The strike continues...

No, I'm not on blog-strike, though I'm sure all 7 of my loyal readers have come to that conclusion.  The C-Monster is STILL on his napping strike!  We have yet to come to an agreement and we're currently in a stand-off on this whole nap thing.  I'm not really sure what to do at this point, as I have tried every strategy outlined by every "expert" out there (I'm convinced that none of them know what they are talking about).  So.  We've developed our own strategy.  As predicted, it is going just as well as all of the "expert" strategies, so I'm going to just label myself a "sleep expert" as well.  But. That aside, I have totally neglected my blog.  Again.  Most of my loyal followers (again, all 7 of you, and I think that includes myself) are moms too.  So I think you get it.  If not at this stage, at some point, you have probably had to prioritize your lives yourself, and something likely got dropped.  My blog is my thing that gets dropped.
The good news is that I'm going to catch you up now!  I'm not going to give you any grand sweeping promises that I'll do better, because we see how that's worked out in the past.  Just know that I INTEND to do better.  I always do.  Enough about that, you didn't come here to hear me blog about not blogging.  You didn't come here to see what I have NOT been doing, but rather what I HAVE been doing.  So here you go.  Just remember it's been a while, so we've got some catching up to do...Let's start with Christmas.

    I have no idea why he looks like he's showing off his cleavage, but aside from that, he's just darn cute.

 One of the many faces of the C-Monster.  He really looks like an old man here. 

He has my "snooping" gene, I'm afraid.  And YES, it IS a gene!

One of my favorite little shirts. 

Mimi came to town for Christmas!  She stayed with my aunt and cousins, so we had her over for lunch one day.  I really want Cameron to spend as much time as possible with his great grandmothers.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care... (Note:  these are not the stockings I wand Cameron to grow up knowing as "our" stockings.  But as you well know, I haven't had much time to make the stockings that I want.  So see.. it's not just the blog that gets neglected.)

Happy Baby!

This is Santa's loot.  I'm glad we took this picture, because Christmas morning, it was CHAOS, and we totally wouldn't have gotten a picture of everything all laid out.  We took this right after Santa came on Christmas Eve.

Grammy came over on Christmas day!  We started this year having Christmas at home- that's how we want to do it ongoing, so why not start now?  Grammy (Ryan's mom) came over, and so did Uncle Russ and Aunt Mikka (Ryan's brother and his wife). 

I didn't even realize this until later, but there's not a single picture of Grammy looking at the camera.  She's always got her eye on her super sweet grandbaby.

IT SNOWED!!!!  I've always dreamt of a White Christmas, and the only one I got that I know of was the Christmas I spent in Colorado a few years ago.  This was a HUGE deal to us!  But little did we know, this would turn out to be nothing.  (See?  Another advantage to being way behind on my blog... I can make foreshadowing comments like that.)

The day after Christmas, we went to my Aunt's house to see my extended family.  Here are two of my cousins, Christy, and Carly. 

Which one of these things is not like the others, which one of these things does not belong?  (Remember that song?)

December 26th, we actually took C out to "play" in the snow. 

You know, I wasn't sure about asking Santa for this chair.  I mean really, how much use can you really get out of it?  But this giant smile made me realize what a good idea it really is.

On New Year's Day we met up with my side of the family to do family Christmas. What?  You don't celebrate holidays on the wrong day?  Well we do.  We stretch them out as long as possible.  Here Uncle Alex (my brother) is showing Cameron how to be Superman.  No, not the Soulja Boy Superman. But as a side note, my father knows that entire dance. 

As usual, I was in charge of desserts.  And as usual, I don't just do normal desserts.  I mean come on- it's New Year's Day!  We had to set something on fire!  So these are my champagne cupcakes.  I saw the idea on Oprah, and knew I HAD to do it.  One thing they failed to mention on Oprah though- the dust from the sparklers gets all over the top layer of dessert.  That "dust" is actually tiny bits of metal, and is toxic when ingested in large quantities.  So be prepared to scrape it off, or just don't go back for 2nds.  Or, now that I've told you this, you can use those sparkling candles instead of actual sparklers.  Too bad Oprah didn't mention that... thanks a lot Oprah.

One of my favorite pictures... this was just a plain old boring non-holiday kind of day, and both my boys were looking at the camera.  Now THAT'S worth remembering.

Do you see them?  Oh I failed to mention this... we made HUGE progress in Cameron's sleep from Thanksgiving to December.  HUGE.  He was sleeping through the night (from 7pm-7am, not that stupid 5-hour stretch definition of "sleeping through the night") right up until Christmas.  On Christmas night, he completely stopped.  On December 29th, I found out why.  His gums were HUGE- swollen and inflamed.  The very next day, two tiny teeth broke through on the bottom.  You can barely see them here, but they sure made a grand entrance.

Since it was C's first Christmas and he was so young, we decided to do something fun for us for his gifts.  He would have no idea what he got anyway, so Ryan and I each picked out something for Cameron, from us, that the other person didn't know about.  I picked out this floor gym, affectionately known as "Monkey Island."  Ryan got him a Charlie Brown t-shirt.  I'll have to find a picture of that, because it is SO cute with his big bald head!

No fun story here.  I just like the big goofy grin.

So you saw our Christmas snow, right?  It was a BIG deal in Georgia.  BIG.  HUGE.  It made the news for 10 days.  But this is what followed.  It hit mid-January, and shut the whole city down for an entire week!  We measured it with our very unofficial tape measure, and it was 8 inches in our backyard!  Even if that measurement is slightly off, that's a ridiculous amount of snow for Georgia.  Ryan worked from home all week, which was fun, actually.  It was like a mini-vacation.

And we dragged him out in it again...

And again. 

More smiles on Monkey Island!  I'm not sure who loves this gift more- C or me.  (You can totally tell it's a mom gift... I just needed more places to put him where he could occupy himself.)

This is one of my absolute favorite pictures.  Could that smile be any bigger?  Seriously.  If the whole world made a New Year's resolution to smile this big just once a day, there would be no war.  Well, there would at least be no road rage. 

And he found his feet.  Perhaps it was because they had monkey heads on them, or maybe it's just time for that particular milestone.. but either way, it's been the cheapest entertainment we've had in a long long time.

Many of my friends have asked about our coping strategy during our sleep "challenges".  I believe the old adage that "A picture's worth 1,000 words," so consider this picture my 1,000 word photographic essay.

I know he's not supposed to sleep on us, but when he's that stinking cute, how am I supposed to resist? 

"Well hello ladies..."  Sweet Jesus, is this how Hugh Heffner started out?  Oh I hope not. 

This picture was taken right before we left C with Uncle Russ and Aunt Mikka so we could go look at cars for the afternoon.  They are expecting their first child in July, so they were dying to practice with Cameron.  I would have loved to have taken a picture of their faces when we got home, but they ran out the door the second we got there, absolutely terrified of what was in store for them.  (In their defense he WAS in the middle of his napping strike, and can be so terrifying even a Navy SEAL couldn't handle the insanity.  Oh and I rarely exaggerate.)

That's right folks, I'm an aunt! Cameron's first cousin was born in January.  My brother Andrew, and his wife Carrie were due in early February, but miss Katherine made her grand entrance a tad early.  Everyone is happy and healthy, and that girl has got some HAIR, which is pretty funny in contrast to my little Charlie Brown baby here.

I actually liked this picture better, but you couldn't read all of the words on the sign, which was the whole point of the stinking picture.

So there you go... you're caught up through the end of January.  We had several holidays, lots of smiles, and a new cousin/niece keeping us busy, so again, no excuses, but this is one of those things that has been neglected, sadly.  Another thing is my photo uploads.  These are the last ones I have updated, so I'm about 3 weeks behind in uploading them!  I got Photoshop for Christmas, and am DYING to sit down and just play with it (add that to the list of neglected tasks).  Hopefully this nap business will settle in soon enough and I can do all of my catching up during naps.  So far, it's not sounding good though. 

I also plan on changing my blog background to be a little less Christmassy, so if you're reading this before I get around to it, I know, I know.  It's on the never-ending list.  So hey, I'm on a roll.  I can at least do updates every 2 months!  Which means that if I keep this up, my next update will be when spring is here!  Haha, just kidding.  As usual, I have every intention of updating sooner.  But you know,  we'll see how that goes.