Happy December you guys! December is one of my favorite months of the year, so I am delighted (and a little horrified) at how quickly the year brought us back here. Seriously though, where does the time go? I can't decide if I need more hours in my day, days in my week, or a better strategy of managing what I've got.

Actually, I'm logical, so....

I haven't done a sleep update in a while, so that's another thing. About two-ish months ago, Duke started consistently sleeping through the night and I feel like we've finally found our family rhythm. The first year was so hard. So much crying and not sleeping, and rotating which of the three of us was in need of the most consoling -- it feels really good to be on the other side. We sleep all night and play all day. It's good.

Speaking of Duke, he's filling up his vocabulary nicely. No SAT verbal level stuff, but I'm not judging him too harshly yet. He's picked up go, hot, mom, dad, that, three, up and a ton of babble that only the dogs understand. And it's crazy to see him comprehend what we're saying to him. Like when I ask him if he wants milk, or to take a bath -- two things he'd like to be having and doing all the time. He gets visually excited and runs directly to the right location to take me up on whichever I'm offering.

He's a lot more independent too, which is great because he'll keep himself busy. But on the flip side, he finds and is only interested in playing with the most ridiculously dangerous stuff. Like, he'll find a toilet plunger I didn't even know we had, or a bottle of Windex that's been crammed under the couch since 2012. And all I can do is chase him around to supervise the things going in his mouth --- and ask him to help me find Daddy's keys. I mean, if you can sniff out weird unfindable things....

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So we're hunkering down for Christmas this year, which I'm 100% excited about. We traditionally travel for the holiday, but made a decision that this year, now that we have Duke, we're staying home. I have such stupidly good memories of waking up on Christmas morning with my siblings and creating any reason to sneak downstairs to take a peak (I'm SO thirsty Mom! I'm going to DIE if I don't go to the bathroom Dad!) And I want that for Duke, starting now. He doesn't get it yet, but I just want home to be the place that he wakes up on Christmas. And I'm really maybe a little too jazzed to stay up late with Ryan on Christmas Eve, just wrapping his presents and trying to keep George away from them for a whole 12 hours.

Actually, who am I kidding. He sleeps through the night but 12 hours is a stretch that Christmas miracles are made of. More like 9 hours, but we'll take on the challenge. 

So anyway, quite a bit of our family is coming to us, so it's going to be an Up North Christmas, which I can't honestly think of anything better.