Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, joyeux noel and happy Kwanzaa!

We spent the last week out in Boulder, CO visiting extended family and it was a great time. After 12 hours of trains, planes and automobiles, we're back home in Boston, ready to start "real life" again tomorrow.

Christopher goes to YMCA vacation camp and I go back to work. Bah humbug. But hey, someone's gotta pay the mortgage, right?

The week away was really nice and it was great to see family. Everyone was incredibly generous with their gifts too: My sister got Christopher a Razor scooter and a cool helmet. She also bought me a cappuccino maker so now I can stop going to Starbucks and start enjoying tasty coffee drinks right in my own home. Nice right???

Christopher adored spending time with his auntie and with his two cousins, who are close to age with him. The up side was, the kids had a lot of fun playing together. The down side was, sometimes play turned into loud, screaming chaos.

With three kids ages 5, 6 and 7, all over-stimulated, over-sugared and not getting enough sleep, even the most well adjusted child will melt down. Try having a special needs kiddo with ADHD, ODD and PTSD and as you can imagine it all got a bit insane at times. Each day Christopher seemed to lose more impulse control and the defiance increased in frequency. We tried going out to dinner on our last night there and all the boys did was fight, which made we two moms ready to rip our hair out. I'm pretty sure the other patrons at Outback Steakhouse were happy when we were done and gone that evening. Thank you come again....not.

Then there's the travel. Christopher's actually a really good airline traveler--better than I am, if I am to be honest. I get so stressed that I'm going to be late and miss my flight or forget something important like my wallet or that I won't find parking in the economy lot, etc. etc. For some reason when we travel, Christopher's the calm one and I feel like the raving lunatic until I'm safely buckled into my seat. I joked with the woman next to me in the security line that I think it's the only time of year that I wish I had a Xanax prescription. (Kidding! Well sort of...)

Now the airlines also really do not make it easy to travel during the holidays. First, everything is just so unbelievably expensive. I don't even want to tell you what I paid for those tickets. On top of that, you get on the plane and they want to charge you for "premium seats", which frankly, don't seem all that premium-ish to me. If you want to watch DirectTV, it's $8.00 per TV screen per flight. So for us, just getting to Denver it would have been $32 if I had chosen that option ($64 round trip). No thank you! I loaded up the Kindle with movies and games for Christopher and I chose to read a book. Last but not least, no airline peanuts. If you want any sort of food, even a snack, you're now paying out of pocket for it and it's pretty crappy. Needless to say, we ate in the airport.

When I booked the flight, I couldn't select my seats yet. Fine. So I waited and went back to the site last week to select seats, only to find that most seats had been chosen and there were only some random singles left. So did that mean I wouldn't be sitting next to my young child for 4 hours? Pretty much. When I got to the airport, I tried to get the United people to help me, all to no avail. It was a full aircraft, nothing we can do, blah blah blah. Finally, I had to beg the nice man sitting next to Christopher to switch with me just so I could sit next to my young child. Thankfully he did, or else I would have had to pay for those "premium seats" to ensure Christopher didn't start screaming and crying without me there. Yeesh. Honestly, next time I fly out to Colorado, I'm flying JetBlue. United just kind of stunk. So not family friendly.

Now we're home, Christopher's asleep and I'm just about ready to call it a night myself. I hope all who read this has had a wonderful Christmas season themselves and I look forward to a momentous and enjoyable 2014 as well. Cheers!

Fun Run

Yesterday I had one of the best days I've had in a really long time. I got to run the Somerville Jingle Bell Run. I was slow as molasses because I haven't had the time to run in months but that doesn't matter. I had 30 full minutes all to myself so I could do something I love. It was awesome.

A group of friends and I dressed up in festive holiday attire and all ran the race together. My friend's husband watched the kiddos while the rest of us ran. He only had them for 30 minutes so it wasn't terribly taxing but still, it was amazing.

After the race was over, we went over to a restaurant in the neighborhood and had brunch together. Christopher played with the other kids and I got to enjoy some quality time with friends. Awesome day.

In 2014 I'm going to do my best to have more social fun times like this because I just felt SO good. Running is healthy and such a great stress reliever and the kiddo had fun too.

Happy Holidays everyone!

xoxo Jackie

Happy Birthday Christopher

“When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.” 
― A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six

Today is my little man's 6th birthday and he is SO excited! He woke me up at 3:55am today, ready to start his day, wondering where his presents were. I, on the other hand, was not quite so ready to start my day so the little man was led back to bed and told to sleep. Then we both proceeded to oversleep, which meant running around crazed at 7am so the kiddo could make it to school on time.

Where are Christopher's presents right now? At the store because I haven't had the time to shop yet. I took today off from work and I'm going to go to Target in a bit and pick him up a bunch of Angry Birds toys. My sister did send him a present that arrived on Wednesday and I hid it in my closet so Christopher wouldn't see it. I know for a fact he would have sneaked in there and opened it when my back was turned otherwise. 

I told Christopher he was getting clothes for his birthday, which of course made him yell "NOOOO!" so hopefully he'll be pleasantly surprised when he actually gets toys.

His birthday party isn't until January 18th, which means he gets to enjoy quite the "perpetual birthday" this year. I rented the therapy pool at the YMCA and didn't realize you've got to rent it two months ahead, since it's so popular. I figured it's better to wait until after the holidays anyway, when life's a bit less insane. That's what I tell myself at least so I don't feel guilty about putting off his party for over a month.

I will take the kiddo out for a late lunch and then he'll come home and open his presents. Don't worry...this kid will still celebrate today.

Happy birthday Christopher! Mama loves you. xoxo