Christmas

Merry belated Christmas!  This Christmas season came and went before I could even enjoy it.  I don't like to wish away time or hurry through days, but I've felt so desperate to sell our condo and pass papers so we can buy our house in Easton that I almost wanted the Christmas season to be over so that we could hurry up and get on with things.  I think we did more to enjoy the Christmas season over Thanksgiving than we did in the whole month of December!  

This is a photo we took with Santa so that we would have one to compare with the Santa visit to the NICU last Christmas.  We weren't planning on taking a picture with Santa on this particular day--the boys' hair was a mess and they weren't dressed in anything Christmasy or anything.  But we had to seize the moment!  None of the pictures really came out that well, but we bought the best one of the bunch.  It's hard to get a good picture of twins (meaning they are smiling and both looking at the camera) when it's a 16-year-old working the camera!

For the sake of comparison, then:

Sebastian (L), Adrian (R)

Christmas Eve we went to my Auntie Carol's, as we always do.  She has a beautiful home, and it's always so cozy and decorated so well for Christmas.  The food was awesome: turkey, lobster pie (we dream about it all year long!), squash casserole, tortellini with mushroom and sun dried tomatoes...there were numerous appetizers and pies for dessert.  And we had champagne with peach nectar--delicious.  I ate until I thought I'd burst!

The boys were all over the place...it is hard bringing them places now that they are so mobile.  Luckily we had lots of help.  My cousin Christian is so good with them---he's probably the best 8th grader in the world.  He was on the floor playing with them and he even gives them his old toys to take home and play with!  He has a Lego city that is A-ma-zing with a capital A.  There are various scenes and he puts all of us in the city doing silly things.  You can kind of catch a glimpse of the city in the picture below.  But it's actually two tables worth and there's a train that runs through it etc.  The city is even decorated for Christmas!  Sebastian was fascinated with the city; when my Auntie Carol tried to pry him away from it, he would fuss!

The boys wore their outfits that their NICU nurse Marcy gave them the last time she visited.  So cute!  Little Nautica button-down shirts, sweaters, and jeans.   Here they are in their outfits waiting to go to my Aunt's for Christmas Eve.

Sebastian

Adrian

The boys' newest thing is to play with the magazines in this basket that is in the play area.  They should not touch the basket because the wood is rough--they could get splinters.  We really should move it out of the play area, but there's no where else to put it.  And they left it alone for the most part until just recently.  They like to go over now and pull out the magazines.  We tell them no, but they laugh and think that it's a joke or a game.  The funniest part is that Sebastian shakes his finger at us when he goes over there to touch the magazines.  He knows he's not supposed to be into the basket so he shakes his finger and then laughs and then goes in anyway.  He occasionally will also shake his finger at us for other things, too.  It's so funny when he does it.

The naughty look

He was shaking his finger here...that's why it's blurry

Christmas Day Jim and Jen came over.  My dad was supposed to come over too, but he was sick!  I also actually brought Sebastian to the pediatrician because he was being extremely fussy and showing some signs of an ear infection for a few days.  Turns out his ears were fine, but I felt better having cleared it up.  He had a bad night Christmas Eve after returning home from my Aunt's.  I suppose it was because he was up past his bedtime, but there were other things going on for a few days that made me want to rule out any medical reason for fussiness.  So I missed part of brunch, but it was ok.  I ate cranberry sausage quiche and pistachio bread when we got home.  Then we just played with the boys for a bit.

Sebastian also loves to play peek-a-boo with the house...

Christmas morning in their Santa PJs

Eating time is torturous in the house right now.  Adrian pretty much eats anything you put in front of him.  Sebastian eats nothing but crackers.  He'll eat Ritz, graham crackers, goldfish, and pretty much nothing else.  Sometimes he'll eat fruit out of one of those squeeze pouches.  But he pretty much won't eat off a spoon, won't feed himself with a spoon, and won't eat anything on his tray that we put there to try.  We keep giving him what we're eating to try to get him to eat new things, but it's not going very well.  On a positive note, both boys have responded very well to cutting out bottles (except before bed).  They also now drink out of a more advanced sippy cup with a straw.  Bravo!

Lexi, the world's most badly trained dog (or most untrained dog), is always underfoot because the boys feed her!  Or they drop food or push food deliberately off their trays.  Lexi won't move out from under them!!