Christmas!

Ah the joys of secular blended family Christmas.  Consumption, consumption, consumption.  It's all very patriotic.

Cooper slept well on the Christmas Eve for the first time in FOREVER (6:30-3 without a peep, a brief meal at 3 and back in his own bed until after the big kids woke up-- a dream baby, again.  Unfortunately, he was up every 20 MINUTES from 10 pm to 6 am on the 25th/26th, and last night, he was up 4 times between 11 and 1, slept from 1-4, and then came in my bed from 4-7 where he woke up every 20 minutes again.  FML).

I, however, could NOT sleep after 3 because I was so excited to see Harry and Jack's reaction to Santa. We spent all of Christmas Eve tracking his progress on my NORAD iPhone app, but they had strict instructions to stay in their beds until the clock in their room read 6-zero-zero.  The coffee pot turned on at 5:45 (we program it to warm itself up on school mornings but forgot to turn it off) and woke Ben up, so we decided to make coffee.  I went in to get H and J at 5:58, so they wouldn't wake up Coop when they bolted out of their room and found them both lying on their stomachs, chins propped on their hands, staring at the clock with giant eyes.

We all thundered downstairs with coffee and milk.  Ben made a pile of screwdrivers scissors, and batteries the night before, and my camera was charging beside my phone (the best way to capture video these days) and a pile of garbage bags just aching to be stuffed with wrap-- we were READY for the MAGIC.  So much magic.

Jack is pointing frantically to the huge dollhouse Santa seemed to have brought him.  Harry was stoked to find a barrel! of! monkeys! n one of his stockings.

What other wonders could the stocking hold?

Jack's heart's desire: the dollhouse he has been staring longingly at on the cover the the Sensational Beginnings catalog.

Harry wanted Dr. Dreadful's Zombie Lab so bad.  It's like a really messed up kitchen set-- you can make "edible" zombie boogers, brains, and barf.

The Lego castle of his dreams

Clearly Cooper has no idea what the hell is going on.

Look at Jack's little face.

Harry and Jack built Cooper this stuffed dog and then made it look gross with a Power Ranger costume

I tried to get them to eat some muffins, but instead, Harry made brains

Yum!

It took us FOREVER to kind of clean up our mess and get in the car. We headed to Ben's parents for more present madness. The cousins had a ton of fun playing together, and Ben and I loved gorging ourselves on berry, berry, berry, berry (4 berry!) cheesecake from our favorite bakery (seriously, we need to stop going there-- we've been taking the kids out for breakfast and lunch and getting dessert a lot over break).

Pre-presents

Jack has wanted this Batman cave forever

Cooper still has no clue

Harry was so excited to give the presents he made at school.

Cooper is working on sitting

With mixed results