Christmas week and I couldn't be less prepared

Just taking a little break from ordering all my gifts with express shipping since I suck at life. No time like December 20 to buy Christmas presents. I am so far from ready. I even skipped my nap today, but I still have cookie dough to make and gifts to wrap. And cleaning. Always with the cleaning.

Friday night, we went to Eric's coworker's holiday party. Dalton was clearly the life of the party. The two of us left early for bedtime, and this amazing thing happened.

Snuggling. He even fell asleep on me. A true rarity in toddler world.

We had no intention of doing the Santa thing this year (or last year, for that matter). From my understanding, it would entail waiting in line and spending an exorbitant fee for an experience my child would hate. Seemed pretty pointless when we could spend what precious little time and money we have on fun for the whole family. Don't get me wrong. If I even wasn't sure how my kid would react, I may have gone for it. But there was no doubt in my mind, Santa would bring on tears. Immediately. Anyone who knows Dalton gets it, I'm sure.

However, Carolyn invited us to go to a train garden with her and Nathan Saturday morning. We really had no idea what a train garden was, but it was free, so you can't go wrong. 

When we walked in, Santa was just chilling all by himself and told us to put Dalton in his lap. So, why not?

Eric got the camera ready, we handed him over, and just as predicted, he freaked out.

And Santa wasn't thrilled either.

He was only in the lap for about 3 seconds, and immediately cheered up when I took him back. So he's probably not traumatized for life. 

Turns out a train garden is a giant train table, in this case, with crazy intricate scenes of 1950s Baltimore created with tiny little people.

Not the greatest picture but the good ones are on Eric's phone and he's sleeping and I can't use Droids.

Dalton enjoyed it, but Eric really had the most fun.

I met them there right after running with friends, and foolishly only brought my running jacket. It was the one cold day we've had so far this winter. Luckily I had crazy pregnancy hormones keeping me warm.

To make up for his trauma, we took him out to lunch at Towson Hot Bagels, and treated him to a latte afterwards. 

Never too young to appreciate the good stuff. 

The rest of the weekend was mainly hanging out and playing. We did manage to find a few stocking stuffers.

I stole my friend Jessy's idea and decided to have Dalton "help" me cook. He's always really interested when Eric holds him up to the stove and he loves to see what I'm making. 

During lunch, he mainly just stole pieces of bread from the sandwiches I was about to grill and ate them. 

"Why cook it when I could just eat it right now?"

He started helping me mix biscuits for dinner. That mission was aborted when Eric came home with pizza, but he still had fun and looked cute doing it.

He alternated between the whisk and the fork. 

My plan was to have Dalton help me make cookie dough for Christmas cookies, but somehow we didn't get to that. Where do these weekend days go?

Workouts still continue to decrease. This week I did 3 runs, and one Jillian Michaels DVD. A wise friend told me to just do what I can do, it doesn't have to be every day, or even every other day. Just get in what I can. That's my plan.

3 more school days and a zillion more Christmas preparation tasks, and then it's Christmas break! It can't come soon enough. We have a pretty amazing schedule.

Dec 22: Our friends from NC are visiting, and we have our anatomy scan! (Technically this is not part of break, it's a work day.)

Christmas Eve/Christmas: Just the three of us, at home. We decided that when we had kids, we would celebrate Christmas morning in our own place. This is our first year celebrating in our house! Makes it feel like we're truly our own family now. 

Dec 26-31: Visiting my family in NY. CANNOT WAIT to squeeze my niece's little baby chub. (And if you will be in Rochester and I like you, let's hang out!)

New Year's Eve: Wild party with our friends in Syracuse. And by wild party, I mean they have a 2 month old, we have a toddler, and I'm pregnant. If last year was anything to go by, no adults are going to be intentionally up at midnight. I'm thinking we can just do the countdown at like 8pm, I'm sure it will be midnight somewhere. 

Who's ready for the holidays, and who's a bit more in my position? What's everyone doing December 25?