That time Royce became a new baby

As always, my vacation from work flew by in a blaze of glory. Way too fun, way too fast. I've started to accept my own limitations and didn't have too many grand plans of "getting things done". My main goal was to curl up every morning in my pajamas, with a warm blankie and a hot cup of coffee, which I accomplished. Truly, one of my greatest joys in life is just waking up without an alarm clock and being able to enjoy my coffee in the morning without being in a frantic rush to get out the door. Sometimes I even had a snugly baby with me. My body is pretty conditioned to waking up before my kids since that's how I get ready for work, but to me it's not so much the time I wake up, it's just not waking up to that damn alarm to start the race against the clock trying to get to work on time. And now I've just written a whole paragraph about it, but I stand by it because that's how much I love it.

He worked hard for this 2016 New Year's Eve paper plate award.

Royce's sleep was pretty terrible over break, but it was for a great reason: HE LEARNED ALL THE THINGS. Seriously, our first day back, our daycare was like did you drop off a different baby? In just about a week, Royce learned to:

• officially crawl with his belly off the ground
• pull up to standing
• clap
• lift the flaps in Where's Spot (literally a week on this one, he got the book for Christmas and was lifting the flaps by New Years #genius)

He keeps getting stuck under chairs.

That's huge. Not to mention he's getting a tooth, he's in Wonder Weeks leap 6, and also sort of learned to wave and use a sippy cup (sort of because he's not consistent with either yet). This child's whole world has changed. It just blows my mind how much he can suddenly do. All he wants in life now is to figure out how to get to his feet and all times. 

I can't get over how big he looks.

If he's not doing that, he's working on increasing his crawling speed. 

That one time it was 65 degrees in December.

What's been exciting with Dalton is as his verbal skills continue to expands, he can tell us more and more about what's on his mind. Lately he's been talking about past events, which is really cool because I've never gotten a glimpse into his memory before. Just a few days ago I was putting away some Christmas stuff, and he saw the mug he drank his hot chocolate out of on Christmas Eve, and right away said hot chocolate. Typical stuff that's boring to everyone but the kid's parents.

I actually wasn't lazy, we went out and did something fun with the kids every day.

My dad got us annual passes to the National Aquarium for Hanukkah! Dalton was so excited and said "see fish!" the whole drive there. 

It's nearly impossible to get a good picture of a toddler and actual fish.

Other highlights included the playground, science center, and playdates with friends. 

We're pretty sure the highlight for Royce was going to Qdoba for lunch. No joke, this baby ate more than his big brother. He just kept going and would scream like a little raptor if his plate was empty.

You would probably assume that, being parents of young children, we did nothing to celebrate New Year's Eve. But you would be wrong. We celebrated the hell out of it. 

Our couple BFFs, fellow young child parents, had us over to ring in 2017.

#candid

As always, Dalton's side eye is on point. 

 I rescinded my moratorium on travel of any kind for one night (they are local but my main concern with travel was that Dalton doesn't sleep anywhere but his crib). Since they had recently moved their toddler to a big boy bed, his crib was still available. Dalton actually did great! He was exhausted from all the fun, and I think he's old enough now to understand when we explain why he's sleeping somewhere new. He passed out at 8 and we didn't hear from him until morning. 

Once the kids were asleep, we had a wild night of Heads Up, watching Times Square coverage, a few glasses of wine and in bed by 10:30. Winning. No pictures because...who wants pictures of adults? We didn't bother after the cute subject matter was gone.

I did a ton of working out, which for me at this juncture of my life means more than 20 minutes almost every day. The weather was nice so I got out for several runs. On New Year's Day I was going to just be lazy, but Dalton started yelling "mommy work out, mommy floor!". Then he kindly helped me through my pushups (which I do on my knees, I'm weak).

So helpful.

Sunday night at midnight I woke up freezing to death, with a high fever and tons of pain - mastitis again! Yay! Of course it couldn't hit while I was just screwing around doing nothing all week, it had to wait until it was almost time to go back to work. Antibiotics are tiny little miracles though and while I basically was dead to the world Monday, I was miraculously cured by the time school resumed Tuesday. Royce is now 8 months old, so can I please just get through these next 4 months without boob trauma???

I didn't have any specific health related new year's resolutions, but I was vaguely trying to join in the new year new me stereotype and just kind of stop eating crap all day long and that kind of stuff. So far, it's been a joke. While my mastitis was better, I was still dragging until it really left my system. More importantly, readjusting to work after 12 days off is HARD. It's so exhausting to work all freaking day long and a teething baby who wants us to watch him practice crawling all night (because new separation anxiety) didn't help. I still ate a lot of crap and barely exercised all week. I'm back in action now though. I'm leaving for yoga in half an hour, working on a healthy meal plan, and don't intend on being second last in this week's FitBit competition. Bring it.