Christmas Cookie Chaos!!

The setup before the toddlers hit it

Everyone has their family holiday traditions, right? For my sister and I, we always had a cookie party. Our mom let us invite a few friends to the house and we decorated Christmas cookies for everyone to enjoy. My mom also had her cookie exchange, when her friends came over and they all exchanged cookies they made. My mom has been continuing her tradition this whole time, and now that both my sister and I have kids, we've revived our Christmas tradition too.

Cue six toddlers at Mimi and PopPop's house "decorating" cookies. It was definitely what I would call somewhat-organized chaos. It took them a few minutes to understand that they could not simply pour sprinkles on the sugar cookies, but instead they had to smear icing on their cookies first, then pile them high with sprinkles, mini chocolate chips, sugar snowflakes, and many other decorations.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. All the kids ended up running around like wild crazy people on a serious sugar high, which they totally were. It was really fun and hopefully we'll be doing it again next year!

Sugar cookies in various Christmas shapes and LOTS of icing

Cookie boxes- to make sure we weren't left with all of the beautifully decorated cookies

Baby K's cookie party activity- eating a lot of cookies and icing

Let the fun begin!

O's decorated cookies

Again, what she did the entire party

TR (cookie party helper) and Abbs (expert decorator)

Running all the sugar off!!

4am, you are not my friend!

A slight change in scenery

I know I've said this on the blog before, but I really should be sleeping right now. Sleep when she sleeps, right? I got the message about our change in time zone; unfortunately I cannot say the same for Baby K. I'm not sure where she thinks she is, but it is definitely not in the same place I am.

For those of you who are wondering, yes, we're back in Texas for the holidays. We got back a week ago, having come in earlier than expected for the funeral of a family member. The week before, my sister and her husband came to visit us in Switzerland, so it's been a bit of a whirlwind. More on Cookie and Monkey's (Baby K's names for them) visit later.

Isn't it typical life with a toddler to think that you have things somewhat figured out, only for them to then prove that you absolutely do not?? This is Baby K and I right now. We've done the long-haul flight four times now, and also dealt with jet lag four times. I just thought I had a good handle on what would happen with jet lag this time around...cue Baby K laughing in my face.

I deal with middle-of-the-night wakings much better when I expect them to happen. With that said, I absolutely expected to not have a full night's sleep for the first four to five nights. In the past she has gotten up around 3am the first night, then 4am, then 5am, and so on until we get back to her getting up at her usual 7am. She would typically also go back to sleep after a little time quietly playing in our room. Not so much this time!

The first night she woke at 3am as expected, but then it took about two hours to get back to sleep. The next night it was 4am and I don't think she went back to sleep before getting up for the day. It has only gotten worse from there, including waking at 1am and not wanting to go back to sleep. She eventually does around 4am and will sleep until 5:30 or 6. Yikes...not good for anyone! Last night was probably the worst, mostly because she had the whole house up when she wouldn't stop crying around 3 this morning, still awake from her 1am wake up time. 

So what's the moral of the story? It's that I pretty much have no idea what's going on with jet lag or how to handle it. For the time being I've decided that Baby K is so overly tired that her little body won't get back on track, so I've tried to let her catch up on sleep and not try to adhere so much to her schedule. We'll see how it goes tonight. Hopefully she'll start to recover and begin to get on Texas time so we can start to get out and see people without feeling like we're unraveling all the time.

One thing is for sure: I have no doubt she will sleep through the night the night before BK arrives, as that's usually how it goes. Such is life. Think good thoughts for us.

A fashionably fast trip to Milan

Milan Duomo

Last weekend BK and I contemplated a weekend getaway. And of course, when I say weekend getaway, Baby K was invited as well. Nothing too crazy over here, don't worry! BK first suggested that we go into the mountains somewhere. That way we could get out and do active stuff all weekend, hiking and taking in the views. This was a good idea, but then, selfishly, I suggested we go to Milan.

For those of you who don't know, BK's birthday is right around the corner and Baby K and I are getting him some new dress shoes...exciting right? The shopping is not so great in Switzerland, so we thought we would go and see what all the hub-bub was about Milan. Italy is known for leather goods, so we figured, why not? Not to mention that the dollar, euro and Swiss franc have all essentially become equal, which is great news for us!

Milan is a quick three hour (direct!) train from Montreux. We grabbed the train Saturday morning and arrived in Milan just before lunch time. Baby K was great on the train; so great in fact, that BK was able to spend all three hours doing continuing education out of the way, without me getting frustrated at all. If you're a mom, you know what I mean, and how I feel.

One smart thing we did, and I would highly recommend, was buy Baby K her own seat. On Swiss trains you are not required to make a seat reservation, but on Italian trains you are. It was so much better for her to have her own seat. It gave us all a little bit more room to move around, and we controlled the table, so she could color or do whatever we needed her to do.

Statue of Leonardo

It's crazy how much the weather can impact your impression of a city. It was grey, drizzly and chilly all weekend, which wasn't great to walk around in all day. But, as a result of living in Europe, we've learned to adapt, wear proper clothing, and go on about our way. It really reminded us when we went to Paris the first weekend we lived in Europe. I don't know why, but it just makes a difference.

Entrance to our hotel/apartment- a mini door in the door

We stayed at an awesome apartment-hotel type thing called Le Suite de Palazzo Segreti. It is a group of apartments, but run by a hotel, so there is still concierge service to help us around the city, as well as breakfast and some other amenities. We also prefer for Baby K to have her own room when we go somewhere so BK and I can actually interact after 7:30pm when she goes to bed. We also wanted a living room type situation as well so we could watch the Frogs that night too. And yes, we took the AppleTV with us so we could watch American football while in Milan. The place was perfect for us for the weekend!

Living room and hall to bedrooms

I'm sorry to say we did not do so well on the shopping front, as we came home empty handed. We couldn't wrap our minds around how there were possibly enough people in the world to justify the sheer number of luxury stores in Milan. I can't tell you the number of places we passed with shoes that were thousands of dollars. I mean, really? Why? And please know, this was not what we were looking for!

The shopping streets of Milan

After our failed attempts at shopping, we stopped at duomo square to have a quick look around, then headed back to our apartment for the evening. Milan is very easy to get around, with buses, trams and a subway that are easily navigable. Baby K was also dying to get out and run around, so the apartment was ideal for that as well.

The next morning we got up at regular Baby K time (7 to 7:30am), had breakfast, then headed out to go to the duomo. I wish we could have gone to see The Last Supper, but you have to book that months in advance, which obviously we did not do.

Yes we brought the dog- it's how you really get her to go!

Inside the Duomo

Down the center aisle

The Milan duomo is very impressive. One thing that makes it really beautiful is that it appears to have recently been cleaned, so you can see all of the colors in the marble facade. There is still some scaffolding, but compared to the size of the duomo, it seems insignificant. The opulence of Cathedrals in Europe gets me every time, and Milan's duomo was no exception.

Her favorite part of the Duomo

We left Milan around noon, with high hopes that Baby K would nap on the way back home. Unfortunately that did not happen, but she was manageable. Sometimes I get a bit frustrated when things don't go as planned/how they need to go with Baby K, but BK has learned to read my mind and took her to walk around the train when this happened. He's good like that.

That's about it for Milan- honestly, nothing too excited, but actually a nice getaway for us. Baby K napped for almost two hours while we shopped, and it was nice for BK and I to get to wander around chatting, with no real agenda.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and we have a couple of celebrations coming up. My sister and her husband also get here on Monday, which I'm super excited about! Then in no time, we'll be back in the US for our Christmas visit! Time flies when you're having fun!