First Haircut!

The mullet. This does not adequately capture the one lovely curl that he had, but he had one. I have proof, as I am the dorky overly sentimental Mom who saves their first haircut hair. My Mom did the same, and I know that there is no purpose to it, but I admit that I have looked at my first haircut hair several times over the past 30 or so years. So, its in an envelope. He will probably never have another curl, but I have definitive proof that he did, indeed, have one at one point.

Post haircut, so grown up!

He just looks like such a big boy to me now! I love it!

With holiday extravanganzapoluzza upon us, I decided that it was time to bid adieu to Jake's mullet. I admit that I don't like baby mullets, and we were getting to that point. So, on a whim, I gave him his first cut on Friday morning. Ever the perfect gentleman he sat perfectly still and enjoyed his first trim on the kitchen floor. He looks like a little man!

I thought I might be sad about my "baby" looking less like a baby....but have to admit that I find myself way less sentimental about all of this growing up stuff than I thought I might be. I'm glad. (Although, don't get me started about my reaction walking into Luke's soon to be Kindergarten, or how emotional I was watching his pre-K Christmas program). For some reason seeing Luke hit his big kid milestones is more emotionally difficult for me than watching Jake do the same, and I completely thought that it would be the opposite. Anyway, introducing the new big man Jake!

Holidays and Haircuts

Continuing on the hair theme from my last post, Luke got his first official haircut today. I had trimmed it a couple of times, but as the back was so much longer than the front it was starting to get rather page -boyish (ugh), so I had to get that taken care of. Luke was hilarious, no yelling, no fear, no worries as he hopped up into the chair and took his haircut like a little man. He was so serious as he watched the hairdresser cutting away in the mirror. I was surprised at how unsentimental I was about the whole thing ~ perhaps as he really still does not have all that much hair even at 22 months it's not like it was radically altering his look.

Last night was our used-to-be whole-family-7-fish-dinner-turned-pizza-night. It was wonderful to get to spend an evening with my extended family....And I loved seeing Luke and Julia interact with Ben and to get to meet sweet little Tyler. Pete and Lex are now two days overdue and we are all waiting anxiously to celebrate the birth of their first baby, and my kids first first cousin on my side of the family. Tomorrow night is our new, smaller 7 fish dinner. I am feeling a little overwhelmed all of a sudden. We really kept the whole gift thing simple this year ~ It's just the sudden realization of several meals/desserts that I have to make coupled with a few last minute crafty type gift things that I am working on.....and kids who BOTH woke up sick with colds this morning. Even trying hard to keep things simple, things just seem to never truly be simple with a bagillion holiday parties/obligations/celebrations/commitments/and two very young children.

I need to work hard tomorrow to get myself together so that I can actually enjoy Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with a minimum of stress. I feel as though this Christmas really crept up on me too quickly.

Did I mention that our dog has mange? Literally, our dog has mange. Our mangy mutt. He had been itching with ever increasing intensity over the past couple of weeks. We took him to the vet, assuming that it was food allergies, and the first question that she asked was "Do you live in an area with a lot of foxes?". Yup. And dogs can get mange from a fox from merely running through the same bushes as foxes do (we learned) . Fun times. Luckily with some steroids, antibiotics and the like he is already about a million times better, and none the worse for the episode. Now armed with a skunk attack and a bout of mange under our belts.....what's next for Mulligan? A deer trampling? Snake bite? Stay tuned.