Happy New Year, 2011

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Started working at home. Left Jacob with my mom for the night. Took CS to see OWU. Tried to do the Couch to 5K program.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?




Go back to Pennsylvania.

Lower my debt, I'd like to pay off at least one credit card.

Potty train Jacob, even if it means no more cute diapers.

Lose five pounds or just get my body back in shape. I have no strength in my arms anymore..

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No, not yet!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Chris's Grandma passed away in September. She was a sweet woman and very much missed this holiday season.

5. What countries did you visit?
OHIO!

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
Financial security. Real health insurance, with dental and vision for me.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Not that I remember. April I weaned Jacob, June I got a job, in September Jacob turned two. The year was full of really bad things and some really great things.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?


Getting my job was the greatest blessing of the year.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not getting more involved with my personal faith. I seem to have a block when it comes to doing more than just getting to church every Sunday.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, we are all healthy!

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tickets to Ohio to see my friends and family. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I got there.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Sallie Mae for my horrible student loans.

13. What did you get really excited about?
Going to Ohio and visiting my Grandma in PA.

14. What song will always remind you of 2010?
Anything by Lady GaGa.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

Happier or Sadder: Happier

Thinner of Fatter: Thinner but not as strong

Richer or Poorer: Richer, but not by much.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Taken more pictures of people other than Jacob.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worried about money.

18. How did you spend Christmas?
In the morning, CS and I opened gifts with Jacob for the first time as a family. We went over to my mom's later to make ravioli and eat with almost all of my family.

19. What was your favorite TV program?
How I Met Your Mother. I heard how great this show was, but I had never watched. Now all the reruns are on all the time and it's my favorite. Mad Med is another I never miss.

20. What were your favorite books of the year?


I was a terrible book reader this year. I spent most of my down time on the sewing machine and I can't read and sew (yet...) I got a Kindle for Christmas and I've already read Room by Emma Donaghue and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I have plans to download the Hunger Games and Little Bee next. I also re-read the Harry Potter series because I do that every few years, and I had strange dreams of it just like every time before.

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

I like The Band Perry a lot, along with Lady Antebellum.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?
I only saw two in theatres. The first I can't remember and the second was Harry Potter. We watch a lot of Scooby Doo. I saw Babies and thought it was pretty good, but sad.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 27 this year and CS and I went with his sister and her friend to Water World for the afternoon. It was fun, but we should have been there early to enjoy it more.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

CS having a job and living in a house of our own.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
I distract everyone from my clothing by making cute purses. I'm just happy to be back in jeans under a size 10 and non-flowy tops.

26. What kept you sane?
Sewing, it's a great outlet for me to relax and be creative at the same time.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

For me, everything came together when I started praying and tithing, even if only at church. I know that's not something everyone does or agrees with, but it's been so true in my life this year. I am very blessed and I can't say that I did it on my own. I had a lot of help.

Monday After

I have to say that I was dreading today. I wanted to spend the day going to different shops, spending my Christmas money. Instead, I had to work! But I got Friday off and I get the 31st off, so I can't complain. And I can't take a day off! I should make up some hours, actually.

Christmas was great! CS and I woke up around 7:30, and sat around waiting for Jacob to get up. I went in to his room a few times, and tried to wake him but he's just like his daddy and can't wake up if he's tired. Finally, around 8:30 he was up and happy. The night before we had set up his new train table with all his new to him trains and track then covered it with a sheet. I had planned to wait until the end to let him see it, but CS told him to take the cover off right away.

And that's where we lost him. He had no interest in opening ANYTHING after he saw his trains. When we would hold out a wrapped package and ask him to open it, he would point at us and say "NO! Playing my trains!" and go back to moving them around. We finally convinced him to open other presents and he was happy to add all his new Cars cars to the train table.

CS got me a Kindle, which is pretty awesome, although he didn't realize that most Kindle books are closer to $10. He thought it was only $3 or so, but it will be good to kickstart my book-reading again. I've been so busy with sewing for Christmas that I haven't picked up a book in months! I read Room already and it's terribly haunting but a good story.

I also managed to forget handing out my Christmas cards to everyone so now I have to mail them all AFTER the holiday and that just sucks. I tried, I really did!

I got CS a Ninja blender and he keeps saying that he's never going to eat solid food again, but he also got a waffle maker so guess what we had for breakfast? If you said waffles and a smoothie, you'd be wrong because I failed to buy frozen yogurt and fruit to make smoothies.

Next year, I'm going to make lots and lots of lists and actually remember to check them.

I hope you had a great holiday!

Merry Christmas

Since I was determined to get at least one good photo of Jacob for my Christmas card Groupon from Mixbook, I dragged the Cars couch over to the tree, sat Jacob on it and gave him a Hershey's Kiss and started talking about his favorite train ornament. You can see it off to the side, looking like a little castle being eaten by a wooden fish from above.

I stuffed him into this vest and expected him to protest but he LOVED it and was mad when I took it off. I think he will be wearing it this weekend, and the best part is that we have two! I cannot resist a baby in a vest, especially if I put him in his little brown old man shoes.

I'm seriously counting down the days and hours until we get to rip into his piles of presents under the tree. I am so excited!

My family starts coming in tonight and I anticipate that it's going to be a great Christmas! I wish you the very same thing!

PS. The second photo is on the card. I love the first but it is blurry!

Santa, Baby

The baby kind of sucks at posing. He won't look at the camera or he only wants to push the shutter button to get the flash to pop up so he can smack it down.

He also won't look at me when he sees the camera in my face so I have to resort to yelling and making weird noises to get him to glance over.

I can't wait for Christmas! I know he is going to have a total blast in the morning when we open gifts and I'm kind of regretting that we will have to leave to go to lunch/dinner at my mom's house around 12. When we were growing up, we almost NEVER left the house for anything. I remember we did once, to go be with a friend of my parent's who had just gotten a divorce. We took tons of our stuff and it was fine. But I'm happy that we always made it a family day, except maybe to go across the street to have dinner with my grandparents.

This is the very first year that CS, Jacob and I have been together in our own house, EVER. We decorated the tree and presents are all wrapped and waiting underneath. Only 7 more days...

Etsy Party

My Etsy party this weekend was a small scale success. I only had 4 people come over and I anticipated a few more than that but I still made some Christmas money and had a good time. Jacob didn't get a nap so he was screamier than usual. Luckily, there were only tears and no hitting.

Some potholders made with Insul-bright to protect your hands. In other news, I sold them.

Box pouch. My mom calls them shave kits. I would use it for knitting projects.

Re-usable snack bags. I lined them with PUL so you just wipe them out. This way, you can slice an apple, peel an orange or fill it with carrots and not worry about the mess. I think these will make great gifts for kids. I bet they won't think so though!

I Do (not) Believe

Oh, the Santa thing. I'm dreading it this year as Jacob is getting bigger and more and more people are bringing up the Santa Thing.

I did not grow up believing in Santa. I'm not sure the exact reasons why, although I imagine putting Christ first in Christmas was part of it. My brothers and I thought the UPS man was the best thing ever because he always brought the boxes of toys that we knew were coming for Christmas. I've never regretted not putting out cookies (although I did, just to prove he wasn't real), or writing letters or going to the mall to sit on Santa's lap. We circled all the things we wanted in Sears catalogs and waited impatiently to tell our Grandma in Pennsylvania what we wanted. She was the best grandma, the one who got us the great toys. Our other grandparents lived next door and they always gave us clothes. Helpful! But not fun.

CS, on the other hand, did believe in Santa. Despite the fact that his parents pulled them from school on Halloween, they really did the Santa thing. His mom said it helped when they wanted really expensive toys, since Santa could only bring one thing? I'm hazy on the details.

The other day, CS's dad spoke directly to me about how Santa would be in town every Saturday for the next few weeks. I suppose I should have known it was coming but I was pretty surprised. He's only TWO! And I know he will be terrified if we take him to a big man with a beard and tell him he has to sit on his lap. I know he's not ready for that, and I'm not going to terrify him in the name of "tradition" for something I never knew.

But the more I think about it, the more I struggle with the whole concept. Say he does grow up believing in Santa. He's always going to ask questions about it. And I will have to lie. Not only will I have to lie, but I will have to buy a gift with the money I work very hard to have and tell my son that Santa gave it to him. Where the heck is Santa when I need to pay a doctor's bill?

I know it's all relatively harmless and lots of children grow up loving the fact that they believed in Santa. But I am happy with my Christmas past and so grateful to my family for all that they gave to me for Christmas and I want Jacob to appreciate how wonderful it is to not only get a gift but to give them as well. More fun, in fact!

So what about you? I'm curious!

Headaches

This morning, after a really good walk (2.5 miles) and after the baby took a bath, we got in the car to go get lattes as a reward. And I discovered that Jacob was missing part of his face when I tried to get him into the car. Fortunately, his face was not really missing, it was just my eyesight failing. Recently, I've started getting visual auras before the onset of a migraine. It's helpful since I can combat the pain by taking aspirin and drinking some caffeine as soon as I notice something is not quite right. After getting the drugs and caffeine into my system, I try rest but it's hard to do that when I've just woken up and there is a baby on my head.

Today, I only got a slight headache that went away after a hot shower. I'd love to find a fail-safe remedy to prevent them, but I've never noticed any patterns that could signal a trigger. Of course, it could turn out to be something like chocolate or potato chips and then I'll just have to live with Russian Roulette.