Fauxmas 2014

This past weekend, we got together with my Dad’s Family for Christmas Part III: The One Where Nobody Got an Icky Diseases. We did the same thing last year, but apparently I never bothered to write anything up about it.

(Whoops).

Things got off to a bit of a… rocky start. As in, what would normally be a 2 hour drive to my Grandmother’s house took more than 4 hours. Also, there was this:

Kristian: “Hey, I wasn’t supposed to grab that big duffel bag, was I?”

Me: “You mean the one that had all the clothes and toiletries for Lilian and me in it?”

Kristian: “Erp.”

Lucky for us, my cousin lives just down the street. And she has a daughter. One frantic phone call later, and she was on her way over with some hand-me-downs from her attic. And I was on my way to CVS in order to spend $86 on toiletries.

(I’m so high maintenance.)

(What with wanting to wash my face and brush my teeth and put on deodorant and clean socks in the morning.)

I was looking forward to returning from my expedition to a quiet house, and a sleeping baby. Unfortunately, staying up two-and-a-half hours past her bedtime and then begin asked to fall asleep in a relatively strange location was just too much for poor Lilian. She was wailing to beat the band when I got home.

And she kept wailing.

And wailing.

And wailing.

Sometime around midnight, we realized that she was hungry. Mostly because dug some snacks out of a bag and started waving them around and making faces like these little organic biscuits might very well save her life. I don’t know if she didn’t eat enough at dinner (we stopped at a rest stop and I can’t say it was all that tasty), or if she’d just screamed herself up an appetite.

But, that was apparently not enough.

There had been a slight incident earlier that day, where she pulled my off-brand Zyrtec out of the (now infamous) duffel bag, started shaking it around, and the top popped off. Kristian was pretty sure that he grabbed her and scooped everything up in time, but sometime around 12:30 we started to worry that maybe we hadn’t been so lucky.

What did people do before they could google “zyrtec toddler overdose?”

I’m guessing they did what we did next, which was to call Poison Control. That was a fun conversation. For Kristian.

“So, your toddler might have handled some Zyrtec about 6-7 hours ago and now she won’t sleep? Yeah, I wouldn’t worry yourself about it. If she’d managed to eat any of those pills, she would have shown symptoms within about an hour.”

We were relieved to be reassured that our (ever so slightly paranoid) fears were, well, ever so slightly paranoid. But we were still stuck with a screaming banshee.

I hate letting her scream, but eventually we realized that there was no way that she was going to fall asleep with us in the room. She often can’t sleep if there’s someone there with her. And she was clearly miserable. So, we did what any loving parents would have done.

We put her in the pack and play, went downstairs, and buried our heads under a blanket until she cried herself to sleep.

PS. She woke up again. Three hours later. At 4am. ARGH.

I went and warmed up some milk for her, she drank a little bit of it, and then she fell asleep right in between us, stirring periodically to kick various body parts.

(Good thing she’s so darn cute.)

We got off to a late start the next morning (gee, I wonder why), so we got to my sister’s house just as the festivities were beginning. I was too busy having fun to take many pictures, but rest assured a good time was had by all.

Especially this little one, who got a nice long nap and completely forgot that she only had a few hours of decent sleep the night before.

My sisters had already gathered up some hand-me-downs to give me, so I had a nice selection of things to wear after we arrived. That, plus a shower, and some drugstore makeup and I actually requested that Kristian take a photo of Lilian and me. Mostly because I’m worried that she’s going to grow up and think that I was actually a figment of her imagination, because I’m not actually in any of her childhood photos.

My family (very wisely) chose not to overload Lilian with more presents, but my Grandmother did go above and beyond in sewing a couple of things for her. And by a couple of things, I mean a beautiful little quilt, and a tote bag that is one of her new favorite things in the whole wide word.

I couldn’t get a decent shot of her holding it, because she was too busy running around the house with it dangling from her outstretched arm.

Lilian went to bed ridiculously early (gee, I wonder why), so we had some nice family time. And by “family time” I mean that I curled up on the couch while everyone else played Power Grid (our new favorite game) until I started to look extra pathetic and they all told me to just go to bed already.

Lilian woke us up bright and early the next morning by bolting to standing in her pack and play and yelling “hi!” It was pretty much the cutest thing ever, and it almost made up for the fact that I reaaaaally didn’t want to be awake. Kristian tried to let me sleep in, but one of the items that was sitting in a duffel bag on our bedroom floor was my sleep mask, and it was just too bright in my sister’s guest room for me to fall back asleep.

So, we all went out to breakfast. Who needs sleep when you get to hang out with your sisters?

We stopped at LL Bean on the way home so that I could exchange my Christmas present (we decided to do a Secret Santa this year) for a smaller size. And, man, was that detour worth it. These are the greatest slippers ever. Coupled with the super soft yoga pullover I bought myself on New Years Day and I may never leave my house again.

And now? I need some time to recover from our weekend. :p