BakerBits

Ok, so Christmas with little kids is ultra cute. I’ve got photographic proof!

It’s still risky for all those holiday pounds. I found a great way to reduce holiday calorie intake: feed holiday goodies to the little people with the very active metabolisms. Calories fed to other people do not make you fat! More holiday tips throughout this post.

So here’s what we’ve been up to.

Classic gingerbread house decoration:

Note the remains of a former gingerbread house in the lower left there. The only way to have any candy make it on the house is to let the kids eat a different gingerbread house while eating this one. There is another alternative, but that involves buying a lot of extra candy besides the gingerbread kit, which means much more sugar enters the home. Since sugar generally has no problem entering the house in large qualities in November and December, we don’t need to let more in, do we?

Todd likes to refer to them as Gingermanbreadhouses. He refers to gingerbreadmen as gingermanbreadhousemen. Here is classic, “What you get when you ask a four year old to pose for a photo”

Note the pathetic comparison of our actual house to the gingerbread house on the box. This is not the result of letting the kids do the decoration, no, Mommy did most of the decoration with about 5% of help from Papa and 12% of help from Todd and Peter. However, having children in the very presence of decorations prevents them from being the perfection that the crafter in me desires. So I just had to let it go.

Another tip for decoration from gingerbread house kits: they tell you to wait 15 minutes after icing-glueing the roof on before decorating the roof. The reason they tell you this is that if you don’t wait 15 minutes, and instead cover the house roof with frosting and candies and then proudly prop it up on a high shelf so the children can’t reach it, the roof will slide off and crash to the floor, and the 45 minutes you spent decorating the %#@$%## thing will be wasted. Guess how I know this. On the bonus side, a gingerbread house roof covered with unseen and unimaginable cooties from a toddler infested floor is utterly unappetizing to Mommy, which helps with not gaining those holiday pounds! Toddlers have no fear of eating thier own floor cooties, so food isn’t even wasted!

Aherm. Christmas morning dawned foggy, rainy, and cold. Nevertheless the kids and I were up. Kyle was down with a cold. I whipped out the pots and pan and made a mean Eggs Benedict! However, the toddlers were not appreciative of the breakfast and mainly just stared at their plates and ate the English muffin part of it. Mommy enjoyed hers. But then she had to wash a lot of dishes. When Kyle was up, all he wanted was an English Muffin. Lesson learned: next year, I’m just gonna buy some blueberry muffins. Not the Costco ones, be they ever so delicious, because you can only buy Costco ones in five thousand calorie packs. Not good for holiday fitness!

The Christmas tree:

Playing with toys, retro Little People train set:

The ones below are Anamalz. Cute little wooden critters.

The Big Bad Baker Clan! 

Ok, maybe not so bad. And maybe we don’t look so big, but this is only part of the clan. The rest are off surviving weird foreign government policies in exotic Bolivia.

Earlier this week we had more family, my sisters:

Aunt Carol and Viv in their new boots!

One of the big steps in Mommyhood is realizing that things like birthdays and Christmas, on a personal level, become rather boring compared to how incredibly exciting they are for the kids. So you switch to being excited for the kids, and Christmas is suddenly more exciting than it’s been in years. So don we now our gay apparel!!!! Fa la la la la la la la la!!!! And you better be durned grateful you are just reading that rather than actually hearing me sing it.

This could also be a strategy, that you should look like holiday goodies instead of eating them, but as you normally wear aprons to make food, it kinda obliterates any strategy success. Nevertheless, my Gingermanbreadhouseman apron was loved by the kids.

So the final count was I made it through November and December, and I only gained a total of four pounds. Most Americans gain 9-11 pounds. My biggest secret is this: I am pregnant and I have been nauseous most days. I have not been craving chocolate or sweets, rather I want it salty, spicy, and crunchy! Before when I’ve been pregnant (especially over the holidays) I’ve gained more like 10-15 pounds over the holidays.

Thanks to the hubby for working out with me many early mornings. Exercise really does help, and it’s one of our only non-kid-including activities. And will hopefully help me stay in shape for an easier, faster labor comes my due date in July. Hopefully not too much faster, I don’t want to give birth in the back of the Geo Metro on the way to the hospital. However, if I have an ‘accidental’ homebirth I wouldn’t mind too much.

As this year closes and I have spread the news of Baker Bean #4 around, I am so grateful for all the support. I have heard nothing but excitement and anticipation that we are having a fourth child. I have heard many other situations where mothers expecting a subsequent child have been criticized, or ignored, or just had little jabbing comments. So even if you all are thinking, “WHAT!!! ARE THEY NUTS?” “They do know what causes that, don’t they?” “Only crazy people have more than 1 (or 2 or 3) children!” etc etc, you haven’t said it to me, and that really helps. Cause really, you don’t want to tick off a pregnant woman who deals with toddlers all day. She is not scared of you and she will tell you exactly what she thinks.

Well, hope everyone else made it through the holidays with hollyness and jollyness and at least a little snow. You must all be hoggin it, cause we haven’t got a flake. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

And as I look toward the new year, and think about goals, my pregnancy is weighing heavily on my mind. (Come July it will weigh heavy absolutely everywhere!) I will have four children under the age of five. Three children under the age of five have been keeping me plenty busy with plenty of challenges. It has been a big growing experience. There have been times when I’ve wanted to sell the children on eBay and run off to Paris. I have never been more aware of my shortcomings as a human being than I have being a parent. However, God has given me strength, and taught me, and I have leaned heavily on him to stay sane. I know that this next child will make things more intense. So there are big lessons ahead of me. My biggest goal for the new year is to have peace in the midst of the deeper chaos. I have confidence God will give me the strength, tools, and hope to make it through.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!