ex(PR)essed

Do you know what I learned last weekend? You can totally have Christmas-cookie-baking-and-crafting-extravaganza-weekend with two kids, and you can rock it!

Yep…a couple hundred cookies later and Adele and Silas have officially been indoctrinated into my favorite holiday tradition. They were both so good and so much fun. And, don’t even get me started on how nice it was to see Jamie. We’ve been wonderful friends for nearly 15 years, but there’s something especially sweet about walking this journey of motherhood with her.

From previous posts, you may know that our Extravaganza weekend is usually jam-packed with cookie baking and all other things Christmas. Usually we’re exhausted by the end of the weekend. This year, we just went with the flow and adopted the word “simplify” as our mantra. So, we eased into making cookies, lingered over coffee, played with our cute kids, watched a little “White Christmas,” and still made four types of cookies, including rolling and decorate 120+ sugar cookies. It’s ok if you’re impressed. We were too!

So, here a few photos from the festivities, and the last is a photo of my sweet baby girl taking her first taste of cereal last night!

Adele was a huge help…of course!

Enjoy this picture of the sweetest baby girl taken about two weeks ago.

When I married Jeff, our promise to love each other “in sickness and in health” was just one of several important promises that we made that day. And, three years later, we have loved each other through bouts with strep throat, the flu, and a cold or two. Easy.

When Adele came into our lives, there was no formal ceremony in which we promised to love her. But we do, in an overwhelming sort of way. It really only took an instance. So, when she started to come down with a nasty cold on Saturday, we didn’t have to remind ourselves of a promise we made nearly four months ago. Instead, we just started loving on her even more than usual. It felt easy and natural.

But, this fierce, unwavering love has been messy the past few days. Our sweet little girl is battling a cold, complete with a terrible cough that causes her to throw up. Jeff and I both have been on the receiving end of this misfortune several times, but, thankfully, our love doesn’t decrease with each change of clothes.

Seeing Adele so sick and miserable has been totally heartbreaking. Even though her eyes are glassy and ringed by dark circles, her nose is running like crazy, and her cough is “juicy,” I couldn’t love her any more. Her little body is still my favorite sight all day long. For better or for worse.