A few weeks ago, I was talking to a new girl I’d met. She also has a 2.5 year old little boy, so we were swapping stories. Then I mentioned that we also had a 7 month old named Hayes.

She said, “Oh my gosh! You have two? How do you do it?”

(Now, I know many of you reading have two kids. Some of you may have three or four kids or even five kids. So I’m sure you’ve all gotten this question before.)

And I responded and said, “You just do it.”

There’s no magic answer. I am not special. I just live hour to hour. Especially in the beginning.

I was terrified of my mom leaving and being home alone with two kids under 2. How would I survive? But you just do. You do what has to be done and then you move on to the next thing that has to be done.

Somedays, depending on what happens, there’s not a lot of time for anything else other than playing with them, feeding them, changing them and making sure their needs are met.

It’s a completely different world than the one I was in just three years ago. I can count on one hand the parts of my life that are the same as three years ago. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I stay home with them.

I stay home with them, so I don’t have many responsibilities outside of the house. My job every day is to take care of them. It’s a very big responsibility, but it’s not at all glamorous or a cake walk.

Now that Hayes is older and Hudson has become really independent, I don’t have to live hour to hour anymore. We have our days scheduled out. But it can still be overwhelming. Hudson gets upset when I have to give Hayes a bottle. Hayes is wanting to do more than he can, so he needs my help a lot– usually when I’m trying to help Hudson with something.

But you just do it.

Yesterday was a horrible day. Everyone was sick. I didn’t go back into my bedroom after I rushed out of bed to get a coughing Hudson first thing yesterday morning. I was in the clothes I slept in all day and Hudson never napped. My hair was a wreck and I may or may not have gotten an opportunity to brush my teeth. But they needed me. It is possible to get everything done with more than one baby. It’s not at all easy and the responsibility is huge.

When you’re in the moment and the kids you’re caring for are your kids, it’s not scary. I’m not being graded or observed. I’m just loving them and doing everything I know how to do to teach them and mold them into the kind of people I want them to be.

It’s not pretty. It’s messy. It’s hectic. I’m not always nice. I even miss the care-free days. But I wouldn’t trade what we have now for anything.

I don’t always know what I’m doing. I wish I could add more hours to the day to help get things done, but I can’t. So I just do what I can.

Two-year olds are challenging little humans. Seven month olds are in such a great place where they’re just ready to learn and develop. But they both need me, so I just do what I can do.

Christmas only comes once a year, so I like to use as many Christmas song lyrics for titles to my posts as possible during this time of the year. Although, Christmas does seem to come faster every year as we get older, and older, and older…

I’m going to attempt to write this post in a way that seems positive and upbeat, despite how tired and run down I feel today.

In true week-before-Christmas fashion, Hudson is sick. It’s such a horrible coincidence, but I guess we can be thankful that he didn’t have to miss any school. He was complaining about his ear on Saturday morning, so while Hayes napped, Hudson sat on my lap sipping his Ovaltine and watching How The Grinch Stole Christmas. TC had gone to breakfast with the guys from our Sunday school class. When TC came home, he was giving Hudson some medicine. I guess Hudson got choked or something because, without warning, he lost his breakfast (and Ovaltine) all over our white sofa and me. Poor guy. Poor mama.

He was in tears and I was nearly in tears. TC kept saying, “don’t cry, either of you.” We all got baths. The couch got cleaned. Hudson took an epic nap that day. Thankfully, after you get tubes, ear infections aren’t nearly as bad as they were before tubes. We have drops on hand to nip those ear infections in the bud quickly. So we did.

But now that Hudson is sick, we’re all kind of sick. TC didn’t sleep a wink last night, I’ve got an awful sore throat that seems to be getting worse with each cup of coffee I drink. But I can’t seem to lay off the coffee. There’s still so much to be done despite the sickness.

Christmas is days away and my Christmas cards are still sitting in the box waiting to be addressed. I had to order more this year. I looked at my list and the amount I ordered and it wasn’t even close. I usually end up with about 25 extra cards and it always seems wasteful, so I cut back this year. I guess I made a bunch of new friends this year, so yay for that! Right?

Maybe I’ll make good use of my time tonight and watch The Family Stone while I address Christmas cards. TC should be willing to do it, but he uses “poor handwriting” as his excuse to not have to address them. Don’t lawyers have really strong hands after taking the bar exam? (That was six or seven years ago, so maybe he’s not as conditioned anymore.)

Sweet Hayes is the only one of us who hasn’t seemed at all sick, thank goodness. He is trying so hard to crawl and just smiles when he pushes up to all fours. He can crawl backwards, but he just can’t figure out how to move forward. He gets around, though. He does a mixture of army crawl and rolling to get where he needs to go. He’s such a happy guy.

(sorry for the blurry iPhone picture)

I got a little video of him trying to crawl last week.

I don’t think I mentioned this on the blog, but we drove to South Louisiana last weekend. (I guess a week of Christmas-related posts kept me from doing a lot of catching up.) It was a 14-ish hour drive (including all of our stops to feed the boys and change diapers). When we got home on Sunday night it was about 10:30 p.m. The boys were both in gross clothes, so I stripped them down to a clean diaper and just let them play before putting them down for bed.

Hayes and Hudson were seriously wired and I got this hilarious video of them. It’s long, but they are both just so funny to me. Hayes cracks himself up and Hudson takes this “big brother” thing pretty seriously, it seems. Hayes is also pretty loud, so turn down the volume if you watch the video.

Sorry for the big blog ramble, but it was fun to do a little catching up! I hope you’re all settling down and getting ready for a fun week with family and celebrations.

Happy Friday, friends! Today is our last day of this fun week of link-ups and I am the hostess.

I wanted to share our home and Christmas decorations with all of you and I hope you’ll link up to do the same.

This year, I was in charge of the decorations for our Junior League Holiday Market. I have been in “decorations mode” since June! I love decorating for Christmas, but I wasn’t sure if I would have the energy to decorate my own house after decorating such a big space for Holiday Market.

I ended up just going for it because I knew that Hudson would love it. He’s little and he really appreciates a Christmas tree and the stockings. He loves seeing the lights and pointing them out. He loves looking at all the different ornaments on the tree. And I can tell him about each one.

Welcome to our home! I have used this front door wreath for a few years now. I love the colors and I love that it goes with the happy, bright, cheery colors on the interior decorations.

Right now, Hayes appears to be enjoying the Christmas decorations!

So, in our living room, we have our fireplace and mantle with our stockings and some mantle decorations. I am actually in the process of changing out the pictures on our stocking holders, so they don’t look quite right at the moment!

This is our Christmas tree this year. We have a combination of different glass ornaments. I have all different colored ball ornaments from simple multi-colored packs. I put all of those at the base of the tree (near the trunk) and then put the special ornaments near the front so they can be seen. I pick up an ornament for our family every year and have it personalized with our name and the date. We also pick up an ornament every time we travel– even if it’s just to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a football game! But don’t worry, my Alabama ornament looks like the state of Alabama, not the University of Alabama.

These are some of my favorite ornaments this year.

1. Our 2011 family ornament 2. A fun Louisiana fleur de lis in Mardi Gras color 3. A little Boudreaux ornament

4. the one and only cookie monster 5. A Gamecock ornament 6. Todd’s Caddyshack ornament

One of my favorite decorations this year is also something that can be used by everyone. I got this giant plush nativity set this summer and was so excited to show it to Hudson this year. And he absolutely loves it!

He is always carrying them around and arranging them. He talked about Mary, Jofeph (not quite Joseph), the wise men (except his calls them Wise Man, Wise Man and Wise Man) and of course the baby Jesus. He says that the baby Jesus is sleeping and sings what he knows of Away In A Manger to the little stuffed baby Jesus.

I love this nativity because Hudson is interested in it and I think it’s a great way to teach him in his way.

We have a couple of French doors in our dining room, which is where the two wreaths that I made for Holiday Market hang. I have been wanting wreaths for those doors for years!

On our entry table, I used these adorable mesh trees again in a set of three. They are in three different sizes and I just love them. They’re so colorful and happy!

So that’s our house at Christmas time! I know that over the years the decorations will evolve some as tastes change. But I just love Christmas time. I love lying on the sofa next to the tree just so I can look at it.

I hope you’ll share all of your decorations today! I’m going to do a separate post with all of the Holiday Market decorations so you can see what we were up to there!

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This week has been so much fun! I’ve loved seeing everyone’s entertaining ideas, craft projects, recipes and now I can’t wait to see what traditions you share with your family and how you document them.

As our family has grown, it is becoming more important to me to establish a few little traditions that we can all look forward to every year.

I hope that you’ll look up with AP at I Love You More Than Carrots to share what traditions you and your family enjoy!

Gifts

These traditions started on Hudson’s first Christmas. The grandparents give him a collectible gift every year and now we’ll be doing the same with Hayes.

TC’s parents started a Lionel train set for Hudson and they give him a new train car every year. Hayes will also get a train set and a new car every year. I can’t wait to see how this train grows over the years! We’ll only take it out during the month of December for them and they can play with it and appreciate it. I’m so excited to see what cars they get this year.

My parents gave my brother and me a nutcracker every year until we were about 19 or 20. They are starting the same tradition for Hudson and Hayes. We have so many nutcrackers and I love bringing them out every year. We label the boxes with the year so we can remember which year we received the nutcracker. It’s such a fun tradition!

Visiting Santa Claus

Oh yes! It’s a rite of passage for kids, right? Even if they think they’re excited only to get on Santa’s lap and meltdown?

Hudson with Santa in 2009

Hudson with Santa in 2010 (such a brave face!)

Hudson and Hayes with Santa in 2011 (two seconds before that he was so excited to see Santa)

Christmas Cards

I love doing Christmas cards. I love sending them and I love receiving them. I have every single Christmas card from my family growing up saved in my baby book. I’ve been doing the same thing for Hudson and now Hayes.

We did our first little “newsletter” this year and I was excited about that.

We had our pictures taken a few weeks ago and I picked out our favorites. I shared with you all that I was ordering our cards from Minted. I absolutely love the designs from Minted and the customer service is impeccable.

I chose a card that said “Noel.” I loved how simple it was and it just reminded me of Christmas. This is our first year to do a more traditional-looking card and I love it. I love that Noel means Christmas and it just looks to pretty. At least it’s pretty to me!

The colors are so vibrant and the paper quality is wonderful!

For the back, I chose a few different photos to do a small collage.

I’m so pleased with them! Now that I have them in hand, I’m ready to start addressing them (by hand, of course) and mailing them out! Yes- we’re a little bit behind, but in our defense, we didn’t have our photos taken until Black Friday.

Christmas Eve

I’ve mentioned before that we go to church on Christmas Eve and then come home to enjoy some delicious gumbo, French bread and the dessert du jour. Then we’ll be opening up our brand new Christmas pajamas and cuddling up to read The Night Before Christmas and the story of Jesus’s birth in Luke. It’s a magical, very special time. It’s simple and it’s all about enjoying each other’s company.

And it’s bound to come with a couple of toddler meltdowns as most things these day do!

The Candy Cottage

One of my favorite things this year (that I should have given away as part of the Favorite Things giveaway) is The Candy Cottage.

It is a reusable gingerbread house. It is made out of plastic and it can be completely cleaned after each use and reused for the next holiday or occasion. It’s not limited to just Christmas. We can make Halloween, birthday, Easter, Valentine’s Day and beach houses. I’m so excited about it!

I sent one to Callie, Caroline and Molly last week and Callie did a great post about the day she and Caroline decorated the house. It is absolutely adorable!

Hudson and I are decorating the house today when he gets home from school. It’s so easy because it’s already assembled. I just had to buy the decorations– all store-bought stuff. We’ll cover the house in icing and Hudson can just place all the pieces of candy on top. I can’t wait!

What traditions to you celebrate? Link up with AP and share your traditions with us!