An Eventful Christmas

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We had 4 celebrations and we were all a little exhausted by the end of it. It has been great seeing all the family though.

We spent Christmas Eve at my parents' house, and Elena loved handing out the gifts to everyone. Sammy had a good time hanging out with Papi.

We spent Christmas day at Seth's parents' house and had a great time except for Elena burning her hands and nose on the fireplace. It was a pretty traumatic for us all.

She is very good about staying away from the fireplace when it's on because she knows it will be hot. Unfortunately, it had been turned on previously and was turned off when she touched it. Not only did she not realize it was hot, those of us in the room didn't either. I was feeding Sam when she started to cry with her hands on the fireplace. I thought they were stuck because she wasn't taking them off (I think she was just too shocked to move). Uncle Richie quickly grabbed her and we saw her hands had been burned. As we ran them under cool water and watched them blister, we noticed her little nose was also forming a blister (she now looks like Rudolph).

We got her some ibuprofen and stuck her hands in cold water. She cried and cried for over an hour when she finally fell asleep. Seth held her as we soaked her hands and iced her nose. She slept almost an hour before she woke up and continued to cry for about another hour. Then we moved her into the room with all her cousins and they did a superb job of entertaining and distracting her. She managed to stay in a surprisingly good mood the rest of the evening as long as we could keep her hands cool.

Here she is laughing at her cousins.

The hard part was when she wanted to get up and play. She could handle about 5 minutes of jumping or dancing, but soon her hands would start to burn again and she was just so tired of soaking them. Then we would have to force her to sit down and put her hands in the water again until she calmed down.

Here she is on one of her breaks.

Seth slept with her that night and she did really well. I am amazed at how well she adapted. She doesn't let it bother her any more than necessary. I think we could all learn a lesson from little kids in that respect. They don't waste any time feeling sorry for themselves. While we were all feeling so bad for her, she was happy and smiling as soon as the pain subsided.

The next day we celebrated with the DeCock side of the family (Seth's mom's side). Almost everyone was there so there were around 70 people - and too many babies for me to count! It was a little crazy and a lot of fun. Luckily, Elena's doctor happens to live next door to Seth's Aunt and Uncle's place where we were celebrating, so we ran her over to his place to look at her burns. He was kind enough to call in a perscription for her cream so we wouldn't have to spend the whole day in urgent care.

She had fun with all her cousins and adjusted almost immediately to her new condition, using the backs of her hands to climb and play.

Rudolph and Cousin Maddy playing with a Nativity set.

The best Christmas present of the year: Sammy.