Haha, Wish! I am so NOT prepared for Christmas this year! I feel like I need another month in addition to the remaining 3 weeks in order to be somewhat ready
Miki, your life sounds so busy right now. I'm with Wish... makes me tired just reading it, and I'm not trying to grow a tiny human! I'm impressed that you have any energy at all. I hope the 2nd trimester has meant less nausea and easier food choices. I can't believe you're already over 25 weeks. Just 15 more?!
Kai sounds adorable and I bet he's loving all the visitors. How does he do with family he hasn't seen in a while? Is he shy or does he kind of remember them now? Miriam is very shy, but we found that showing her pictures for about 2 weeks before the meeting helps a lot. I was so relieved at Thanksgiving because she warmed up in a matter of minutes. With such a short visit (2 days), it helps if she's not shy and hiding from people for the whole first day! How are you feeling about your mom's visit? I hope you have some planned downtime where you can get away, even if it's just to relax in your room for an hour.
Wish, do you have any special plans for the boys' birthday in January? I can't believe all these "babies" are turning two! When did they all become bona fide toddlers? Christmas for us will be low-key this year, too. We will just have my mom at our house (she's local, so that's easy) and we aren't planning anything major for Miriam. My dad and stepmom will be in town for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year's, so we'll do an extended family thing with my sister at that time, but no gifts to speak of (except everyone seems to buy for Miriam!). I'm looking forward to kind of a quiet holiday. However, before then, we have my choir concerts, DW is going to visit her mom for 4 days, and we have to get all the paperwork done for DW's hip replacement surgery coming in January. While I'm not excited about the surgery itself and DW being laid up and unable to drive for a while, I am sooooo glad she's having this surgery! Her hip had gotten so bad that she can barely walk at all and it causes her constant pain. She also kept falling a couple of months ago - one time while holding the baby, who got dropped on the concrete driveway. Thankfully, everyone was okay, but it made it finally hit home that the surgery was necessary NOW and not "in a few years when it gets really bad." DW finally realized it already IS really bad and her primary doctor and the orthopedic doctor both told her so.
Miriam finally started walking right before she turned 18 months and now, at 19 months, she is running around like a total goofball. She still only says a few words, but she "talks" constantly, so we think that with a little speech therapy, she'll start using real words fairly quickly. She seems to understand everything we say, so the language development is there. Maybe she just doesn't feel the need to speak?
Thanksgiving was so fun, though. My parents bought a vacation house in WV, which is the perfect central location for all my siblings to get together. So we were all there in one place for the first time in over 15 years. Miriam just loved playing with her cousins, who are 9 and 13. Amazingly, the 13-year-old boy was GREAT with her and kept her giggling all the time. Of course, all the aunts were thrilled to hold her, too. And since the house wasn't baby-proofed AT ALL, Miriam had free run and loved testing all the boundaries. I, on the other hand, was worn out by the end of the weekend from chasing her up the stairs and out of the kitchen! Thankfully, she was a great traveler and had no problems in the car (4 hours each way). DW had to work, so it was just the two of us. It could have been a real trial, but it wasn't! It's hard to believe this was her second Thanksgiving. So much has changed in the last two years, from being pregnant and sick at Thanksgiving, to feeding purees to a baby, to her eating actual turkey and sides this year. Can we just get time to slow down a little bit?!