Monday, December 17, 2012

Merry Christmas 2012

90  second year in review (longer Christmas letter to come?):

Eric and Laura welcomed their 2nd (and last) child into the world! Jeremy Phillip was born on March 10th at 3:32am (Scott was born at 3:31am for those of you keeping track).

Lots of fabulous friends and family have come to visit both to see the new baby and to see us. I'd put everyone down, but well, I'm too tired to remember everyone and I don't want to leave anyone out. But if you came to visit, we LOVED having you here and appreciate that you came to us. If you didn't come visit in 2012, our guest room is wide open for 2013! Eric and I didn't do much travel ourselves in 2012, although we each went to one wedding (separately) that required a bit of travel.

This year has been all about finding a balance between staying sane with the lack of sleep and ever mounting housework, doing enriching things for the kids, and trying to have some fun ourselves.

Eric and Laura are at their same jobs. Laura hit 6 years over the summer and Eric has been with his for 2 years. Laura continues to enjoy her book club as her major ongoing "hobby". Eric has gotten into target shooting, although he doesn't get to practice much.

Scott is now 2 years old, celebrating his birthday with a fabulous Toy Story party where his friends and ours dressed up in costumes. He can walk, run, climb, jump, throw and do everything else the big people can. He's talking a lot more now, although we don't always understand what he's saying. He can put 2 or 3 words together, but we don't have sentences yet.

Jeremy is 9 months old and already walking with assistance. He will stand up using anything and if it's something he can push, he will take off across the room. Tables, chairs, toys... all of them get relocated. He has 2 teeth now. His major downfall as a person is his poor sleep, we are looking forward to him outgrowing this stage, but we aren't there yet.

2012 was a great year, and we hope 2013 will be even better.

I need words of encouragement

Every day is a challenge. 

Every day I think "This too shall pass".

Scott is very much 2. He has temper tantrums where he just screams "NO!" over and over again because he doesn't have a ton of language to explain his overly 2 year old emotions. He is getting smarter every day and he's also incredibly loving, but well, the "terrible twos" are a thing in our house. It's hard. It's hard to accomplish anything. It's hard to keep the baby safe and happy around his self-important older brother. 

And while Jeremy is wonderful, happy, playful, smart and inquisitive during his waking hours, he is a sleep terrorist and I haven't gotten more than 3 hours of sleep in a row (and those blocks are rare) in like 6 months. Most nights I get 1-2 hour blocks all night long. I am run down, frustrated...

and sick. Yeah, we are sick again. It sure seems like we spend half our lives sick. 

Kids. I sure hope you two end up BEST FRIENDS and appreciate how hard it was on your daddy and me when you were little. Having two kids this close together is incredibly difficult. I do not feel like a failure in any way, but I do feel like I did something stupid and now I just have to suck it up until... until I don't know when. I had someone tell me that when the younger one is 18 months old it gets better. So, we're half way there?