1Y42W: Happy Birthday, Paul (12/13/10 - 12/19/10)

I spent most of this week trying to finish up my Christmas shopping. Tuesday was Paul’s birthday. We went to dinner that night at his favorite restaurant, Zukey Lake Tavern, per his request. We didn’t know until we got there that they were having a big dinner with Santa and Mrs. Claus event. We were confused as to why it seemed like we were walking into Chuck E. Cheese’s with kids running everywhere until we saw the giant sign announcing the event. We didn’t even try to have Lily’s picture taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus. One tear-filled attempt per year is quite enough. We were seated pretty close to them which was already almost too close for comfort for Lily.

My parents came down and watched Lily on Friday. My mom kindly made us all dinner then they stayed to help me wrap all of our Christmas presents. I absolutely hate wrapping and severely suck at it so I was so grateful to have the help. My mom can wrap about 5 times faster and 10 times better than I can. They stayed pretty late to get it all done so it ended up being a very long day for them.

Rachel flew in on Saturday to spend her Christmas break with us. We haven’t seen her in 6 months (our longest separation from her by far) so we were very excited to have her home. Lily was especially thrilled to have her big sister back. We were glad because it had been our worry that Lily would not remember Rachel since it has been so long since they’ve seen each other. Lily kept excitedly yelling, “Rachel!” every time she saw her sister and would freak out whenever Rachel tried to sneak up to her room for some alone time.

My mom and I took Rachel shopping on Sunday so that she could pick out her Christmas presents and we could have some girl time. Lily hung out at home with daddy and papi. After shopping, we all went out to celebrate Paul’s birthday together and where did he pick to eat again? Zukey Lake Tavern, of course! After dinner, we came back home for presents and pie.

We were horrifically exhausted all week because Lily woke up and wanted to stay awake between 2 and 4am every single morning. She would fight and scream to go downstairs to play. So now, it’s not only hard to get her to go to sleep, she also won’t stay asleep. Ugh! Those lost two hours of sleep were made especially worse considering that I was too busy to get in bed before midnight each night and need to get up at 5:30am to get ready for work. That means I averaged 3.5 hours of interrupted sleep each night. I am so exhausted it’s ridiculous!

Here are some pictures from this week.

This is the closest that I could get Lily to Santa at Zukey Lake Tavern on Tuesday (look real hard in the background):

A hilariously unattractive picture of Paul and Lily:

Lily was even skeptical of this fake Santa:

Reiley and Amber love to hang out under the Christmas tree:

Silly girl wearing Rachel’s crazy glasses on Saturday:

Lily was so excited to have her sister home and loved showing Rachel all of her favorite toys and books:

Goofy girl sitting on her “penguino” (thanks to Dora, she uses the Spanish word for penguin) playing Legos with daddy:

Rawr:

My girls and I back at Zukey on Sunday:

Lily eating fruit snacks while waiting for her dinner to arrive:

Back at home checking out Paul’s birthday presents under the Christmas tree:

Paul opening his gifts:

My sweetheart:

Paul and his birthday pie: