Holiday party and sleep routine excitement
The holiday season is now in full swing. The only real event where we have a lot of people over at our house is our holiday party so this is almost a house warming event for the Newton house. Sarah has managed to co-ordinate the party thus far but I have been involved doing things like purchasing and carrying in a Christmas tree on Saturday. Madeline was very happy to see a Christmas tree and quickly proceeded to place ornaments onto the bottom branches. Eli the cat then proceeded to knock the ornaments off of the tree. Our tree this year is fatter than last year so the beads didn’t make it around. Since I am Jewish I don’t have a big set of ornaments but we have decided it makes sense to place some dreidels, menorahs, and gelt decorations into the mix on the tree to represent multiple cultures. My other contribution was to go out on a wine cellar stocking expedition with Dave F. to purchase a case and a half of wine at the various wine establishments. We learned the important point that the 15-20% discount when purchasing a case or more at each store still applies if you purchase the case with a friend and split it on two credit cards. So it pays, from a discount standpoint, to shop together for wine. Thus far I have successfully avoided all post Thanksgiving trips to the dreaded holiday mall parking lot. Given how pre-occupied I’ve been with work it will be an interesting question as to whether I’ll have the time to paint Madeline’s new room, the one she’ll be moved to when the new baby arrives, before this holiday party or not. If I start tonight or tomorrow I should be able to pull it off but after Wednesday it will be impossible to do two coats of paint.
The new go-to-sleep routine with Madeline has become for Sarah to rock Madeline in the dark while I pull a chair in and talk with Sarah about life until Madeline goes to sleep. It has been a good way to actually talk with Sarah about life rather than our standard running around chasing tasks or sitting watching DVDs. But Sarah did go out to dinner tonight and Madeline tried to revolt when I went to put her to bed. The various activities prior to sleep including taking 3000 licks on a tootsie roll pop before I needed to bite into it for her to get her to finish it, reading books and watching a baby Einstein video in bed, a trip downstairs for an orange juice, then rocking with her while screaming that she wanted mommy until a few minutes later she suddenly and inexplicably instantly fell asleep.