2013 Holiday Recap

The past two weeks have brought snow, cold, and plenty of holiday cheer. This has also been an initiation into home ownership by necessitating endless shoveling. It has also made me exceptionally happy that we did not get one of the other houses we were interested in on the corner of two streets for it would have meant triple the shoveling we have at this place.

Our next house will be chosen as the one with the smallest yard and shoveling space.


The snow did afford a nice opportunity to have all the cousins sled together and still sort of be scared of the outside and the snow.


They did, however, tolerate a forced sled ride.


Before my parents' arrival I had to go pick up some stuff at Crate & Barrel. In exchange for using her car Lauren gave me a mouse from her basement that I was to deposit on the other side of the river from their house in a designated wildlife area. I did bring it to the other side of the river but I may have used the parking lot of the Crate & Barrel as the designated wildlife area. There was some grass across the street so I'm sure the mouse had a blast if he made it to the other side alive.



Nana and Grandpa arrived right on schedule and the boys were very happy to have the guests.


Particularly since Nana usually travels with six or seven different media devices, all of which are able to play various Elmo videos.

They like anyone who can give them access to Elmo.


The days leading up to Christmas were full of lots of assembly. My dad assembled their table and chairs while I assembled their wagon. They both wanted to help with assembly but when the wagon began to take form they wouldn't stop crawling into it making the task of putting it together take about ten times as long as if they weren't around.

Then, they wouldn't accept anything other than riding in their freshly assembled wagon.


On Christmas we put out their kitchen which my Dad had put together and they enjoyed having another large toy which they could fight over.


Christmas morning was full of delicious breakfast, mimosas, and opening about 25% of our presents before it was time for the guys to take their nap.


During their nap we continued to open presents, then picked it back up when they woke up, right up until dinner time.


They didn't even know what to make of it when they received an Elmo of their very own. They have been obsessed with Elmo in his many forms but no Elmo has ever captured their attention like the Elmo who stands and watches guard on their daycare room from high atop a shelf.

Now there was an even larger Elmo in their own home, one they could hug, interact with, and ultimately fight over.



For Christmas dinner I made my first ever crown roast of pork which was sensational.


It went down wonderfully with a huge bottle of Anchor Brewing Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.


After a very quick week Nana and Grandpa had to leave and hit the road back to Rhode Island.


We missed them right away but Elliott comforted himself knowing that he had the Zebra they had given Martin for Christmas, his new favorite toy.


Shortly thereafter Aunt Lisa had to depart as well.


Only after she reclaimed her sunglasses and phone from Elliott. All he needed was her wolf purse and he would have pretty much had her entire persona captured.


On the warmest night in the past month, with temperatures all the way in the 20s, we went to The Illumination at the Morton Aboretum.


They mostly just sat in the wagon, unmoving in the terrible cold.


Afterward we warmed up by the fire while I finished a beer that remained icy cold on our long walk through the park.



At home I was able to enjoy this Narragansett Coffee Milk Stout, a great after-dinner beer combining some of my favorite Rhode Island things all in one. It was a gift from my parents for Christmas along with my father's Narragansett beer glass that he got after touring their brewery in the late 1960s.


As things wound down after Christmas I made this leftover risotto with Jen's father's Christmas Eve ham and some peas.


Martin has taken to sitting down right beside our fireplace and just hanging out there.


Elliott, on the other hand, prefers climbing inside of one of our kitchen cabinets and hanging out on the shelf.

They have each found their respective fortresses of solitude.


For New Year's Day we made cassoulet, for the first time, in a Crock Pot. I have never used a Crock Pot in my life until moving to Illinois. Since we have embraced the return to suburban living so heartily it seems only fitting that we eat frequently from the warm bowl of a Crock Pot. It's only a matter of time before our pantry is stocked exclusively with cans of cream of mushroom soup and Ritz crackers.


In the past couple of days Elliott has discovered something new: tantrums. His latest thing is that he will actually lie on his belly and smash his own face into the floor as hard as he can. It takes very little to trigger this. It's not like he wants something and we tell him he can't have it. It's usually something small like he goes to pick something up and drops it, or that Martin gently bumps into him.

Last night was the worst night in a while as far as tantrums. Luckily it would seem that the head-banging thing is self-regulating in that eventually he will grow weary of bashing his head into the floor because it hurts pretty bad. Unfortunately, until he figures this out, he will have a pretty large bruise on his forehead.

We have also been serious about sleep training in the past week. As we have been guests in someone else's home for the past few months we felt it best not to torment our hosts with screaming babies more than they already were being tormented. Now it's time to get serious and let the guys, mostly Elliott, scream before bed. We've gotten good at not caving in and simply patting their backs or holding their hands until they fall asleep. It's too bad because it would be so much nicer and so much easier to just hold them until they fall asleep.

The funny thing is that while Elliott carries on a lot more before getting to bed, he has been sleeping through the night regularly since we started being strict about it. Could it be that this new technique has made for a better chance of the kids sleeping through the night?

Or could it be that I just jinxed us for a terrible, terrible night tonight?

Either way we're going to continue Googling: "Foolproof, easy way to make sure your child never has a tantrum." So far we haven't found anything but the answer has got to be there somewhere.

The truth is out there.

Taking Ownership

After much back and forth and much pain we have finally moved into our new house.


They didn't humor us with the "sold" sign and the U-Haul in the driveway is not ours but we finally did it.


On December 9th we met with a team of lawyers and mortgage gurus to sign our life away. Jen tallied up the total number of times we signed our names and it came to 69. It's actually only 11 times if you remove all the times they made us acknowledge that we need to have homeowner's insurance.


The first week of home ownership was snow-filled. In the first seven days of owning the house (and still not having slept there) I had already shoveled the driveway four times.


The effect was pretty sweet at Jen's parents' house with the light-covered bushes draped in a blanket of snow. It looked like one of those plug-in ceramic Christmas trees that everyone's grandmother had.


Tuesday morning started with the painters arriving at 6:30 AM. I showed set up a nice Dunkin' Donuts spread for them because America Runs on Dunkin'. Of course, all the painters were Polish and seemed to run on cigarettes.

Needless to say I had a lot of leftover coffee and donuts.


While they painted I made the first of at least a dozen runs to Home Depot, filling my car with new home essentials like shop vacs, outlet covers, and toilet seats.


The painters were able to accomplish a lot in the one day of painting, not the least of which was devaluing our bank account by thousands and thousands of dollars.


We went out to dinner with Lauren and Doug for the first time since moving here and then returned to the home only to run out to Home Depot after discovering a leak from a toilet. Then we were able to enjoy celebrate home ownership by measuring water damage to the ceiling and reseating a toilet, perhaps unnecessarily.


The worst of the snow was last weekend and we were able to take the boys outside to enjoy the snow. Instead of enjoying it Elliott tolerated it and Martin actively hated it.


They were mildly amused by the sled ride I gave them until I hit a snow bank and Martin tumbled into the snow. Since he refuses to allow gloves to be put on his hands he was not a huge fan of touching snow.

He does not believe that it is a marshmallow world. Instead, he thinks it is an inhospitable ice planet of doom.


Half way through our first week of home ownership Elliott had a rough night of screaming and not being able to be soothed. Jen took him to the doctor to find he had a double ear infection, then she took him to the pharmacy.

He was better for two days.


Then, on Friday, it happened again and it was my turn to do the clinic and pharmacy circuit. It was discovered that one ear had gotten better and the other had gotten worse. So I took him to the pharmacy again where he had a blast and was particularly happy when I purchased this Snoopy toy for him.

I think maybe the ear infections are a ruse in order to get us to take him to hang out at the pharmacy.


On the weekend it was back to work, sketching preliminary floor plans. This floor plan had actually been done before we closed on the house and, looking at it now, it is fairly inaccurate. But it gave me a good sense of where to tell the movers to put things and what I could do between trips to Ikea and Home Depot.


I also passed the time before our things were delivered by cleaning out the fridge while Lauren tackled the floors and the boys' room upstairs. I found many interesting things inside the fridge but mostly just a lot of dog hair.


Not as much interesting things as were found in the ductwork of the house. The cleaners said it had probably never been cleaned since the house was built in 1984. Judging by the dust and hair build up I could easily believe that.


Though I can't figure out how this receipt from 1975 ended up traveling to the house at some point nine years after it was built.


We split up on Saturday so I could get some work done at the house.


Meanwhile, the guys spent much of the day running Jen ragged and wrestling with each other.


On Sunday we finally had a moment to brave the single-digit temperatures and get a Christmas tree.


Unfortunately it was the last day they had the lot open so there wasn't a ton of selection. We got a fairly oddly shaped tree. I'd like to be all Charlie Brown about it and say that it's the spirit of the season that matters but at the end of the day I wish we were able to get something a little nicer.

And I also wish we hadn't run out of lights.


Last Sunday, after putting lights on 75% of the tree we also brought the boys over for their first chance to romp around our new digs. They had quite a blast running around and instantly finding things that they could fight over.


We had our first dinner at the new house, take out from a local BBQ restaurant, and it was pretty nice except for realizing every two minutes that I didn't know where plates, knives, forks, or glasses were.


This past Wednesday we said goodbye to our non-functioning wash room . . .


. . . and hello to our new, expensive washer and dryer set. It was nice being able to do wash in the most luxurious way possible but the luster of that feeling was slightly dulled by the sting in our already hurting purse.


After a week I was able to put out approxmately eighty empty boxes and four thousand pieces of paper used to pack our embarrassingly large collection of glasses and plates.


On Wednesday we slept through the night for the first time in our new home. We didn't have anything we need, or at least we couldn't find everything we needed, but it was nice to sleep under our own roof for the first time in nearly three months even if it was in a room with no blinds and boxes piled to the ceiling.


Our shabby Christmas display lit the night air in our new neighborhood, announcing to the neighborhood that we are here and this is the best we can do this year.

Temperatures have mostly in the single digits all month until winter finally was upon us and temperatures spike to a new high of 30 degrees. It felt downright balmy to be able to walk from the car to the house and not have my mustache immediately freeze solid.

The run up to Christmas is a lot shorter than in years past but with my parents on the way from Rhode Island and hosting our first Christmas dinner in our new house it is promising to be a pretty great one.

The stocking are hung by the chimney with care in hopes that one day I will figure out how to use our fireplace.

Merry Christmas!

Almost There

Two weeks ago begun with the guys getting their first haircut.



Martin was the real catalyst for the trip as his hair was now routinely in his eyes and annoying him on a regular basis.



Elliott mostly just tagged along for the experience. The before and after shots for him are not nearly as stark.


What Elliott lacks in rapid hair growth he makes up for in developing his block-buildilng skills. He has taken a huge interest in building things and, of course, knocking them down.



Temperatures have been in the low teens so we brought out the big guns with these comical snow suits which are surprisingly easy to get on even if it makes them a little grumpy to be in them.

After temperatures warmed a bit the boys suddenly came down with a five day stretch of a horrible stomach bug leading right up to Thanksgiving. This was their first stomach illness. It was pretty mild, all things considered, but still lead to a lot of sleepless nights and messy dinners.

This was immediately followed by one of their worst rounds of teething to date.


After they were on the mend we started feeding them a lot of simple foods including yogurt but this made Martin pretty angry as we were feeding him a bit less than he really wanted to eat.


When they were completely better they found the true joy in fighting over things. The first thing that they became obsessed with fighting over was this roll of wrapping paper. Nothing has come so close to tearing this family apart than this roll of wrapping paper.


Wednesday was the last day of day care and it was also pajama day and it gave us a nice excuse to give them a trial run for this year's Christmas pajamas.


We had Thanksgiving at Lauren and Doug's and got a nice change to FaceTime with Auntie Vi who was at my parents' house.


For the first time in my life we actually went out on Black Friday. This wasn't to get deals at 5am but rather, at 12pm, to take advantage of our one moment together to go pick out some furniture needed for the new place. We also got a chance to have an extremely unhealthy lunch at Portillo's.


Later that night the guys had the time of their life watching Grandad put up Christmas lights. For some reason there is nothing they like more than watching Grandad do manual labor from the comfort and warmth of the house.

And there is nothing that their Grandad likes less.


Jen is back in New York for work and Martin and Elliott are still enjoying a healthy round of sleep regression. This meant Martin woke up at 10:00 PM, cried for an hour, and wouldn't get back to sleep until 1:00 AM after eating an entire box of Bunny Grahams and watching five episodes of 30 Rock. It's nice that I've been able to catch up on a TV show for once but truth me told, I'd rather get some sleep.

With a little luck we'll be closing on our house on Monday and moving in shortly thereafter. It's been a long road to get there but the time to relinquish this house back to Jen's parents and finally have a place of our own is nearly upon us.

What could possibly go wrong?