Dear Santa: Please Forget the Last 24 Hours

Well, it's only been a couple of days since the last post, but it feels like much longer. You know how bad days seem to just drag on?

Everything was going fine on Tuesday - - Greg and I were home for the day and the girls were at daycare. We got some things done around the house, ran errands, went to lunch. We picked up the girls. I should have known we were in for a rough night when they said, "Emma's been kind of fussy today." ("No, you must be talking about someone else's child.")

At dinner, the three of them decided that they no longer wanted to be spoon fed. Becca was ok if you put food on the spoon and then gave her the spoon. Emma and Julie just refused to eat. And screamed. Even if you put food on the spoon and gave them the spoon. It was the worst mess they've ever made. They'd take the spoon and bite on the other end and get peas everywhere. Or, they'd grab on to the spoon and let go and food would go flying. It was on us, on the floor, all over the high chairs, all over the girls. And they screamed the whole time. We gave them puffs, and I think that helped for a while (I've kind of blocked it out), enough that we figured out that they were ok if they were feeding themselves. So, clean up was worse than usual, and they screamed through that, too - - every face wipe just fueled their fire. They screamed through diaper changes, pajamas. And then we got to bottles, at which point we went through the whole "I want to sit up to take my bottle but I can't hold it myself and you must hold it for me or I'll scream" battle with both Emma and Julie. And then Emma screamed bloody murder when it was bed time. Julie and Becca were falling asleep downstairs, but Emma was pitching such a fit upstairs that it was pointless to bring them up. I just got in bed and cried after we finally got them down. It was awful.

They were a bit cranky this morning, but they ate their yogurt without any battles. They love yogurt! I'm having a really difficult time coming up with things to feed them that they can feed themselves, while still getting them some fruits and vegetables. They still aren't chewing very well. And we need to start introducing some chicken and turkey. I guess if we start forcing them to eat table food, they'll eventually figure out chewing. If anyone has suggestions for table food that they can feed themselves, we're pretty desperate. We weren't prepared for this sudden rejection of being fed.

We had talked about taking the girls to the Roper Mountain Holiday Lights tonight (Wednesday night). But we weren't feeling very Christmas-y after the past 24 hours. The girls seemed to be doing better, and we spent most of the day recovering. So we did venture out, and it went well. ("It could have gone a lot worse.") I was worried about wait times, lines to see Santa, etc, but actually, it went amazingly smoothly. We got there right when they opened, and the line to see Santa was only about 5 minutes. The girls were totally fine while we waited in line, and there weren't any tears up until Julie started screaming about 5 seconds after they took the picture. They had a nice section that you could walk through, and it wasn't terribly cold.

So hopefully we've got a bit of the Christmas spirit back now...



They don't appear to be terribly impressed by Santa or his sleigh. But hey, they're not screaming.


Isn't the cat hat the cutest?


With dad. We had to pull out the new hats because the striped ones seem to fall down in their eyes all the time, and we're constantly tugging them back up, and the girls start flipping out when they slide down.


Elementary schools decorated a bunch of panels.


With mom.





I was going to delete this one, but the red and green are kind of Christmas-y.


I think I cut off Rudolph.