Back to reality

I can hardly believe how utterly I've failed at blogging every day this month! Oops. Maybe January will be more fruitful on Green Grass.

Our Christmas was fantastic. We've had some kind of Christmas-related party or other even almost every day for the past couple of weeks, but things are winding down now. Yesterday we came home from Atlanta, where we visited the branch of our family tree that we thank for our long legs. We've spent several nights out of town with Claire, but this was our first time staying in a hotel room with her rather than at a friend's house.

The first night was great -- she slept on a quilt on the floor in a corner of the room, where she couldn't see us. A closet would have been better -- she wouldn't have been able to hear us either -- but that wasn't a good option in our hotel room.

The second night she woke up every couple of hours wanting to eat. At home she never would have done that, and if she had I would have ignored her. But the hotel's walls were super-thin so I jumped up to feed her every time she cried. Also, the office building right next to the hotel was being loudly demolished, which started at 7:30 both mornings. All three of us were exhausted yesterday (the people in the surrounding rooms must have been too), but Matt totally took one for the team and drove almost the whole way home.

I feel bad that Claire's sleeping schedule has been so nuts for the past few weeks, but she's handled it like a champ. Probably at least half the nights in December she either had to fall asleep at home while we had (loud) people over, or she had to sleep a few hours at someone else's house, then be woken up, driven home, and put back to sleep in her crib. Some fallout was to be expected. We're going to Mark and Sonya's for New Year's Eve tonight, but this should be the last night for a while that she's out of her normal routine.