Odds and Ends

Some of you have been asking for a Cohen update and I was going to do one today after his 6 month check up with the pediatrician but it got moved to Friday so I will do it then. For now I will tell you that he has been sleeping through the night in his big boy crib in his own room for a few weeks. Danny got the sniffles a little while ago so we decided it would be best for Cohen to be in his own room away from the germs. Cohen decided he rather liked his crib and hasn't missed us so he gets to stay in there.

Tomorrow night we will be stuffing the stockings so I will share some pictures with you when they are done.

I am working two days this week, only 4-5 hours though.

The house did get decorated thanks to my mom and Karen (and Christine in spirit :) and it looks great. I didn't have nearly as many decorations as I thought I did so they brought some of their own over to share with me.

We are trying to simplify our Christmas this year. I have a really good article from GriefShare about "Surviving the Holidays" that I may put up later. But we talked about being allowed to say no and deciding what is really important to us this year and doing those things and letting the rest go. So we got a small Christmas tree and we aren't putting lights up on the house. My Christmas shopping is done, I did almost all of it online. We are going to stop by Danny's parents on the 21st when we go down for Cohen's pulmonology appointment and then we will spend Christmas Eve at my parents. We will take other activities as they come, but please don't be offended if we say no. It's been a long year and we are just trying have as little stress and as much rest and relaxation as possible, especially during Christmastime.

In Griefshare we also talked about starting some new traditions. Since this is our first year having a baby we really don't have too many old traditions, which is kind of nice I guess. One thing that I really wanted to do to kind of start new as a family was to get matching stockings. Danny and I (and Russell) each have our own stockings from our parents, but this year I decided I wanted us to have stockings together as our new little family. So I ordered one for each of us, including Carter. Stockings have always been one of my favorite parts of Christmas so I think this will just be a nice new thing for us.