The day after

I didn't write much yesterday because it was such a busy day. I was up for a good portion of the night with Madelyn... Then the three of us got up around 8 and opened presents here. John and I exchanged gifts, then we opened presents sent by my mom's family in Florida. Madelyn received the most presents, which is to be expected. Thankfully she got lots of 3 month sized clothes so that once she finishes outgrowing all of her Newborn size clothes, she'll have stuff waiting for her to wear. We are also very thankful for the gift cards and money we received from my mom, John's father and stepmother, John's Aunt, and my grandparents. After we finished opening here, we showered and changed, then headed into my Mum Mum's house. She only lives about 5 minutes from our apartment, so it's an easy little trip. Since we have been keeping Madelyn inside because of the cold weather, this was the first time my Mum Mum met Madelyn. We exchanged gifts with Mum Mum, and my cousin's family. We played pictionary and Wii with the kids, but we only stayed for about two hours before going back home.

We had visited my grandparents (father's parents) and my sister's family on Christmas Eve to make room on Christmas Day afternoon/evening to visit John's mother, brother, and step-father in Virginia... our original plan had been for us to leave Annapolis around 1, hopefully get to VA by 2:30-3, then exchange presents and have dinner, and try to leave by 8pm since John has to work today. Since we can't take our crazy dog for a car ride with Madelyn, we can't be gone for too long because we can't just leave him at home alone for more than 6-7 hours. However, when John called them on Christmas Eve to finalize plans, they asked us not to come. If we could only visit for five hours, they'd prefer we not go at all. We ended up spending the rest of Christmas Day cleaning up the apartment, organizing gifts, etc. We had hoped to visit the Carpenters in VA on the 29th, but we were told that day wouldn't work for them either. The problem with waiting until January is that my students are back from winter break so I work Mon-Fri and John works weekends. Neither of us can take off right now because we're still hurting financially from my unpaid maternity leave. Oh well. Hopefully we'll get to visit them one day during the month of Jamuary - if one of those days works for everyone.

Anyway, this morning I had hoped to get out and do a little early morning shopping for the after Christmas sales before stores got slammed with everyone returning stuff. I waited until Madelyn work up at 5:45am, I gave her a bottle, then put her back down in her crib once she fell asleep. I woke up John to tell him I was heading out, and he said okay (half asleep). Unfortunately, I had only gone to two stores (and only purchased baby formula and water) before I got a text message from John to come home because the baby was being "retarded" - that's John language for saying that Madelyn was crying and he was too tired to deal with it. So I came home to take care of the baby while we crawled back into bed... men...