December 9, 2018
Happy December! I hope everyone has fully recovered from Thanksgiving and the following shopping days. I'd say I can't believe it's already December, but that snow storm we had recently made it clear that winter is well on its way.
Thanksgiving was our first major holiday in our new house, so we offered to host. Mom and Hannah helped a lot, of course. But @nancydrewnickerson did an incredible amount of work, and I was once again reminded of how amazing she is.
Henry, our normally sweet and mild-mannered little boy, had a couple really bad weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. His second molars were coming in, and it seemed like they were more painful than all of the other teeth combined. He had a low-grade fever and was super cranky and irritable. And with that came a heightened sense of attachment to Nancy.
It's incredibly hard to watch your child in pain, and even harder when he won't even let you try to comfort him. And poor Nancy; I can't even begin to imagine how hard it was when she couldn't be with him, knowing he only wanted her. So it's an understatement to say that we were both--Nancy especially--tired once Thanksgiving rolled around.
Thankfully, (yes, this is one of the things we both said we were thankful for when we went around the table) he was starting to get back to his normal self. Nancy and I got up way earlier than either of us liked on Thanksgiving morning and started some of the prep work. Once Henry woke up, I made pancakes and then distracted Henry until our family started to arrive.
Nancy's Aunt Eloise flew in for Thanksgiving this year, and, of course, my parents, Carson, and Hannah came. Henry loved having everyone over. It's not like he doesn't see them often; quite the opposite, actually. But he doesn't often see everyone together. And because he's still the baby of the family, all eyes are usually on him. He eats the attention up. I think it helped resolve any lingering need to be attached to Nancy's side all day long.
We've been excited about the house since we first toured it. Every day since has been great, and it has felt like home since we moved in. But having everyone over for Thanksgiving felt even more special.
Getting to take Henry out to play in our yard reminded me of all the Thanksgivings when I was little and would run around the yard with my dad. And seeing everyone around our dining room table was awesome. We even got to finally use the fancy china we got from our wedding registry.
All of the food was amazing, not surprisingly. And we had crazy leftovers for awhile. Except for dessert. I may have polished the rest of that off pretty quickly.
My birthday was a week after Thanksgiving. I'm in the middle of a big project at work, so Nancy didn't have any luck convincing me to take the day off. But she did surprise me in the afternoon, and we went out for lunch.
We want to replace some of our older furniture, so between that and the expense of the house, we agreed to take it easy on presents for each other for now. But after we spent Saturday decorating the house, inside and out, (which Henry loved) Nancy surprised me by dropping off Henry with my parents so we could have an adults-only night.
Christmas and our anniversary are both right around the corner. The season gets more exciting every year as Henry gets older and starts to enjoy our traditions more. His favorite part of this time of year has always been the lights. Even when he was a baby, he would always reach out to grab them. So we've already extended our drive home a couple times so he could look at the lights around the neighborhood. It's hard to resist it when we know that his smile will be huge.
As if it's any surprise that he's spoiled. Nancy and I went shopping for some more of his presents today. Between our family and Santa, we know he'll have plenty of new toys, so we stocked up on some clothes (although, I wouldn't be surprised if Bess’ gift is a full new wardrobe, ha) and books. We also sorted through his toys for things he doesn't play with much and clothes he no longer fits into to donate.
A productive, but tiring day, so I am going to go find my wife and see if she's up for some cuddling on the couch!
