Out with the old...

Guess who managed to stay up until midnight last night for the first time since Hannah was born! That's right, this early-to-bed, mostly loser-ish mama right here.  It helped that Laura was here making life fun, and it also helped that Eric volunteered to stay home so that I could walk down to 34th Street to see the ball drop, something I've wanted to do for years but somehow never got around to doing in all my 5-1/2 years of living here.

Photo courtesy of Ms. Laura Mae and Jon

I've gotten terribly behind in my blogging this month and don't feel like dragging December's memories into the new year with me so I'm going to create a monster of a post catching you up on everything you didn't know you missed in December (which, as it turns out, is not as much as I thought) starting with Christmas day and working backwards. Get your reading muscles ready!


1. Christmas (as in Christmas day)
Hannah took her time opening her presents, playing with each thing she opened for a while before opening another, so the present-opening lasted all morning which was really nice.

As I said before, I'm not much of a shopper, and I don't want Hannah to get used to having a ton of stuff under the tree, and we spend a lot through the year on various classes (getting ready to add Spanish classes to her weekly routine which already includes gymnastics, music, and kids fitness fusion) and memberships (just bought a Port Discovery membership and renewed our membership to the aquarium). That said, the only things we put under the tree for her were two packs of Dinosaur Train figurines and a book, but those figures combined with the Megabloks Dinosaur Train that Grannah and Granpah got her made her day. I don't think I've mentioned Dinosaur Train before, but it's awesome, and Hannah loves it, and I love that she loves it because it's a seriously great kid show. You should check it out if you have kids.

Grannah and Granpah got Eric this crazy face/head warmy thing and some nice socks and flannel pants, all of which will come in quite handy when he takes his crazy self to Minnesota this month to dedicate an entire week of his life to dogsledding and camping in below freezing weather. Ugh. I'm cold and miserable just thinking about it. You couldn't pay me enough money to go on a trip like that!! I can think of few things more miserable than spending 7 minutes in below freezing weather, let alone 7 days. No thank you!

Grannah and Granpah also got Hannah an indoor gardening kit. Grannah helped the munchkin plant the seeds that afternoon, and a few days later, they sprouted! Hannah's having fun watering her plants and watching the green shoots get bigger every day.

After a nap we walked to the playground for some fresh air.

Hannah's got a new game where she stands behind this little play bar thingy and pretends to be a waitress of sorts, asking us what we want and then running off to the grass to retrieve it the pretend smoothie or sandwich or whatever was asked for before bringing it back to the customer. Here's Grannah placing her order.

2. Holiday parties
We got fancied up for Eric's holiday party at the beginning of this month, and sadly, the pics (due to my inability to take low light pics) turned out pretty terribly, but I thought I'd post one for posterity's sake anyway.  I got my hair cut the following week so it no longer looks so incredibly, ridiculously terribly thin, though I do find that I have a lot less hair these days than ever before which totally sucks.

Amy babysat for us that night (and also did my hair and makeup and provided that super-sweet push-up bra) so we got to relax and enjoy the night knowing that Hannah was more than fine. She was so excited to have Amy to herself for the night that she repeatedly asked us to leave--it was fantastic! So we went out and had some drinks and even danced! It took me four drinks to get to the dancing point, and I suffered a bit the next day, but it was worth it.

Eric was hurting a bit the next morning too so when Hannah woke up early, the two cuddled up on the couch and watched videos on the internet. I love this pic.

We went to my holiday work party the week after but didn't get any pics which sucks because my hair looked awesome that night. Oh well.  Mary Cate babysat for that so once again, Hannah ushered us out of the house, and we were able to totally relax and enjoy getting to know my new coworkers.

3. Meeting baby Zoey!!
The first exciting thing that happened this month that I never got around to blogging about was Zoey being born to Amy and Nate next door. This means that Hannah is no longer the only kid on the block!! It's going to be so fun watching Zoey grow up and watching her interact with Hannah.

We went over to meet her and take some pics about a week after she was bornp Hannah was mesmerized.  She has been asking for a baby sister for some time now, and meeting Zoey made her more insistent. We keep trying to explain that we have no control over whether it's a boy or girl and wouldn't she be happy with either a brother or a sister, but at that, she just pauses, narrows her eyes at us and says, "No. I want sister."

Alright, you're caught up now I think.  Whew!! Sayonora 2011!!  Happy 2012!