Christmas and New Years 2009

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We enjoyed a wonderful christmas in our new house. Patrick's parents, Marvin and Carol, came over and stayed a few days, bringing food and an extra pair of hands to help around the house. We installed a new baby gate for the stairs and finally put together the toddler bed for Benjamin. Big guy has been cramped in a pack-n-play since April! The crib we had purchased in France was too small for him and we never had enough time to actually put the toddler bed together. We were sort of afraid to actually use a real bed since we weren't sure how the transition would go. It has been a week now and he refuses to get out of it until we come to the room to get him (this is a good thing)! He still has issues tossing around and laying in a length-wise position. We usually get up once a night to get him unstuck from lying perpendicular to the bed with his head stuck in the headboard corner and his feet lying over the guard rail. Hopefully one of these days he'll figure out it is more comfortable to actually lay on the mattress. As you can see from the pictures, there were lots of presents to go around. Benjamin took awhile to figure out that if you opened a package there was usually a toy involved. He was so preoccupied with Santa's gifts that he really wasn't interested in opening other gifts. So, it took us a couple of days to actually get through all of them for him. The video is from New Years and explains why we don't stay up late to celebrate. :) He is full of energy! We opened a nice bottle of wine and went to bed around 10pm. Just the way I like it. We are off to see Marvin and Carol at their place for dinner tonight and then it is time to take the christmas decorations down. Not fun. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and I can't believe it is 2010!