I'm not sure what happened this year but there was definitely something in the water where I work because there is a huge baby boom going on! There are about 10 people expecting little ones within a short span and four of us girls all have due dates within three weeks of each other. So needless to say the water cooler chats have turned from work topics to baby topics. :)

It's a pretty good mix of both new moms and moms with other little ones so we are passing back and forth a lot of recommendations on daycares, pediatricians, what to buy and what to avoid, etc. I have been recommending Emma's daycare to pretty much everyone because we have been so incredibly happy with them. As I recommend it, I send along the website to people and since I hadn't visited the website for a while on my own, I was checking things out and ended up looking through the photo album.

Well wouldn't you know that there was a picture of Emma's old Infant Room on the website and in the bottom right hand corner you can actually see a picture of Emma's Gigi! When Emma first started, we were asked to bring in some pictures of family members because they make little cubes for each child, so Emma's cube has some pictures of her grandparents, aunts and uncles, mommy and daddy and of course her Shamus!  

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was dropping off my baby peanut in this room. It's funny to look around and see all of her favorite infant toys and books! My baby is getting so big!!

Christmas 2010 Recap

We had a great Christmas this year (well, I suppose technically it was last year since it's taken me a week or two to actually post about our holiday)! Although Christmas was great, we have had a crazy couple of weeks following the holiday but are finally starting to settle down (at least I hope so)! Our poor dog Shamus, who is no doubt Emma's best friend, had to go in for surgery earlier this week to have a bone removed from his elbow. He actually got hurt on Christmas Eve but our vet was trying to leave surgery as the last option. But, since this post is about Christmas, I'll just wrap up and say that its been a crazy few weeks following Christmas but we are back on our way to normal life (or at least however normal it can be with a toddler, two pets and a baby on the way)!

This year, Emma started out the Christmas holiday with a new love, candy canes! I wonder if it  has anything to do with how many I ate when I was pregnant with her! Christmas 2008 was during prime morning sickness time as I was just about 8 weeks pregnant and what actually really helped was sucking on a candy cane, especially when I was in the car! To this day I can barely look at them but Emma sure has a different opinion! And no, we don't let her bite them or give her much at all, she takes a few licks of Daddy's candy cane and that's about it!

We spent a quiet Christmas Eve at our home with Mimi, Pop, Nanny and Uncle Andy and had a great time! We had some good food (thanks to the hubby) and just hung out and relaxed for the evening. One of Emma's gifts from Mimi and Pop was this cute little cottage! Since it was too big to wrap (even in the box) we decided to set it up and give it to Emma on Christmas Eve so Mimi and Pop could see her reaction. She loved it and still does!!

After heading to bed, Santa of course stopped by our house and added a few extra gifts under the tree and stuffed our stockings full of goodies! He even stuffed Jackson's stocking!!

Emma woke up a little before 7:00AM on Christmas morning and came downstairs to find lots of goodies! Her big present from Santa was a new kitchen set!! She loves playing in her kitchen (especially now that it is sitting in our kitchen) and she "cooks" all the time. It's actually pretty funny to open the little refrigerator because you never know what the little stinker hid in there!

Apparently, I didn't learn my lesson from 2009 and once again got stuck behind the camera for most of the morning so I don't actually have one picture of me and my baby on Christmas Day! ACK! Well, we at least have a few of Daddy and Emma together opening presents!

Ummm....cuteness overload.

Need I say more?

Emma also got a new booster seat to replace her highchair from her Gigi and Papa!! She is such a big girl now!!

Emma got lots of goodies this year (and so did Mommy and Daddy) and if I tried to name them all I would certainly miss a ton!

Both Emma and Jackson scored some sweet new outfits this year!!

  

After our quiet Christmas morning at home, we headed over to Mimi and Pop's to celebrate with Emma's east coast cousins and had a great time along with some great food. There is a ton of stuff that I am missing, and maybe one day I'll come back and try to recap some more but frankly, I'm exhausted!!

New Year's Resolution Step 3: Organized Brain Dump

Although this step probably should have been Step 2 in my New Year's Resolution, it ended up being Step 3 and that's okay! I had been starring at my brain dump for a few days now and decided it was time to take it to the next step so that I could actually do something with it! The next step was to categorize and organize. I wasn't really sure what the process was going to look like so I just sat down with my BFF (MS Excel) and started playing around. I thought about doing this step by hand like my brain dump, but since I wasn't quite sure what the end product was going to look like, I decided to use Excel so I could easily move things around and adjust the format as I felt comfortable.

After a few trial and errors with how I wanted things set up, this is what I came up with; a very simple spreadsheet that will allow to me sort my tasking in a couple of different ways. You will notice that there are no due dates or tasks numbers associated with each line, and that was done for a reason. This way, I won't be stressed out or get down on myself for missing a due date and I can shift around my task list and if I am feeling productive, then maybe I'll tackle a high priority item, or if I am having a rough day or week, maybe I will look for something low priority to tackle. I set a goal for each task as to which month I would like to have things done by, and assigned a priority because there are some things that just physically have to get done before others.

The text is probably hard to see, but the point here is that I can easily look at my list, and with one click of the mouse I can see my high, medium and low priority things are. I can also see which month I would ideally have each tasking done by. And frankly, just because it feels really good to be able to cross something off the list, I added a "Complete?" category so I get the satisfaction of crossing something out and watching my list get smaller and smaller!

It's probably hard to tell by the picture but with one other small click of the mouse, I can re-sort my list and check out everything that I wanted to get done by month. That way, I can try to concentrate on even the low priority tasking that I was hoping to get done in January, like creating a watermark for my blog pictures. Could I do that in March? Of course, but the sooner I do it, the better. At the same time, I'm not going to stress myself out and make sure that I get that complete in January say over something higher priority like getting Jackson signed up on our insurance plan so he is covered on day one.

Whenever I complete one of my tasks, I change the font to a light gray and cross that list out! I could just delete it but it makes me feel good to see those babies crossed off! So, so far so good! I don't really yet know how this is going to keep reducing my stress because if I don't keep up with it, it could make me more stressed out, but I still am at least feeling good that its all out of my head and written down and somewhat organized. It's also really easy to add things to, so as I think of random things in the middle of the night, I can just add them to the list (the next day of course). :)

Happy New Year!!

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."   

~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce