Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A little time has gone by since my last post, and I do apologize for that. It really is my intention to update this regularly, but the road to somewhere nasty is paved with good intentions, right? To catch you up to speed in a nutshell, there has been good and bad and ups and downs. If you're able to step away from the immediacy of minute-to-minute, you will see a huge leap forward! In the last week, Cassidy really has warmed to me. She fist bumps now (which she learned strictly by observing the other children doing it), and she even gave me a single kiss on the cheek last weekend (none since)! Last night, she even gave me the Mommy treatment. What is the Mommy treatment? Whining at me any time I put her down. Of course, the reasons are pretty different. She likes being held by Mommy for the peace and love of it. She wants me to pick her up because she's a daredevil/thrill seeker. She finally figured out that I am the human roller coaster. She likes being hoisted into the air and riding on my shoulders as I gallop through the house (in the house only, though). She even likes being flipped in my arms (which Shari doesn't like watching). She likes riding on my foot as I walk around, and she likes being spun around, albeit slowly. The rough part for me is that once I do anything like that for her, every other kid in the house wants to do the same thing. Let me tell you that there is a huge difference in weight between a 23-month-old, undersized girl and an almost-nine-year-old, oversized boy! I think I'm probably an inch shorter than I used to be just by virtue of my spine being compacted by the resident food vacuum sitting on my shoulders...

Okay, I confess. It's not all about the acrobatics. She also wants me to pick her up because I'll hook her up with the peppercorn potato chips. (She likes things with a little kick...)

Below is a rather long three-minute video of Cass' first Christmas. I recorded and posted the whole thing mostly to showcase just how long it took her to work through one present. As a bonus, you will also get to hear lots of happy screams from the other kids as well as me correcting Jake... who, as I found out moments after the filming stopped, was actually in the right. Enjoy.

So Christmas was exactly what the doctor ordered for us. While I'm certainly not equal to Mommy in Cassidy's little eyes, she has certainly warmed up to me. She has napped on my chest. I can now put her down for night-nights without having to trap her on her side in my arms. She reacts enthusiastically when I get home from work. She can say "dadda" now, and she is actually talking about me when she says it. I know some people didn't understand or appreciate our decision to stay home for Christmas, I'll never regret it, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Next year, we can give her the customary traveling Christmas experience...