several books, puzzles, magnets, a backpack, and riding giraffe toy, and a couple of movies. She doesn’t know what to do with all of her new toys! :)

Of course, Brooklyn had the biggest pile of gifts!

She got help from several family members when opening her gifts!

Trying out Mommy’s new necklace :)

One of the neatest gifts she got was a set of refrigerator magnets that Cici made–each magnet has a different picture of a family member on it. She loves them!

Emily ordered this airplane print for Carter’s nursery on Etsy with all of his birth stats on it—I thought it turned out so cute!

Speaking of Carter, he got lots of love and attention on Christmas!

I love how this picture turned out—Carter looks like he’s smiling! :)

By late afternoon, Emily tricked Brooklyn into lying down on the couch with her, and it didn’t take long for her to fall fast asleep! (All day long, she kept asking for “bideo Brook-in”, meaning that she wanted to watch videos of herself on someone’s cell phone, so Emily lured her over to the couch to watch “bideos”…haha!).

So worn out!

Carter decided to take a nap at the same time. It was sweet! :)

It took several days, but I think I have FINALLY recovered from all of our Christmas fun. We are still arranging and rearranging to find a place for Brooklyn’s new toys, but we will make it work! It will all get reorganized soon enough when we start working on Sister’s nursery. (We’ve decided her name, but I will blog about that in a separate post along with some other non-Christmas updates). Hope you all had a very merry Christmas too! :)