Let the Fun Begin!

Mamie Brigitte came up this afternoon for a visit because we didn't get to see her on Sylvain's birthday.  We took the Nugget down to Newport on the Levee and we found....SANTA CLAUS!!  He was just hanging out, all by himself, waiting for kids to come talk to him!  Sylvia spotting him from a mile away and shouted "HO HO!!!"  For a split second I thought we might see the classic "run to Santa and give him a hug, even though you have no idea who he really is" moment, but the closer we got, the more afraid she became.  Then, for a split second, I remembered last year's disaster and I debated whether or not we should take her anywhere near that giant bearded stranger.  We approached slowly, and as long as Mama held her, Sylvia was all good with the Santa man.  Here's the best shot we could get:

Of course, we'll try to do Santa's lap at the mall again this year, but I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope for that visit.  Maybe now that she's been properly introduced, he won't be so scary.  We'll see!

In other Christmas news, I read Meredith's blog post about their cute little gingerbread house yesterday, so I decided that we'd try to make our gingerbread train last night!  My Mom is the queen of gingerbread houses, and she'd kill me for buying a kit, but come on - it was a CHOO CHOO!  I couldn't pass it up!  We broke open the kit after dinner and got straight to work.  Sylvia loved all the bright colored candy and ooohhhhhh, the icing!  I did my best to put it all together, but alas...

...this is as far as we got.  After multiple attempts to hold the stupid thing together, I finally threw in the towel and tossed Sylvia one of the cookie panels smothered in icing. 

She didn't seem to mind one bit.  In fact, when the train really started to fall and collapse, I was screaming and laughing at the same time and she thought it was hilarious!  So, for $9.99, Sylvia and I got to sit together at the kitchen table and work on a failed project together, which ended with her licking icing off a cookie.  How bad could that really be?

Finally, we got another early Christmas present on Friday: we heard the baby's heartbeat!  I was sweating bullets for a while because it took our doctor FOREVER to find it, but we finally heard the little "whomp whomp whomp" through all of that swooshing and I was able to breathe again.  All is well with the newest baby bean, and we are SO happy!  I have so much to post about this pregnancy, but I'll have to wait until Christmas break to start that chapter.  We're just having way too much fun playing with Sylvia and enjoying the season for me to really stop and get sappy about the fact that there are two hearts in my body, one of which won't be there for very long.