holidays, new year and 19 months. oh my!

once again, nearly a month has flown by and i haven’t stopped to write a post. to my benefit, i’m working hard on one of my main new year “goals” which is to live more in the moment and worry/stress/plan less. so, i’m going to use that as my excuse, even though the goal is not exactly as easy as i anticipated. damn type A personality makes “living in the moment” pretty damn hard. enough about that though and back to the topic at hand…eli.

the holidays were amazing. truly amazing. eli had a all at all 4 of our family christmas gatherings…wonderful time spent with family, great conversations, yummy food, cocktails, holiday desserts (my mom makes the BEST bourbon balls in the world that will nearly give you a buzz) and, of course, the gifts. we surprised eli (well santa did), with a choo-choo table along with about 100 other gifts. we haven’t mastered the art of minimizing gift buying for him for christmas, that was evident. we are pretty sure he spent christmas eve and christmas day wondering what on earth he had done right (so he could do it again) given the amount of gifts (and all the indulgent food!). he was in his own version of heaven. a train table, pop up tent/tunnel, cozy coup car, finger paints, easel, dump trucks, legos, PJ’s and slippers, books, hammer toys and LOTS more. it was pretty ridiculous to say the least. but it was perfect. and, pk and i treated ourselves to a little holiday gift as well…instead of a gift we are going to hawaii again in february! merry christmas to us indeed. let’s just hope i make it longer than the vail trip last winter when i flew home after a day. it was by far the most memorable holiday in my book and i know they will only get more fun as the years go by (SLOW DOWN!!). we also started a “tradition” (pk hates when people say they are starting traditions as it’s completely contradicting), but that’s what we did. or hope to do. every christmas eve we are going to give him pajamas to wear that night and then christmas morning, our little family of 3 (plus griff) will enjoy the morning opening presents, playing and making chocolate gravy and biscuits. i love the fact that we have our own little thing carved out that is just us in the midst of the holiday fun and chaos.

on to the next holiday, new year’s eve. i have come to the conclusion that it’s just not our holiday. last year eli was on the tail end of his month-long rsv battle and was also dealing with an ear infection. this year, pk came down with the flu-like virus (not the flu thank goodness) that morning and i got it that evening. so we were all in bed by 8:30 on new year’s eve. party animals over here. maybe, maybe next year?!

in other news, with the new year i’ve been trying to focus more on clean eating at our house. for those of you who know me, you know i’m a pretty healthy eater, but i definitely live by the 80/20 rule and daily chocolate (and wine most of the time) is an absolute must. but eli seems to be shunning veggies some these days (hit or miss) so we’ve been doing more smoothies (amazing what you can hide in a smoothie!) and even juicing some which he loves. i WILL get this kid to eat his veggies if it kills me!

the weather has been crazy – snow one day, 55 and sunny the next and 3 degrees the next. so we’ve taken advantage of the warmer days and played outside and cozied up with books and the fire on the bitter days. thankfully, we have no shortage of new toys to keep us occupied! and, i am beyond thankful for the ymca and library storyhour! eli simply LOVES going to spend time at the ymca while i workout for a bit and he also loves our M/T/W mornings at the library. he’s a regular.

i must also mention how much eli has evolved in the past month. his language and comprehension has made huge leaps. he can speak phrases now, “mama want yogurt”, “mama help”, “mama pick up” and he can follow directions for many things (putting up toys, bringing certain items, etc.). he picks out the books he wants to read, identifies nearly everything in them, points things out to us, etc. it’s awesome to watch him learn every single day. that will be the really tough part about going to hawaii. he’s going to change so much. but, thankfully he has some awesome grandparents to document it while we are away. and, facetime will be used a lot!

last but not least, we had a BIG milestone this week; we “celebrated” eli’s FIRST haircut. i’m not happy about this. in fact, i’m nearly devastated…still. even after the sushi and wine “celebration” dinner. i’ve fought pk for months about it and finally caved and now i’m so upset at myself. i miss his crazy curls already. yes, it’s still long, but it’s not my wild man hair anymore. i know it was probably necessary since we had a lot of “girl” comments, but it was so damn cute. and it still is (craig, my hair guy, did a great job), but i still cannot believe he’s old enough for us to have his first haircut. big tear.

my little boy is growing up.