Picking Kumquats

We played another round of Stranger Things Monopoly last night. It was my turn to be the banker, and the game actually went really well! At 11pm, we were all pretty much neck & neck. I ended the game with six properties, six forts (=houses), and almost $500. Much better than the night before! We decided to just call it a draw and quit at 11, since we had to get up super early today, and we were all pretty evenly matched.

Everyone in the house was up & moving early today. Nita came over to pick up all the boys, and her & Jeff drove Ryan & Gabe back to meet their mom. Emmie gave everyone big bear hugs, and actually did really well when they left. And then we both had a bowl of cereal for breakfast together.

She pulled the wooden dish from the middle and was telling me all the colors of the ornaments. She picked up this one, sniffed it, and said “this smells like red.” I’m not sure what exactly red smells like, but apparently this is it!

We played for a bit and watched some of the “Secret Life of Pets 2” on Netflix (Emmie loves anything and everything dogs, obviously), and then she was telling me she was sleepy and rubbing her eyes. So we went to take another short morning nap in Mommy’s bed. She chattered and flopped about for a while, but eventually she fell asleep again without any lullabies or anything. And look at her little hand on my arm. She had to be touching me the whole time, and it was so incredibly sweet.

After we woke up from our short nap, I gave her a bath, and then she watched videos on my bed (so calmly & sweetly) while I took a shower.

And then we headed down to Woodville, to spend some time with Grandma Duly, my dad’s mom. His whole side of the family always gets together on Christmas Eve, and usually we would go too, but since Meg & I were both with our in-laws for Christmas Eve, we missed going down there this year. But Emmie got another present, and we all ate fried chicken, and got some good baby time with the triplets. And we picked some kumquats from Uncle Alvin’s tree!

After spending a couple of hours visiting and playing, Emmie and I headed back home. I made sure to talk to her the whole car ride home, to make sure she stayed awake. I knew she was tired and needed another nap, but if she fell asleep in the car, she wouldn’t sleep again at home. But she stayed awake and once we got home, she was ready for her nap.

I washed a bunch of dishes and tidied up a bit around the house, and wrote the first half of this blog post while Emmie napped. I also made this little collage of my Top 9 Instagram photos of 2019. And the first three are all about my beautiful triplet nieces, which is of course no surprise.

Top row left to right: triplet babies birth day; Emmie meets triplets; Meg & Bo’s difficult journey to parenthood.

Middle row left to right: souvenirs from Laurel, MS; new dining room rug; read every day for a week book challenge.

Bottom row left to right: fresh & clean baby after bath; fun with bubbles;backyard orange tree harvest.

After Emmie woke up from her nap (she slept from about 3:30 – 5pm), we cleaned up around the house some more, got the mail, played a little, and watched part of “Klaus” on Netflix. She’s still very excited about Santa Claus.

Jeff got home a little after 6 o’clock, and since I was tired from all the cleaning, and didn’t want to dirty up my kitchen again, we decided to go out. Emerson wanted a cheeseburger, and since I drove past a BK earlier this afternoon, and it smelled so good then, I suggested that tonight. Plus, we found some Whopper Jr. coupons, so all three of us ate for only $9.75. What a deal!

We played for a little while longer once we got home, and Emmie was so crazy and giggly and cute. We watched a couple of calm, night-night videos to get bedtime underway, and that really helped.

She needed extra hugs from her Daddy (she missed him a lot today and asked me multiple times where he was), and then lullabies as usual. When I put her in the crib to scratch her back and sing “Jesus Loves Me,” she kept saying “one more time,” so I ended up singing it about five times, before I finally sneaked out of the room.

For Christmas gifts with my siblings, we just get one “together-gift” for Megan and Bo to share (although my step-brother Drew just gets his own gift), and they get one thing for Jeff and I to share. I got them a personalized “first Christmas” ornament from Etsy, and she got us this pretty tea organizer box, plus the box of breakfast tea (she made sure it was decaf), and the little tea-bag-squeezers. What a fun gift, for us tea-loving-people!

At Publix the other day, I found a couple of new flavors of tea to buy, and made sure to get the ones that are individually wrapped, so I could organize them in our fancy new box. Tonight, we’re having the orange & cinnamon spice tea, and it’s really good! Time for hot tea & relaxing, and Netflix for a bit, before we both pass out from a long, busy day and week.