Christmas, Etc.

On Christmas Eve we went to my sister's house and opened presents with my family. I wasn't great about taking pictures but I got one of Dylan in his Christmas pajamas. This year he did great opening his presents. He especially love the train he got from my gramma D. He also got a farm from my parents that he dragged everyone over to play with.

(PS the year is wrong on this. Eric set it and apparently he's still in 2007!)



My Gramma gave us our wedding quilt that she made for us. At our wedding we passed out quilt squares for our guests to sign and then she put it together with pictures and made a nice wall hanging. It came out so nice. My aunt helped with getting the pictures together for it. My favorite quote on it is from my Gramma McNeil "Dear Sarah and Eric, Here's to many happy and productive years! Gram needs some great grand daughters! I love you both very much! Gram Mac". She is very determined to see any of us have a girl!





One day before Christmas, my mom and I were looking through an LL Bean catalog and she mentioned how she was thinking about getting Eric a pair of one piece long underwear for work. I told her I wasn't sure if he would like it. However, about a week later Eric was talking to his Uncle Rich and he mentioned how Eric should get a pair of them because they are so warm. Well Santa came through and as you can tell, Eric really liked them. He even walked outside in them!

Christmas day I made dinner. I was a little bummed to not have my Gramma McNeil there but it was so nice to have people come over for a holiday! Our guests included: Laura (Eric's mom), Tyler, Melissa (Tyler's girlfriend), Mom, Dad, Gramma D, and Ted. I was going to take pictures of myself cooking the meal and everyone enjoying the meal but we all know me with a camera, always forgetting to document important events! I made ham for dinner and various other things. I didn't completely time everything well because everyone came over right when I was planning on getting the cooking in full gear so I got a little distracted. I did get some help which made it go smoother. It all seemed to come out well. No one complained of stomach pains and everyone's still alive so I consider that a success!

In other news...

We registered at Babies R Us an hour before they were closing on Sunday. So we ran around the store and did what we had to do. I left there not having a clue as to what I registered for. So today I fixed a lot of it and read a lot of reviews and deleted and added things. We are also registered at Target for all of the baby bedding and a few other things.

I got good news yesterday that my Gramma McNeil is heading home on New Years Day. I can't believe how quickly she's getting out! She apparently is doing remarkedably well so they're letting her lose! I just hope she takes precautions this time that she stubbornly refused to take previous to all of this so that she keeps herself safe.

Happy New Year!!!

Dreams

I have always had crazy dreams at night. This is nothing new. However, the past couple of nights I've had 4-5 dreams a night and they are the craziest dreams. One of the dreams I have often is that when the baby kicks I can see his foot or hand and can grab it and hold onto it for a second. It feels so real!
The dream I had last night was quite interesting. I apparently somehow missed giving birth but the baby was born and I walked into the room where Louise Cronin was the nurse (if you knew her, you'd know this would be the last place she'd be!). She said to me "Sarah, you are going to be so happy. You got what you wanted." I walked in and there were two babies, baby Eric and a girl baby. She told me that Kayla (the girl baby) was hiding behind baby Eric in my womb so they were never able to pick up that she was there in the ultrasounds or through listening to the heartbeat. However, in my dream, the power was out and Louise told me that because the power was out they could not tell if baby Kayla made it. Then all of the sudden "baby" Kayla got up and started walking around! She looked like a baby with shoulder-length hair and she was walking around. Baby Eric was very quiet and he had a really big head. I said "Well I guess it'll be a little more expensive having two babies but we'll figure out a way to do it." Then I woke up.

Eli Day

It was Elijah's 4th birthday last weekend. He is growing up too quickly. Sunday we took him for a day in Boston. We first stopped a Dunkin Donuts for some snacks, however I seem to have 'lost' that picture, oops. Our first stop was Fenway Park. We were going to do a Fenway Park tour but because of the construction the tours only involved watching a movie which seemed pretty boring for a 4 year old so instead we just walked around the park. We went inside a restaurant that looked out onto the field so he could at least see the field but there was a football game on in the restaurant and Eli could have cared less about the field. (PS disregard the dates on these pictures. I changed the batteries in the camera but didn't reset the date!)

Eric and Eli on Yawkey Way

After we walked around Fenway we tried to find the Children's Museum. However, my navigation wasn't cooperating so we decided to go to the Museum of Science instead. The Museum had a disappointing "Discovery Zone" for kids. Eli liked it a lot though. I don't think Eli understood that there were other places in the museum to check things out and he refused to leave the Discovery Zone which led to a mini tantrum and us leaving the museum altogether because he wouldn't apologize for his behavior. I think he was just tired. Eric and I try to stick to our guns when he gives us a hard time but we really didn't want to because it was his special day!

Once we left the parking garage Eli apologized. We were glad because we didn't want to end his special day. We gave him tons of praise for making the right decision and made an another attempt to find the Children's museum. We thought we would just never make it there but then out of nowhere it appeared. The Children's museum was so much more fun! Plus because we got there in the last hour of it being open, we got to go in for free!

Eric and Eli in front of the Children's museum, near the water. Clearly professional photographer is not my calling because these pictures are very dark.

Me and Eli, same time of day but Eric took this one so it came out better :)

Eli really liked this ball launcher at the museum where you pull a weight and then let it go and it sends a tennis ball flying up in the air.

This bike was supposed to light up light bulbs if you pedaled hard enough but it was broken.



I found this picture and in case you can't read under it it says "Future Star of the Boston Red Sox". Of course Eric insisted on putting his face in it.

Eric's days of possibly being a Red Sox player are over but Eli's are not!

My favorite city at night :)


Eli was exhausted at the end of the trip so he slept for most of the car ride home.

Further news

So in further news, as of today my gramma is doing well. She's finally had something to eat and has gotten up today. She will most likely be going to a rehab facility at the end of the week. Unfortunately she may not be able to join us for Christmas at our new place but at least she's still here with us and that's what's most important.

Something I forgot to report on in my last blog is that at the family Christmas party over the weekend there was another announcement.... great grand child #14 is on the way and will arrive in July. So here's the rankings:
#10 my cousin Jason and his girlfriend's son is due in January
#11 my cousin Pete and his wife's son due in February
#12 baby Eric due at the end of March or perhaps beginning of April
#13 My cousin Jane and her husband are due in June
#14 My cousin Andrew and his wife are due in July

HOLY BABIES!!!
I think that's why my gramma is somehow sticking around through all of this. That woman I tell ya, she takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.

The Week In Review

I had a doctors appointment on Tuesday. I went by myself because Eric wasn't able to get out of work early enough. Although he was tempted to somehow make it to my appointment at 4 in Worcester from Boston when he left Boston at 3:30. One of my concerns was whether I was gaining enough weight or too much but apparently I'm right on track, 12 1/2 pounds so far. The doctor says that everything looks great and the heart beat sounds good. It was different for some reason this time to hear the heartbeat knowing that it is my son's heartbeat and he has a sex and name attached to him this appointment. I feel much more bonded with him now that I know what he is.
Everyone tells me that I've "popped" this week which is not really my favorite thing to hear (you know "Wow! You've popped!!"). Frankly I wouldn't proclaim that to most pregnant woman to their face but I guess that's just me. My favorite thing to hear though is how good I look for being 6 months pregnant. I could hear that all day. Or how cute I look in my maternity clothes. Those are my favorite things to hear.
Eric has been able to feel the baby kicking a few more times. Everytime I tell him the baby is kicking (which is quite often), he tries to feel it and then of course the baby stops kicking. But Eric talks to my belly when he knows baby Eric is awake, it's really cute. If I poke my belly a little bit I can wake the baby up but Eric gets upset when I do that. He's very over-paranoid. I have a feeling that I will be expected to call the doctor at every little thing wrong with the baby because Eric will be so nervous (not that I won't but babies are so new to him).
So this weekend was a good and hard weekend. Saturday Eric took a class and then we went to the Union Christmas party at Union Station. It was really nice. The food was catered by Maxwell Silverman's (where we got married). We were able to see Alex, the manager at Maxwell's and he remembered us which was pretty cool. When we walked in the door of the party they gave us a raffle ticket. The prizes were great! I was half-heartedly listening to the numbers they were called when I heard my number called. I sent Eric up to get the gift. We won a $50 gift card out to eat. At one point in the night the live band played "Wonderful Tonight". There was only one couple on the dance floor but Eric insisted that we get up in front of the 300 people there and dance. So we did and it was really nice. Eric was so proud to have his family see his accomplishment of being in the Union. I'm so proud of him too.
So for the tough part of the weekend.... Saturday was also a family party that I ended up not going to. However, my sister called me before I had left for Eric's Christmas party to tell me that my Gramma (who just had two heart surgeries back to back) had fallen in her bathroom at 7:30am and no one found her until somewhere between 2 and 4 (it depends on who you talk to). She was on the floor yelling for help the whole time. It breaks my heart to know that she was alone and in pain for so long. She has diabetes too so anything could have happened to her during that time span. Finally a neighbor and my aunt and uncle got to her and called 911. They took X-Rays at the hospital and found that she had broken her hip. I guess this is something my gramma has always been afraid of. So yesterday they were able to do surgery at about 7pm. Eric and I had gone to see her. My mom and dad were already at the hospital. One of the doctors had come in to see her and told her that the hardest part of the surgery was going to be that she could have a heart attack afterwards because her heart is so weak (she's was recently told that she has cardiac failure and is on medication for it). When they came to take her to surgery she started crying which broke my heart. She has been through so much over the years and she is so strong but she was so scared. A part of her wants to meet my pepe in heaven but a part of her is scared to die I think so she got pretty upset. She didn't think she would make it through the surgery. When I hugged her she told me that she hoped that I would have a happy and healthy baby and that's when I lost it. Everyone was crying (even Eric) as we watched them take her to the OR. My mom called me at 10pm last night to tell me that she made it through the surgery so I have a little sense of relief but she's not totally in the clear yet. I really hope her heart holds out because she's going through enough with all of her health issues and a broken hip. The last thing she needs is another heart attack.
So that was my weekend in a nutshell.....

an update or two

So the baby is moving even more than ever. I swear he's doing the back stroke or something. We had Elijah sleepover this week and he said "I'm so glad you guys are having a baby." He really liked seeing the baby room even though the furniture is not set up yet.

So in other news... In an interesting turn of events, our baby has been bumped up on the baby roster on my mom's side of the family and this will be great grand child #12, not #11. I'm not going to go into details of why on this blog but you know me, I always have a story! Needless to say babies #10 (due in January) and #11 (due in February) are boys. So it's up to my cousin Jane now (she's growing baby #13). There should really be a study on my family!

All moved in

We moved into our new apartment and have been here for a little over a week. It was quite a move. I had convinced myself that we didn't have much to pack because we were throwing a lot of stuff away and replacing it with all of our new wedding stuff. However, Eric and I quickly discovered that packing the morning your supposed to move never really works out. It was pretty chaotic and we decided not to rent a UHaul truck this time which made for what felt like several hundred trips back and forth on Rt. 9. Once we got here Eric insisted on being completely settled and have everything put away which was not easy for me because I have been so tired when I get home from work. However, Eric did an awesome job putting the place together and it looks great.

We also got the new baby furniture thanks to Eric's cousin Mike and his wife Jess. The furniture is gorgeous and looks brand new. We don't have it set up yet because we found out we can paint the walls here so we've got to tackle that first. Mike and Jess are giving us a list of stuff for the baby so once we find out what the colors are on all of that stuff we will resume painting.

On an upsetting note I decided it would be a good idea to laminate the baby pictures so that they wouldn't get ruined. Thank goodness I saved them on the computer because apparently the heat from the laminator and the ultrasound pictures didn't mix and all the pictures went black. The only picture I don't have on the computer is the very first ultrasound picture we had when they were trying to figure out my due date. I'm not too upset because it really just looked like a piece of rice. So to everyone out there for future reference: heat+ultrasound pictures= a really bad idea!!!

We received some exciting news yesterday via Gramma McNeil. Hopefully I'm not spilling the beans too early but we just found out that my cousin Jane (see the picture of the 4 of us girls) is pregnant. So another chance at a baby girl in the family. This is great grandchild #12. She's due in June so we'll have to wait for a little bit to find out what she's having but if anyone should have the girl in our family it should be one of us girls!!!

And finally, after hearing the news from many people I made a revelation. Apparently the rule/law is that if a child does not have the same exact name as the parent then they cannot be a junior. So our baby boy will just be Eric Charles Hamelin. We will not be torturing our child by naming him Eric Matthew Wagner Hamelin Jr. He will never learn his name!!!