Christmas is Coming...

That title is part of the lyrics of one of my favorite Muppets Christmas songs (well, I'm sure it was a Christmas song before the Muppets...but we live life according to Muppets standards in our house). I think we'll change goose to "baby", though:

Christmas is coming,
The baby's getting fat. 
Please to put a penny in the old man's hat.
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do.
If you haven't go a ha'penny, 
Then God Bless You!

I always sing the lyrics in Miss Piggy's voice in my head. When we replace goose with baby, though, the whole thing doesn't make sense. Lukie's not GETTING fat. He IS fat. So fat. And has been for a while.

Spreading the Muppet love. Feel free to ignore.

Anyway, I didn't update over the weekend because it's pretty much been nose-to-the-grindstone around here to try to get through to the 28th when we can go home to Illinois, but yesterday, I had the day off! We took a family day, and even though I spend most days there anyway, we came to the Kingsport Public Library to meet Santa Claus and have lunch with Grandma Rebecca!

We got there early and got VIP treatment, I guess- Lukie got Santa all to himself for a few pictures before they opened the doors to the auditorium. A few people had told me that he might freak out, but he gets passed around to other people all the time (which I do on purpose, since I want him to be unafraid of meeting new people). And, I just don't think he's gotten to that "stranger-danger" stage where he acts a little shy or needs Mommy all the time.

Anyway, he did NOT freak out...he had fun!

And apparently, he felt comfortable enough with Santa to do exactly as he does to his Daddy on a relatively regular basis--- pull on his beard. This shot is from Pete's iPhone...but it's pretty priceless. He had to check and make sure his beard was real!

We also had my friend Kyndra take a family photo for us. My hair's all busted. Typical.

He just looks so. danged. fat. in this picture. 

We went out to lunch with Grandma Rebecca after meeting Santa and watching the kids' program. Rebecca is so wonderful to Lukie-- she bought him an outfit, 3 or 4 books (including one my favorites, the "Bear" books- Bear Stays Up for Christmas), a really awesome Christmas sock monkey (which he promptly attempted to eat), and a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament that I will now have to fill with a picture. Probably one of the ones up above.

We also bought Lukie a stocking (actually, that was quite a hunt-- Pete requires all of our stockings to actually look like they could be socks...I think it's a historical accuracy thing) and a toy. I don't overbuy toys for him, but I noticed he liked the light-up ones at daycare, so we got him a light-up toy that plays music when he pushes on the buttons. Hopefully he'll like it. Mostly we just wanted to open something with him on Christmas morning.

In other news, Lukie is the worst sleeper ever...but I'm blaming it on teething. I can feel the bump on his bottom gums and he's rubbing everything and anything on there to try to cut through. For the last 3 nights, he's been up every hour/hour and a half unless he has Tylenol, and even then we've only gotten 2-hour stretches out of him. He's not really coordinated enough to hold teethers to his mouth for very long without dropping them on the ground. We haven't tried Orajel yet, but I'm just not a huge fan of medicating him in the first place. I don't know. We'll see. Mommy's so tired, but I keep telling myself it's a phase and as soon as those teeth pop out, it'll hopefully get better. Good Lord, I hope it gets better!

It's a good thing he's cute in the morning.

Also, he's getting fun...It used to terrify him when Pete would swing him around, but now we have a baby who loves to be bounced, tossed (very gently--still a little young), danced with, spun...anything involving fast motions (but not too fast...that results in serious upchucking, even if he's happy while doing the upchucking).

Please excuse Pete's discussion of Lukie's baby chunk. It's a little indecorous.