It’s strange being pregnant this year, instead of having a newborn.
Thank goodness for Chris, because I don’t think I would have had half the energy for these Christmas traditions we have. He’s the one that bought the ingredients and pulled out the stand mixer to make Christmas cookies. We forgot to buy a new pack of food coloring, so we used this random pack we had in the back of the pantry of these neon colors. Olivia declared them Grinch cookies (orange for Max the dog), and we set to work baking and decorating. Well, they baked. I apparently needed an afternoon nap.
But after dinner, we frosted and decorated and even Emelia was fully capable of participating even though both girls had to constantly stop and wash their hands every few cookies from licking the frosting. That’s what you get when you have a mom who’s a nurse and germaphobe.
The girls got their bunk beds this week, and the night after officially moving in together, Emelia spiked a low-grade fever. Due to Christmas plans being rescheduled with my family, my mom dropped off one of their gifts early, so the girls could open them. She had bought them each a new bedspread for their beds. Emelia, despite her fever, loved her unicorn bedspread and Olivia went crazy for her Harry Potter one. As you can see from her Harry Potter shirt below, she’s pretty much obsessed.
I also got her Harry Potter sheets to open at Christmas, and Emelia got Frozen sheets, as is her current obsession.
Then, when we were dealing with Emelia’s fever, Olivia appeared to wake up one morning with what looked like pink eye. Both her eyes were red, but she insisted they didn’t itch. The next day was the same, though they seemed to get less red as the day went on.
I still continued to monitor her, since she wasn’t getting the goopy eyes that usually come with pink eye, but it has been going around the school. The next morning, her eyes did have some crusting but it wasn’t behaving like normal pink eye, so I sent a message to her provider listing all her symptoms and if we could get drops since Christmas was approaching and she would need to be on drops for 24 hours beforehand.
An LPN messaged me back and said we would need to make an appointment for her symptoms, and her provider was out until January 4th. This was…Friday morning? I wrote back a sort of snarky message that said something along the lines of how exactly do you expect me to make an appointment when there are literally no appointments available in the Twin Cities?
I started poking around in my phone trying to figure something out. There was no way in hell I was stepping foot with her in an urgent care to wait 6 hours. And all the Minute Clinics around here appeared to have shuttered. I was skeptically signing up for a virtual urgent care slot that said it would be 25 minutes before a provider would call (which seemed deceptively short) when I got a call from the clinic. It was a staff person and they said they got my message and an appointment had just opened up that afternoon.
Apparently, the virtual urgent care was legit, I think, but there’s always that concern you’ll do it and the provider will say, so sorry, we can’t help you, you need to make a gd appointment.
So I took the appointment slot with Chris’s doctor that afternoon and turns out, Olivia had viral pink eye. I’ve heard of it, and was suspicious that this could be it, but I’ve never actually seen it before. No drops were necessary, and he said it should clear on its own in the next day or two. He did give us a prescription for drops should any of us need them in the future. Whew. So he was pretty much amazing.
Christmas Eve
Emelia was initially doing better, but then spiked another fever that Friday night into Christmas Eve morning. But then it went away on its own right before nap, and she didn’t have it again. She started a bit of a runny nose and a slight cough, so it seemed very similar to the virus she had for Thanksgiving.
Both of them were up at 6:00 for the second time, until we told them again to go back to bed. But then they were up for the day at 6:30 to watch TV. I slept in until almost 8:00 and then we opened presents.
They were so excited, that this was the best I could get for a picture of them.
Emelia got a Bluey shirt, along with some pajamas. I got her a Barbie wildlife vet set, Minnie Mouse Duplos, and some Frozen books at a consignment sale. She also loves Cocomelon, so she got the singing bathtub with little figures to bathe. I also found this secondhand Leapfrog write-and-learn tablet for a grand total of $2.50 which turned out to be one of her favorite presents. She also got a Raya sword, Frozen sheets, and a wooden button and spool threading kit.
Olivia got the Harry Potter Diagon Alley playset (thank you, 50% off Target), and Harry Potter legos, along with some letter beads, a Pokemon drawing book, and Dog Man sheets in addition to her Harry Potter ones. She got quite a few pajamas and clothes because she’s growing like crazy and desperately needed some size 10-12 clothes.
After we opened presents (which felt like lightning fast even though I was trying to slow it down because I have a 7-year-old who can just seem to rush through everything without you being able to stop it), we ate egg bake and homemade cinnamon rolls.
We didn’t have any plans, so it was just us hanging out all day. Chris got me a Soda Stream and I tried it out making cherry Bubly. He also got me pajama pants and some kitchen spoons, and Soda Stream refills. He’s going to be organizing the garage this spring, so he requested storage items.
That night, the girls put out cookies for Santa and Olivia wrote a little note.
I especially love how she wrote Emelia’s name in cursive and added a K at the end of her name since she has to do that in school. Also still cringing at the neon orange frosting.
Christmas Day
It was another early wakeup this morning, and we all went downstairs to see what Santa brought. Emelia loves her babies more than anything, and she loved getting her twins. Olivia was over the moon to get the Harry Potter play castle.
Emelia’s favorite item in her stocking was this chapstick attached to a squishy doughnut keychain (who knew?) and carried it around all day, applying the chapstick and constantly breaking the chain so Chris had to keep putting it back together. You just never know what they’re going to latch on to.
Olivia built her castle with minimal help from me and played with it all morning. She also loved the Sonic fruit snacks Santa brought.
Then it was showering and dressing and getting ready to go to my sister-in-law’s for Christmas.
The girls had so much fun with their cousins and we had lasagna, garlic bread, salad, and tapioca pudding, all staples of the Kerslake family and it was amazing.
Their aunt bought presents for the kids and Olivia got another Harry Potter lego set, along with figurines for her Harry Potter playsets. Emelia got the Cocomelon bus and while she was really shy receiving it, she ended up racing all over the house with it when we got home.
We’ll be celebrating Christmas with my family in a few weeks. Overall, it was a great day of eating, visiting, laughing, playing games, and more eating.
