Consider the halls decked

I stayed up way too late last night, but I'm about 90% of the way done with my Christmas decorating. The tree is lit and decorated in the living room and I even managed to set up my awesome vintage aluminum tree in the dining room. Woo hoo! Pretty much all there is left to do is to finish hanging some of the exterior lights, which I hope to take care of later today. That is, if I'm not asleep on the couch.

The Paper Mama Photo Challenge: Blessings

This week's photo challenge theme over at The Paper Mama is blessings.  While it's a difficult concept to convey via a photograph, I think this one comes pretty close.  I really have been blessed with a great husband and in-laws, who have welcomed me into their respective families with open arms.  I love seeing CH's paternal grandparents in their new role as great-grandparents--one they have definitely embraced wholeheartedly.  Sammy is one lucky (and blessed) little boy to have so much love in his life.

Be sure to click here to check out the other entries:

No sleep 'til Brooklyn

I'm beginning to think that I may need to change the name of my blog to "Have Baby, Will Travel."  This weekend found Sammy and me in northern New Jersey hanging out with my father-in-law, Cosmo, and Sammy's great-grandparents.  Cosmo took the train down on Thursday so he could assist me with the drive up on Friday; that night we had dinner over at Sammy's great-grandparents where he was smothered with love, affection, and Italian soap operas.

On Saturday, Cosmo, Sammy and I headed over to Captain Husband's cousin Matt's new house outside of Boonton; he and his fiancee', Helen, had a lot of work on their hands when they bought the place and have done an amazing job.  They've ripped out walls and rebuilt rooms as well as replaced rotten joists and refinished the floors.  I know they still have a lot that they want to do to the place, but it's amazing what they've already managed to accomplish.  Sammy and Helen had a lengthy conversation about the aesthetics of the new paint color in the living room.

Since Sammy has completely outgrown the bjorn at this point, Cosmo offered to get me a new baby carrier as a Christmas gift; the hard part was deciding on which one.  Some internet sleuthing revealed a store in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn called Boing Boing that specializes in baby carriers, so we decided to be wild and crazy and drive into the city on Sunday to check it out.  The drive went pretty smoothly with only a few minor hiccups thanks to various construction detours, but we managed to find a place to park within walking distance of the shop.  Although I didn't find a carrier that I was heads over heels about at the store, Cosmo did pick up a few gifts for Sammy, like some mittens, baby feeding accessories, and a new stroller bundler (which will come in handy as the zipper just broke on the hand-me-down one I had been using).  We then ate lunch at a place called Peperoncino; the food was really good and the atmosphere was warm and cozy, not to mention baby-friendly--if you ever happen to find yourself in that part of the world, I highly suggest eating there.  Sammy was bummed that he didn't get to have any of our omelets.  Here he is giving Grandpa Cosmo his best sad puppy-dog eyes, to no avail.

We walked around the neighborhood for a bit and checked out a few of the shops and grabbed some hot chocolate at the Chocolate Room.  ZOMG.  Best. Hot. Chocolate. Ever.  Seriously, it was toe-curling good.  At this point, Sammy was completely zoned out in his stroller, so I snapped a few photos to commemorate his first trip into New York and then we were on the road again.

Speaking of being on the road, Cosmo, Sammy and I are making our way back to Virginia today.  My fingers are crossed that the drive home will be as smooth and trouble free as the drive up to New Jersey was.  Wish us luck!

Foto Friday: Texture

This week's suggested theme over at the Household 6 Diva for Foto Friday is texture.  My mom recently gifted me a premium account to Picnik, so I had a little bit of fun playing around with their holiday textures and a photo of Sammy that I took this week.  Here's how it turned out (I call it my "Baby, It's Cold Outside" photo):

Click below to check out this week's photos:

Have a great weekend everyone!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In

In an effort to learn more about fellow MilSpouse bloggers, Wifey from Wife of a Sailor started this weekly meme;  here are this week's questions.

1. If you were given $1,000 right now, how would you spend it? 

I would put it towards a plane ticket to South Korea; how sweet would it be if Captain Husband, Sammy and I could all spend our first Christmas together as a family?

2. If you had to choose a movie title (a real one that already exists) for your life story, what would it be? 

Um, I have no idea...how about The Historian (I cheated a little bit, because this movie is currently in development)?

3. If you were a teacher, what subject would you like to teach? 

American History, with an emphasis on material culture and what it can reveal about certain moments of time.

4. Has being a MilSpouse changed how you view holidays or how your holidays are celebrated? If so, how? If not, what hasn't changed? 

Well, I certainly don't take spending time with my loved ones for granted, although Christmas has always been up in the air ever since I finished college.  Work often made it difficult to travel, so I would usually go home for New Year's Eve instead, which also happens to be my mom's birthday.  Not much has changed since meeting CH; our first Christmas as a couple was spent meeting each other's parents; CH was in Afghanistan for our second Christmas so I celebrated the holiday with some friends in Annapolis; our third Christmas was spent with CH's parents (we went to my parents' for New Year's); this year, I'll be traveling to my in-laws' earlier this month and then I'll be taking Sammy home to my parents' for his first Christmas, because the thought of spending the holiday alone in my house is über depressing.

5. What is your favorite Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) memory?

It's a memory that's been transformed into something of a family tradition in recent years.  My family would spend Christmas day with my mom's side of the family at my maternal grandmother's house.  Every year, without fail, she would put a box of crackers and a can of spray cheese out on the coffee table and us kids would go crazy making cracker and spray-cheese sandwiches.  My grandma died seven years ago, but we still put a can out in her memory--it's just not Christmas without processed cheese.

And so it begins...

My mom noticed it first while I was home over Thanksgiving.
"I think Sammy may be starting to teethe."
Me: "Huh?"
My mom: "See how he keeps chewing on his fingers in the same spot?  That's a sure sign right there."
Me: "Crap."

My mom's keen powers of observation are definitely bearing out as other teething symptoms have appeared over the past several days.  Sammy's been waking up in the middle of the night, crying out as if in pain (fortunately for me, he's also been going right back to sleep).  Sammy's always been a drooler, but he's soaking through multiple bibs in a single day.  On top of that, the last couple of days have been witness to several moments of frustrated crying jags with no obvious cause--which is super unusual, because Sammy is not one to fuss without a reason.

Sensing the inevitable, Santa made an early visit to the house and dropped off a Christmas present for Sammy: his very own Sophie the Giraffe (Santa has much deeper pockets than I do.)  I hurriedly opened the package and handed the toy over to a fretful Sammy, who, I will admit, broke into a great big sunny grin upon seeing Sophie for the first time.  He needed a little coaxing to figure out how to actually get her into her mouth, but I think with a little practice he'll soon be chewing like a seasoned pro.

Tempus Fugit

 Picture Sounding Rhymes by Mary Alice Stoddard; illustration by Florence Sarah Winship 

(Racine, WI: Whitman Publishing Co., 1943)

Holy crap, it's December.  When in the world did that happen?  It's going to take a whole lot of elbow grease to get Sammy's room finished by my self-imposed deadline of Christmas.  Oh, and then I'll need to find a place for all of Captain Husband's books and other stuff currently residing in the office so that I can get rid of a bookcase and move all of the furniture around so that I can fit in the new trundle day bed that I bought on my Thanksgiving trip home, which will make the office double as a guest room.  And then I need to work on selling the furniture from the former guest room on Craigslist so that my garage no longer resembles a used furniture shop; anyone interested in a full-size brass bed from the 1920s?  Yeah, and then there's picking out a Christmas tree (and carrying it up three flights of stairs) and getting all of the decorations out and multiple road trips to New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania.  Don't forget wrapping presents, sending out Christmas cards, and mailing out my MilSpouse Secret Santa gift.  I'm tired just typing this stuff out.  Anyone know where I can get myself cloned?