Three Days of Christmas

Our First Christmas Together!

We are still recovering from our long Christmas weekend. Whoa. It was wonderful to get to see our family, but the kids especially were worn out by the time it was over.

 

THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS

We started the weekend off with a visit from the babies’ Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Winn. The babies seemed to really enjoy the visit, and Ellie discovered that Great-Grandma wears necklaces that are really fun to chew on. 🙂

With Great-Grandparents Winn: Ellie, Caleb, Abby, and Eli

They brought a gift with them that was big enough to pile all of the babies on top of. Abby didn’t seem to get into the Christmas spirit as quickly as the others, but eventually, they all took turns tearing (really more like chewing) on the wrapping paper. They brought us one of those Super XL Play Yards. Or as I affectionately refer to it, “The Baby Cage. “ We’ve already started using it to corral the kids. Awesome gift because these little people are all over the place now!

 

What is this big box?Opening their first Christmas gift

Friday evening, my parents, brother Mike and his wife and daughter, and my two youngest brothers, Josh and Chris, came over for dinner. We decided to have a New Mexican Christmas dinner as a nod to our childhood. It’s so hard to find good Mexican food here in the Midwest, so we like to make it ourselves to make sure it is good. 🙂

New Mexican Christmas Dinner

I made Chicken Fajitas with homemade salsa and homemade guacamole.

I baked some bischochitos as well. They are the traditional New Mexican Christmas cookie. Made with brandy or white wine, rolled thin, and dipped TWICE in sugar and cinnamon. Yummy!

Bischochitos

My Mom wrote down my grandma’s posole recipe while she was in Mesilla, New Mexico visiting last week. Cooked correctly, it takes a while to get that perfect flavor of pork, hominy, and red chili, but it is so worth it. Mom made her red chili sauce from scratch just like grandma used to do. She also brought a big pot of chile con queso (not rotel, mind you. I’m taking about the real stuff!)

Sarah brought Little Smokeys and Taquitos. Little Smokeys? That’s not technically Mexican, but every Christmas Eve, we had a potluck at my grandparents’ house and someone always brought Little Smokeys. It’s just not Christmas without them. The only food item that got a complaint were the Taquitos. Mike told Sarah that they weren’t quite right because she didn’t cut them in half for him like when we were growing up.

But, other than Mike’s small complaint, everyone thoroughly enjoyed skipping the Traditional Christmas Dinner, and going with the New Mexican version. Can you tell it was one of my favorite parts of the entire weekend??

Uncle Josh, Uncle Christopher, Grandpa, Cita, Daddy, Aunt Sarah, and Uncle Mike

There is even talk about making it a tradition from here on out. I’m totally on board with that!

The kids thought that the wrapping paper was the best part of the evening. Then they got to the toys and realized that Grandpa and Cita brought all toys that make noise. The kids LOVE the fact that they light up, move, and play music. (Sean and I are still coming to terms with the extra layer of noise in our house now.)

First Christmas!

Two of my siblings couldn’t make it back from Christmas, but we were lucky enough to get to Skype with my brother, Mark, from New Mexico (he moved back to the area that we grew up in). We wish that he could have made it here, but Skype is a good compromise!

 

THE SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS

Saturday afternoon, Sean’s parents, and sister Ruby and her husband and daughter came over for a traditional Christmas dinner. Ham, sweet potatoes, cheesy corn, rolls, and pumpkin pie. Another delicious meal! Which reminds me, I still need to get that cheesy corn recipe from Ruby. It was beyond amazing!

That was followed up by some Wii Bowling before we dug into pie and then into presents.

 

Pa, Cousin Marissa, Ma, and Daddy Playing the WiiCousin Marissa, Uncle Todd, and Aunt Ruby recovering from Christmas Dinner

Cereal, Crawling, and Christmas is Coming

One week until Christmas!

I thought this year would be pretty low key with being on lockdown, but somehow, four babies have made for it being anything but that!

The kids are definitely keeping us crazy busy!

Caleb is such a sweetie, but he hasn’t done much in terms of moving from point A to point B yet. Why go to all that work when eventually someone will just make the move for him?? He rolls a lot though and gets up on his knees a bit. I imagine he is not too far behind the others. His favorite thing is giggling. He loves being tickled and sometimes he will just lie on the floor and laugh at his own private jokes. Hmm…reminds me a lot of his father.

We wish a little of his happiness would rub off on the kid that was born four minutes later.

Now that Abby has figured out how to crawl, she thinks she is a cat. If she wants to be picked up and one of us are sitting on the couch, she crawls over and rubs up against our legs…or head butts us. Whatever strikes her fancy, I guess. She also likes to lick our knees when we are down on the floor. I really don’t know what to do with that….

Happily though, she FINALLY decided to give up her oxygen. It was a surreal feeling packing up all of her monitors and supplies to go back to the medical company. For all intents and purposes, we have had a mobile NICU unit set up here, and suddenly, we were done. Nine long months of fighting to get them stable and breathing without support and **BAM** we’re finished. Not complaining, of course. It’s just such a strange thing to watch the gear that has accompanied us everywhere walk out the front door and then look down and realize that my daughter is officially unattached to it.

Elijah is doing what I like to call “The Injured Soldier Crawl.” He throws one arm out and then drags the other three limbs behind it. It’s kind of hilarious by itself, but the physical and occupational therapists are now zeroing in on him to develop core strength. That boy hates therapy like non-other. His therapists were telling me yesterday that most kids can be coaxed into doing their exercises after awhile, but not Eli. He is a total wet noodle, and does his best to stay that way. I think his unequivocal refusal to do anything is definitely challenging to his therapists. Other than that, he is the most laid-back, genuinely happy baby I’ve ever met.

I’m sure his sisters would be thrilled, though, if he would stop kicking them in the face. Yep, I’m already having to separate my kids.

 

Our runt. Ellie is a crazy little thing! She suddenly decided to start crawling a few days ago without any warning. When I left for the grocery store, she was just spinning around in circles. By the time I got back, she was crawling all over the place. There really was no lead up to it. She just decided she was going to start crawling and got down to business!

Always our high maintenance child, she is currently driving us both up the wall with her constant crying in the evening. She isn’t hungry, wet, dirty, cold, or in pain. She just wants to be held for hours on end. Even if Sean is playing on the floor with the kids, if he isn’t playing specifically with her, she screams about it. We try not to let her dictate how our evening goes since we have to get other things done too (like eat dinner), or play with our other kids, but we are kind of suckers. She gets held a lot. She’s a hoot though because when she is playing or laughing, she makes sounds like she is a lion. When she’s happy, she’s thrilled to be alive! And when she’s sad, we aren’t thrilled to be alive. Go figure.

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I have to stop for a minute and ask, “Did you like the previous four photos?” We love them! They were taken by the same photographer, Debra, from Abundant Moments Photography who did the babies Newborn shoot. We are super lucky to have won that gift certificate! Woot! We now have a large print of our family and a large print of them all curled up together naked on our dining room wall (Don’t worry. The nakedness is tasteful. Everybody can still eat. 🙂 )

We still have another shoot or two in the next few months before we are done. We are talking about doing one either here at the house in their environment (once they can sit up by themselves) and/or a first birthday shoot. If you want to see her other work or are curious about her, you can go here.

 

These photos are treasures at our house!

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Sean’s parents’ brought over the babies’ first Christmas tree last weekend, so we set about decorating it. In a bid to keep pine needles out of their mouths, the tree is sitting on our kitchen table on the other side of the gate. But for this photo, I asked Sean to move it into their play area. Sean’s mom also brought over Christmas pajamas, so we dressed them up and took their first Christmas photo.

A Christmas Elf, Santa Claus, A Reindeer, and The Kid who Thinks if She Stays up Long Enough She Will Catch Santa Coming Down the Chimney

(we haven’t had the heart yet to tell Ellie that we don’t have a fireplace or chimney in our living room).

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One last treat for those of you who like to see videos of our kids. We have officially started rice cereal! We are taking it very slowly to give their digestive systems time to adjust, so we are sticking with just the cereal right now. Curious how that’s going? I’ll let the video speak for itself.

In case we don’t talk before then, we wish you a Very Merry Christmas!

-Becca

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Guess who FINALLY gave up her oxygen?

That’s one happy baby (which makes for two very happy parents)!

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