December 2012

Our first Christmas with two little guys was equal parts fun, exhausting and feverish. Feverish because both of you came down with awful colds the day before Christmas Eve – fevers, coughs, sneezy, stuffy and runny noses. No fun at all. But let’s backtrack to early December…

We started the month off with a visit to Matt and Molly’s house to meet Cecelia, who was born in November. She is the cutest and we’ve already decided that Archer and Cecelia are destined for love. We brought in a new babysitter for Thursday mornings (Jessica) to watch Archer while he naps so that I can take Sebastien out for some one on one time and she is GREAT. Sebastien continued his Monday/Tuesday schedule at CNS, Wednesday gymnastics class, Saturday swim class and we all enjoy our Friday visits from Ra and Papa. Sebastien and Nick went down the block to pick out a Christmas tree from the Boys & Girls Club – they picked a great one – and we all decorated it. Archer had his 4 month pediatrician appointment, weighing in at 16 lbs, 14 oz and measuring 26.5 in. Archer is officially bigger (by almost a pound) and taller (by half an inch) than Sebastien at the same age. We’ll see if that trend continues! We all went to Sebastien’s “All School Sing” which… was a bit of a flop. They tried it in a new space this year and it was very hard to hear anything, plus half of the teachers were out sick (both Emma and Nancy included) so there weren’t enough people to get the kids involved. Sebastien was particularly having no part of it; I think he thought it was at the school and did NOT want to go to the church space instead. It was a cute idea though, so hopefully next year will be better executed. We spent a Saturday night at ZooLights at the Stone Zoo, looking at all the Christmas lights, seeing a few of the animals and ALMOST seeing Santa (someone chickened out at the last minute). Dani, Eric and the girls came up for the holidays so we went down to Narragansett to visit before the holiday craziness kicked in. Sebastien and Uncle Eric are total BFF’s so we’re excited at the prospect that they might move back up to RI in the spring. School vacation week started and Sebastien went to two special sessions at CNS (Science & Art and Drawing & Engineering). Science and engineering were the big hits, although I’m not sure what they really did except that both involved water (and wet sleeves). We had a play date and pizza dinner at our house with William and Avery and a play date with our CNS friends at the Science Museum. We celebrated Nick’s birthday with our traditional Carvel ice cream cake, although Sebastien wasn’t actually interested in eating any this year. On the 23rd, we went down to RI for Vuono Christmas, which was held for the first time at a restaurant. It was mostly a success – Sebastien really loved playing with Jacob and they both got lots of fun toys to keep them busy – until we started to crossover the nap time threshold and had to make a quick exit due to a serious meltdown. We had a low-key (and sort of sick) Christmas Eve followed by Christmas Day at A. Sha and U. Richie’s. The kids had a blast playing together (especially Sebastien and Peter) and Grammie and Pop-Pop even came to join in the fun. After Christmas, Grammie and Pop-Pop stayed with us up in Charlestown until the following weekend, when Jared, Margaret, Ashlyn and Ben came up to celebrate Verdi Christmas. We had our traditional bacon waffle breakfast and crown roast dinner, with lots of present opening in between. Seb and Archer were totally spoiled by both sides of the family and Nick and I had to start a massive toy clean-up and organization effort in order to fit in all the new stuff! After all of the family headed home, we spent a very relaxed NYE and New Years Day in (still nursing colds) with a quick trip out to the 99 for our (third year running) NYE dinner.

Archer, as of the beginning of the month, you are officially rolling from your front to back, although mostly just in the middle of the night. During the day, you can’t quite seem to figure it out! You are on a relatively standard schedule these days of a catnap in the morning (45 min to 1.5 hrs), a long nap in the afternoon (1.5-2.5 hrs) and another catnap in the evening (usually 30-45min). Bedtime is still a little later than we would like (around 9pm), but hopefully once you move to a solid two naps, you’ll push that up on your own. (Any effort on our part to push it up just makes for a miserable, extended bedtime with a lot of fussing and crying.) At night, you’re sleeping slightly better – some nights only two wake-ups around 1am and 4am, some nights three – but bedtime is still pretty rough. You’re getting better and better at getting your pacifier back in your mouth after you pull it out… until you inevitably drop it. My favorite thing you’re doing at the moment is this full-body shake and squeal when you’re really excited. So cute.

Sebastien, you came back from Arizona at the end of November with a reaffirmed love for your pacifier and an obsession with tornados (and songs about tornados). That evolved into an obsession with the show Storm Chasers and your only wish for Christmas was a “Doppler radar truck.” (Which, trust me, was not easy to find.) You watched about ten different nature documentaries with Grammie and Pop-Pop while they were visiting and are especially in love with one about volcanoes called, “The Ring of Fire.” The song by Johnny Cash of the same name is now the first thing you ask for when we get in the car. You also love the “girl shaking her hair song” (My Kinda Party by Jason Aldean) and always run to get your cowboy hat and a pretend microphone to sing along. You were a big fan of the advent calendar this year, but weren’t super happy with the concept of only one a day. It was the first thing you asked for in the morning, but then periodically throughout the day, you’d tell me you wanted to “do the countdown again!” And you called it the “Countdown to Chocolate” even though we tried to tell you we were actually counting down to Christmas. You also really liked the nativity, but had trouble remembering the baby’s name. You’d tell us it was, “Baby Chase” and when we’d correct you, you’d call him “Baby Chase-us.” Close. We were well into November before we could transition you out of your Halloween books, but eventually you took to the Christmas books and loved The Grinch and The Polar Express. You are still most certainly NOT a fan of Santa in person, thank you very much, although you were quite excited to see him until he was in front of you. You loved decorating Christmas cookies (and eating the dough) and my favorite word of the moment is “lem-a-lade.” You decided you wanted to get your face painted during Charlestown’s Christmas stroll (which I NEVER thought you would do) and sat so still while you were made into the most magnificent tiger. Then I was afraid you would be upset at bath time when we had to wash it off, but you just looked in the mirror and told us, “Sebastien is NOT a tiger,” quite matter of factly.

We had a great month and I’m not looking forward to the rest of the gray Boston winter without the cheeriness of the holidays. But at least we have Sebastien’s birthday to look forward to at the end of next month! Bring on three!

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