Who Am I Kidding?

Gotta have more gratuitous baby-in-Santa-suit pictures!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

From Aaron, Mina, Alex and Yours Truly.

I would like to rescind my previous statement

Thanks to my bitching about Oregon winter weather, kharma has bitten me in the ass.

In the past 10 days we have received roughly 2 ft of snow, the first 6 inches of which melted off which I can only assume was to make more room for the 10 inches that followed. And the layer of ice thanks to the night of freezing rain, and the other 8 inches of snow that are making their home on top of the ice layer. In cross-cut I would imagine it looks much like a cake, with the thin layer of icing between the fluffy layers of cake. However! I am no longer pleased to be having a white Christmas, as it is preventing my packages of gifts from being delivered, and our family photos from being picked up so they can be dispersed into myriad Christmas cards and mailed off.
Therefore, half our gifts are still out in UPSland floating around, and all of the cards are strewn about the kitchen table and will be arriving at their destinations rather late. It isn't supposed to get warm enough to melt all of this atrocity until at least Friday. There are icicles coming off my house that are 4 ft long (why, oh why did I complain about not getting any icicles?!).
I know, thanks to Zilla, that this means my house is a heat seive and is causing the layer of snow on it to melt due to the loss of heat through the roof. I expected no less. We don't have an attic, and mobile homes from 1985 are not exactly noted for their energy efficiency.
Yesterday we lost power for 6 hours, probably because an ice and snow laden tree branch fell on the lines. It got very cold, very fast. Luckily Mina, Alex, the cats and I can all fit in my bed, we did our best to stay warm. Aaron on the other hand, walked the 2 miles each way to do his last minute Christmas shopping. Men. Pfft.

Thanks to the weather my trip to Washington to spend Christmas with my mom is canceled. I have now officially learned my lesson and will never again complain about the weather. Kharma wins.

OMGWTFBBQPWN! It's snowing!

I was just commenting on Zilla's blog the other day about how jealous I was of all her snow and lovely icicles, as we very rarely get any more than rain here, and then it's never until at least January. And usually even that is just a tiny sprinkle, enough to get you excited, but not enough to make a snow angel in.
But lo and behold, we have snow! It's actually coming down rather well, and sticking, if it lasts much longer there will not only be angels, but forts, and snowmen as well.
Yay!

Go to Sleep Little Baby

He's sleeping, so I have a few minutes to blog. I forgot how exhausting baby care is. Every time we get a system or schedule worked out that is mutually beneficial, he goes and changes it. I was finally comfortable with how naps and bedtimes were going and then he decided that between 5 and 9 pm, I am not allowed to do anything but hold him while he naps. Kinda hard to do since that's when dinner happens. It's also the only time he sees Aaron during the week, so this schedule was not working out well. So I made some changes to better accommodate his needs, like getting his belly stuffed and his diaper emptied, and rocking him till he dozed, then moving him into the crib to sleep... far away from the noise and bustle of dinner making, talking, and homework hassling. It worked out well, our evening was much more pleasant without struggling through his screaming at us and our trying to get things done. However, there has been a decided drawback to this system. When he naps that well in the evening he then believes that 3 am is a great time to not only wake up Mommy to eat and get changed, but to play for a while with her and show off his new trick, smiling. Mommy, on the other hand, is mostly unconscious for this little spectacle, and would rather be fully unconscious. After all of this early morning fun, he then decides that, yes, 5:30 am is a perfectly good time to wake Mommy up. Not because he's hungry, not because he wants something, simply because it is time to get up and move out to the living room where he can stare at things happily for another 30 minutes. The good thing about his wake-up call is that the next 30 minutes of happy, staring time allows me to pee, smoke, make coffee, and check my e-mail before he actually decides he's bored and ready to eat or get a clean diaper.
He's 6 weeks old now. Oddly it seems like getting through the past 6 weeks took forever, probably because I am kind of anxious for him to start doing something other than eat, poop, and sleep. I got my wish when he showed off his first smile the other day, which of course he refuses to do when I actually have the camera in hand. Aaron does this thing where he makes a noise blowing air through his lips like a motorboat, makes him smile every time. The kid just can't get enough of that motorboat noise.
He also seems to like music a lot, not tinny baby music like they put on any musical toy for babies, but Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Jack Johnson, Michael Buble and the Shrek soundtracks. Nice soothing music sung by great singers. He got very excited about Mina waving his arms in time to Frosty the Snowman by Bing Crosby.
So I guess this post is all about Alex... I have nothing else to share today. We are going out to get family portraits taken this weekend, hopefully I'll be able to get them mailed to people before Christmas. I know my parents are dying for some framable shots of the kids.