Merry Belated Christmas

This is one of the first Boxing Days where I haven't had that overwhelming sense of let-down. Why? Because there is so much that I'm looking forward to in the next little while. I am a huge Christmas person, so that's a big admission for me. But LM just gets more interesting every day. And D and I are browsing real estate listings and thinking about a fixer-upper. And I'm really enjoying mat leave but also not entirely dreading the prospect of working again eventually. So life is good.

Also, Christmas and holidays are pretty over-stimulating for the kiddo so in a way I'm looking forward to getting back into my rainy January routine. We had events three nights in a row and LM tolerated the first two quite well, but by last night he was done like dinner. We were at my aunt's house trying to enjoy turkey dinner and he just screamed for about 30 minutes. All told four of us took turns trying to calm him down. Finally I just tied him up in a wrap and he fell asleep on my chest.

I could be wrong, but I think his teeth are bugging him. He's drooly, although I guess that's pretty normal for this age. His cheeks are also red and he's just so incredibly fussy. He is a fussy kid to begin with but recently he had started to get much calmer. Then in the past four or five days he's been really irritable again. On the weekend I sent D out to get him a teething pacifier. We'd never given him a pacifier before - not sure why, I guess I just wasn't sure what to use it for. He didn't seem to have an insatiable need to suck other than when he was hungry. But since he's got his hands in his mouth all the time and I thought a bumpy teether might be a really nice relief for him. However, we missed the boat on that one because other than his hands or moi, his tongue just ejects everything that goes in his mouth now. (Unfortunately it ejects the bottle too, after taking it quite peacefully several times. But then I didn't give it to him for a week and he somehow forgot. We've tried about ninety different things to get him on it again but I have now given up. It's too distressing to spend all that time pumping just to have to throw it away.)

As for childcare, thanks for the advice on the dilemma. What I've decided to do is to see if I can get the same person to come two nights in a row. Kids are welcome at dinner the first night, but since LM generally gets very fatigued around 7, perhaps it would be best to keep him out of the spotlight. That night dinner is at the hotel and it is a casual buffet, so I can just hover around the hotel room as much as I want, waiting until LM falls asleep before I leave, and "popping in" a couple of times throughout the night. Assuming things go well, I'll leave him the second night (when we'll be off-site, so it's harder for me to return), but if I get any weird feelings I'll just pull the paranoid mama card. I do find it aggravating that they assumed we were okay with sitters. But before I had a kid I thought women who weren't with them were over-protective, so I guess I shouldn't be too self-righteous about it.

Anyhoo, LM is adorably snoring away in his car seat because he hasn't woken up from our Christmas-light viewing drive yet, the Christmas tree is crusty and dry and losing needles everywhere (we cheaped out this year), and D is serving up leftovers. So much to be thankful for.