Holidays are here

And here I am, awake and blogging at 1:08 am. My Thanksgiving cold is still with me in the form of a raspy tickley cough that I dosed an hour ago with H-mama's Vicodin cough medicine; our OB said it is one of the safer alternatives for pregnant and nursing women with very bad coughs. It makes me loopy and disrupts my deep sleep a bit, leaving me happy, fuzzy and warm-feeling all night but then exhausted the next day. After the third time I woke up the kids coughing, though, I needed to do something. H-mama is still much worse than me, having started a week later. She is exhausted and her voice comes and goes; today was her last day of work until January 3rd, thank goodness. She needs the rest!

My parents arrived this past Tuesday, and the time has really rushed by. I had very little done for the holidays before they got here. I had decorated a bit and baked 150 sugar cookies, and tidied up. Since they've arrived we've cleaned, shopped, wrapped presents, and put up a tree - a concolor fir, H-Mama's favorite, with its tangerine-scented needles - with rudimentary decorations and the single string of lights I could find after major searching. I swear, somewhere in the house or garage I have thousands of linear feet of white twinkle lights, but I could only find a single 30-foot strand. Thankfully it is enough, and combined with the blue shiny & sparkly unbreakable ball ornaments we bought a few years back, the tree looks lovely. Pequita is enchanted, and is quite respectful of the ornaments. She touches them, and pull one off every now and then, but it is all so pretty and new that she is happy to just look. There are scant few nice ornaments for interest. One thing on the tree is a small glow-in-the-dark frog that Pequita was carrying around when we put up the tree. I tucked in on a strong inner branch where you can see it easily, and she loves to peek at Froggy. She asks to hold him then to have me replace him in his cozy home repeatedly all day long. She loves to hold him, but clearly get some satisfaction from knowing where he is on the tree. Last Thursday she finally understood and started using our question gesture, upturned hands about shoulder level, head tilted and a "Huh?" word to indicate that she can't find something. Today she looked at the tree and saw no frog. She did her "Huh?" thing, and I knew exactly what she wanted - where's Froggy? I said, "I don't know where you left him. Do you want help finding Froggy?" and she grabbed my hand and pulled me after her to look for him. She's 14 months old, and we are having short wordless conversations. It is thrilling. Makes my heart well up.

Monito likes very much to nurse down for his nap gazing at the twinkling lights. They make him giggle and point. He started turning his head away with his eyes following the tree until he can barely see it, then rushing his face back into a full view of the tree and hooting with pleasure. He is a real treat, this kid. My mom cannot believe how peaceful, smiley and complacent he is in general.

With my extremely helpful mom here visiting, I am realizing how many more routines I have in place than I thought. I have systems for everything, and they are faster a lot of times than when other folks try to help. It is, however, lovely to have company. My mom is willing to rise early just to take the kids so I can sleep in. I haven't taken her up on it yet (foolish, I know) but I intend to eke out all the naps I can before all our company leaves. Dad is busy working on a project on his new computer which he set up on a card table in the nursery, but he come out for meals and some socializing here and there. He says he'll stop working tomorrow when my sister and her partner and my adorable nephew arrive on Saturday or Sunday, which is fine. I did manage to get him to come down for a movie last night, Big Eden, a very sweet gay movie. Tonight Dad saw his first episode of The Girls Next Door and he thought it was a hoot. Homestead Mama and I watch it once in a while for the cheesecake and to marvel at the sweetness of Bridget and the stupidity of Kendra. That girl is really dumb as a post - I don't think any amount of cruel editing could make her look as bad as she does on her own. She's very lucky to have the physical attributes she was blessed with; a job at the Dairy Queen would tax her brain.