Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (36 weeks 1 day)

The holidays were different this year. They are going to be even more different next year. Melissa and Jonathan moved to Myrtle Beach this spring and they were not able to come up for Christmas. Brian’s mom was also not home for Christmas. That just left us, my parents and Brian’s grandparents to celebrate this year. Because Christmas and New Year’s were on Saturdays, I did not get a day off for them. I worked Monday-Friday like I normally do. That did not leave me much time to get things done.

Brian’s family has always had Christmas breakfast. When we first got together, we would always have Christmas breakfast at his Grandma’s house. It was always a lot of fun. My family never really did a Christmas breakfast when I was growing up. We always just had Christmas dinner. A few years ago, Christmas breakfast was too much for Grandma so Melissa starting hosting it. That worked out well too. The entire family would go to Melissa’s and we would eat then open gifts.

This year, I was the one hosting Christmas breakfast. It is interesting because I never expected that I would now be the one doing it every year. I did not mind because normally I love entertaining, however this year it was a little more challenging being almost 9 months pregnant and exhausted all the time from working. Next year will probably be better that it is at our house. It will be easier to have people come to us instead of packing up and driving the baby somewhere.

Brian was off on Christmas Eve and he was busy getting everything ready. He had to finish installing our baby camera. That was one Christmas gift to our family. They can now log in online to see Baby anytime they want as long as he/she is in his/her room. He also helped clean up the house. My house is not nearly as clean all the time as it use to be. Basically I just do not have the energy to keep the house completely clean like I used to. I've been told something has to give when the baby comes anyway, so perhaps this will help ease me into a new reality.

When I came home from work, I continued to help clean up the house and get everything ready for Christmas. I was wrapping Christmas presents at 9pm at night. That is not like me at all. Hopefully next year, I will not be that far behind. Then we went to 10pm Mass. After church, I came home and got a few hours of sleep before Christmas.

Christmas breakfast went surprisingly well. My parents drove Grandma and Gramps up to our house. We had a nice meal and enjoyed spending time with everyone. After breakfast, we opened gifts. It was kind of weird opening presents at our house especially since we did not even have a Christmas tree up. Since our elaborate Christmas light display in our yard takes so much time and effort, we decided not to put up the Christmas tree for one last year. From now on we will always have a Christmas tree up.
After everyone left our house, Brian and I went to the movies to see “Little Fockers”. It was a nice thing for us to do. The movie was good. After the movie, we went to my parent’s house for dinner. Again it was a nice meal and good to spend it with family. Everyone was there for several hours. At the end of the night I was exhausted.

The week after Christmas, Brian and I looked at our baby registry and figured out what we still needed. We got a lot from the baby shower and Christmas, but there were still many things to buy. Most of our Christmas gifts this year were for the baby. We made a list and decided to go on a shopping spree at Target. We had several gift cards at Target so it was perfect. One night after work, we spent over 2 hours at Target buying things for Baby. My oh my! We had a coupon for 10% off everything on our baby registry so we decided to put everything we were going to buy on the registry immediately before checkout so we would get the discount. It worked out nicely.

This weekend, we went though everything we bought at Target and put it away in Baby’s room. We are almost all organized now. It is amazing how much one little baby needs! Also this weekend, we went and bought me an electric breast pump. I know I really want to breast feed so having this pump will really be nice.

We decided not to do anything on New Year’s Eve because I have been so wore out. After I got home from work, I took a nap. We went to the store and got some snacks and we had dinner at home. Again I took another nap and woke up at 11:30pm just in time to watch the ball drop. All and all we enjoyed our relaxing evening at home.

We still have a few more things to do before baby arrives like packing our hospital bag, starting to fill out our Baby Book, and sterilizing our breastfeeding bottles. All and all things are coming together.

We also stopped my Motherhood Maturity store this weekend and got me some PJ's for the hospital and breastfeeding shirts. We spent so much money there we even got a $50 gift card to restaurants.com. We ended up getting two $25 gift cards at two different restaurants. We plan on having a few more date nights before our baby arrives too.

Besides being tired, I feel pretty good. I am starting to get some edema in my feet. However I am still able to wear my wedding rings which I find somewhat impressive. I have gained 28 pounds and am almost always hungry again. In fact, I woke up at 4am this morning and had to eat. I also find that I must always wear a cami shirt with a bra. I need that much support for my breasts. I continue to do my Bradley exercises and walk as much as possible. I am starting to get leg cramps again. That is always fun in the middle of the night. I wake up 3-4 times a night to go to the bathroom. I am not sure my stomach can get much bigger. If I look straight down I can no longer see my feet. If I look out just a bit I still can catch a glimpse, so it could be worse.