The Second Christmas of Miss Mouse

This'll either be a marathon post, or I'll break it into shorter posts. We'll see how things pan out. Christmas this year was most wonderful. Not only did the Mouse love all the pre-Christmas celebrating, she enjoyed the actual Christmas holiday, as well. We started our celebrating by heading out to Grandma and Grandpa's at the lake the Sunday before Christmas. We enjoyed a great Christmas meal out there and opened gifts (Miss Mouse can open with the best of 'em). Of course, we had to return home on Monday so that Daddy could work on Tuesday - it is sort of his busy season, after all! Even with such a short time there, we packed in a lot of fun. Miss Mouse loved the train around the Christmas tree, her presents (including a Cabbage Patch doll!), and Maggie the dog, but most of all she relished being the center of her grandparents' and aunt's attention!

Christmas Eve Day was quiet at our house, having left one side of the family out at the lake, and the other side of the family not having arrived yet. Daddy was actually able to stay home until later in the day (last year he was at every one of the six services at church and so was pretty much gone all day), so we opened some gifts and enjoyed our Christmas Eve meal of lahvosh bread with cheese before he left for church. I was not even sure we would venture out to church (gasp!) because Miss Mouse had decided on the 23rd that she wanted to wear "pretty pants", meaning training pants. There seems to be a pattern emerging at our house - last Christmas she weaned herself, this Christmas she starts training, next Christmas.....driving? Anyway, I was unsure how it would go getting her to church, all dressed up, taking along the portable toilet seat (just the cover that goes on the big toilets), and spending an hour at church. She was only able to make it about 45 minutes between "tinkling" (her word, not mine) times. Fairly late in the day I decided that we were not skipping church on Christmas Eve, and somehow I mustered the energy to get ready, get her ready, pack up our supplies, and head off on our adventure. It turned out wonderfully! We did have to leave church four times (during Daddy's sermon, no less!), but each time she really did "tinkle", making it worth the effort and disruption of leaving. Apparently it wasn't too big a disruption since after church Daddy commented "so you only had to take her out once for the bathroom, huh?" What???!!!?? I was glad it wasn't disruptive! Miss Mouse adored the candles in the sanctuary (I'm still a hardcore proponent of real fire in our hands, myself, but at least they aren't flashlights....) and the organ music. I'm not sure where she developed it, but she has a deep-seated love for organ music. Daddy preached the last service of the day at 10:00, so we were in bed long before he got home. I made it through another church service, though, on tv and managed to sort of stay awake for his homecoming. Thankfully, she did not.

Daddy preached again Christmas Day morning, so Miss Mouse and I spent it playing with her Santa gift - a ball pit. It's fairly easy to surmise that she might go through her entire childhood never entering a ball pit in a fast food restaurant, so we thought she might enjoy a substitute of her very own at home. She seems to really love it. It has the unfortunate disadvantage of taking up our entire living room, but it folds down relatively easily and is being enjoyed so much that we don't mind too much....yet.

Grammy, Grandpa Bob, and Auntie Laura arrived in the late afternoon on Christmas Day just in time to enjoy a Christmas dinner cooked by Daddy. We had a wonderful time opening more gifts and stuffing ourselves that evening. Auntie Laura stayed until Wednesday morning (inadvertently - she had planned to take the train home Monday night/Tuesday morning, but the train was cancelled - she headed home with a friend instead on Wednesday), and Grammy and Grandpa Bob stayed until Friday. What a week of fun attention and development for the Mouse!

She continues to wear her "pretty pants". The only diapers we use are for her nap and for bedtime these days. Crazy. Perhaps we have some real struggles ahead with this, but so far we have either just one barely wet accident (she'll start to wet and then realize it, hold it, and run for the bathroom shouting "tin-kle! tin-kle! tin-kle!") or no accidents each day. She's been nearly dry at times after naps and in the morning, too, though not to the point where I would try anything other than a diaper for those times. It's required an extreme amount of attention-paying to the clock because she still doesn't always tell us when she needs to go. We generally take her and have her "try" every 45-60 minutes. But it's been going really well overall, and she is super excited whenever we take down the "pretty pants" and find they are dry.

Also this week (again - is it a Christmas thing or what??!), she started working on her bottom two-year molars. We're struggling to see the top ones still, but we can for sure see that the bottom left has broken through at least one point, and the bottom right is very swollen and sore-looking. We can see the points through the swollen skin. It started last weekend with Auntie Laura saying "what is going on with Miss Mouse? She's a lot 'testier' than she was the other days". I chalked it up to a huge week of routine-change and visiting.....apparently, that was around the time, though, that the first point of the left bottom molar was breaking through. Who knew?! We've had several tough nights and tough napping days now later this week which are getting really rough on 32-week-pregnant-Mommy. But knowing what the trouble is and being able to do what I can to fix it (and it is me she's wanting....constantly) does help.

In other busy-ness this past week, Daddy had another therapy appointment on Monday for his poor shoulder. Hopefully it will be stretching out here quite soon. He spent two full days hunting last week with Hubert (Saturday) and with a friend from out of town on Monday (and Hubert, of course). He hopes to get out once more this weekend before the season closes. We had our new outside door installed on Monday, so we have a door that actually shuts and shuts out all the cold air now! We got lots of projects done, organizing and such, in preparation for February's arrival, too, when my parents were here. Miss Mouse has curtains in her room now; she has pictures hung on her walls; and our bathroom has a shower curtain instead of a tub/shower door (this makes it possible for me to lean on the tub while giving little critters their baths).

We hope you had a blessed Christmas in which you were able to focus on its true meaning - not gifts, not cookies, not traditional meals, not even family gatherings, rather, Christ being born into our world - while at the same time enjoying all the 'trappings of the season'. Happy New Year!