Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Ah, vacation

We have arrived in Louisville, where we will be for the next week, celebrating Christmas and the 60th anniversaries of both of my sets of grandparents.

Nicholas didn't do as well with the 600-mile drive as he did in August, but with the exception of one 45-minute screaming jag he was pretty good.  But, man do carseats take up a lot of room.  Even in my parents' minivan, sitting next to his carseat for hours is extremely uncomfortable.

But here we are, safe and sound, and I can feel the stress and tension melting off of me in layers.  In case you hadn't guessed from my recent blog silence, I've been up to my eyeballs (or beyond) in work of late.  And although Joe and I both need to get some work done while we're here, the pace necessarily must relax.  In fact, we've declared the next three days work free.  Yay for Christmas!
Christmas Eve may not be until tomorrow, but Christmas started early for this very-loved little boy.  Since it didn't make sense to drag a lot of stuff to Louisville and back, we opened presents that had come by mail and exchanged presents with each other and my parents and brother ahead of time.  We actually let Nicholas start on Saturday as a way to occupy him during the snowstorm and have done a couple a day since then.  He is starting to get the hang of unwrapping (slowly but surely), although I think he sees the goal as pulling the paper off so he can put it in his mouth, rather than to discover what is underneath.  There are some more pictures of this, as well as a video of him enjoying one of his new toys, in the Gallery.  Thank you, aunts and uncles.

The other big event in Nicholas' life this past week was snow.  And lots of it.  I don't know what the official total was near us, but somewhere around 20 inches.  I really wanted to take a picture of Nicholas standing in it, with snow up to his shoulders but since he doesn't own snowpants or boots I decided that it wasn't a good idea.  So instead you are stuck with these:

From Nicholas - Month 7
Nicholas mostly just seemed baffled by the snow.  He really enjoyed looking out at it, but he seemed more confused than excited.  It makes sense, though.  Every time he starts to feel comfortable with the way the world looks and knows what to expect when he looks outside, the seasons go and change on him.  Suddenly everything is white and he has no understanding of why.  I think playing with the snow will have to wait until next year.

We seem to have left the snow behind in Maryland, so no white Christmas this year.  But the practical part of me is okay with that--we have a lot of driving around to do.  Yay Christmas!

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