I blinked, and 2015 was over! As it is for most people, the last month of the year is always an exceptionally busy one for our family.
This month…
Thea remains a chatterbox and has moved into more complex babbles, which I have dubbed “gibberish”. They are hard to describe in writing but, trust me, they’re adorable.
Luke and I did an at-home date night (I made him a jar of ideas to pull from last year). He got lucky – the random draw resulted in, “Play a video game together,” which is one of his favourite things to do on any night.
All three of us have had some vacation time away from work/daycare. I’ve had two weeks that started December 19th, Luke had two four-day weekends around Christmas and New Years, and we kept Thea home Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. I opted to send Thea to daycare during her other regular days even though I was off – gave me a chance to catch up on a few things and relax.
Speaking of Christmas, we celebrated in three ways – early in the month in Edmonton with my mother’s side of the family, on Christmas Day in Saskatchewan with my Gramma and Grampa (and Thea’s Gramma, Uncle, and Auntie), and on the 28th with Luke’s family. All were awesome, we count ourselves lucky that we love spending time with our families and our in-laws. 🙂
Basement renovations are in full swing! I’ll save pictures for when everything is done, but it’s looking amazing!
Overall, I think Thea’s appetite has actually improved in December. She still has picky days and meals, but she’s been eating more vegetables and meat lately, and is more willing to at least try just about everything that we put on her plate.
Thea loves to colour (aka: she loves to stab crayons at paper and occasionally gets colour on said paper), so for Christmas this year, we gave her art supplies – crayons, paper, play-doh, finger paints, etc. Some will be for now, some for later; I’m excited to explore art with her as she grows!
We received an early Christmas present of a tree to replace the one ruined by the flood this summer.
Thea is still working on walking. She can do up to four steps at a time, but usually falls at the end. She gets right back up to try again though!
We went to Kids’ Christmas parties at each of our workplaces. This year, Thea’s first meeting with Santa was met with brief stares, and eventual tears. Her second meeting was met with instant sobs. To be fair, she was cutting her first molar that day and was miserable in general.
Teething has entered a new world. Molars are the devil. She’s up to 10 teeth though!
My best friend celebrated a birthday (and a pregnancy, yippee!), so we and another great friend went out for supper and then to check out the last Hunger Games movie. I loved the first three films, and this one was a great capstone to them…But the books are still better. The books are always better.
On New Year’s Eve, Luke and I went for an afternoon date to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was great! Then, we came back to the house where my brother and his partner were looking after Thea. We hung out the rest of the day and night, playing board games once Thea had gone to bed. It’s pretty much the same thing we did last year, and it is quickly becoming one of my favourite traditions. 🙂
During my vacation, I took a hiatus from Facebook. I’m glad I did it; it was a nice break, and I did accomplish a few things on the computer that might not have gotten done if I was wasting time other ways. That said, I also learned a few things: (1) No matter what distractions I cut out, I am an excellent procrastinator and will always find another way to put off the things I don’t want to do (usually school work), and (2) I’m glad I have Facebook to stay connected with people. I like knowing what friends back home are up to, and keeping up with my mommy friends through our private group. I’ll be back on this evening, but one of my New Year’s resolutions will be to limit my time on it more going forward.
2015 was great. Here’s to an even better 2016!
