You better watch out, you better not cry!

You know, when I ended the last post by saying I'd update with any additions to our Christmas agenda, I was really referring to things like "Oh yeah, forgot to mention we're stopping to visit some of Jesse's cousins in NJ on the way to CT over the weekend" or something along those lines. What I did not foresee was a complete reworking of our ENTIRE Christmas agenda.

Many of you have already seen some posts on Facebook, but for those who have been living under a rock for the past two years and have no idea what Facebook is, I'll update you as well. We spent Christmas morning in the ER. Don't worry, the baby is fine. Jesse, on the other hand, woke up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve with some pretty severe eye pain. Having had a corneal abrasion over the summer, we figured it was the same thing acting up again. Why? Who knows...but it hurt like heck, at least as far as I could tell. Being the trooper that he is (read: typical guy), he opted to try to sleep it out.

Flash forward, to 3 a.m. The pain was getting worse, to the point where I woke up to Jesse rocking at the end of the bed and trying not to claw out his own eye. It was time to call the opthalmologist...only trouble was it was bleeping Christmas Eve. We left a voicemail on what seemed to be the emergency line, and hung up. The next few hours consisted of much tossing and turning and very little sleep. We got up around 7:30, called the doctor again and left another voicemail. Thinking it unlikely we would get a response any time soon (it was Christmas morning, after all), we opted to just head to the ER. At the very least, they could call in a doctor to see Jesse if they felt it was necessary.

Eily was great while we hung out in the waiting room. Cooing and giggling the whole time. One old guy thought she was so cute, he took her picture, which she just loved. Two hours later, and a complete flushing out of his eye with a liter of....something, we were sent home with the instructions to see the specialist as soon as possible. If only it were so easy. We couldn't' even get a call back from their emergency line. Instead of stressing, we went home and had Eily's first Christmas morning opening presents (wrapping paper was the biggest hit...I should have just wrapped a bunch of wrapping paper in a wad and let her go to town). We still made our appearance at the Nog At Noon celebration with our friend Nathan. But by the afternoon, Jesse was beat and in a lot of pain. We headed home, where he promptly collapsed into bed in misery and fell asleep. When he finally woke, we had a lovely dinner of steamed clams and shrimp cocktail...in the dark. The lights hurt his eyes too much, so we kept the mood lighting to a maximum. Trying hard to keep his eyes closed, he was like a blind person, feeling around the table for everything. I'm just glad we opted for finger foods instead of filet. An accidentally amputated finger wasn't really something I felt like adding to the list.

I'll skip the details of getting in contact with the opthalmologist, but needless to say, she couldn't see us until late this evening. Strike #1 in the weekend plans. The drive to CT takes approximately 4.5 hours, so leaving anytime past 3 in the afternoon is pointless. We opted to postpone departure until tomorrow morning. The nice part about this is the opportunity we were afforded to spend a little bit longer at Jesse's cousin Steve's house. We saw family we haven't seen in years, and everyone just adored Eily (who was good as gold the whole time).

We got to the doctor's office around 7:30 tonight, and, in a nutshell, the cornea is scratched again. No idea how it happened, but this time it's really bad. She was surprised Jesse wasn't complaining a lot more (he's a tough guy). And here comes Strike #2: the abrasion is severe enough to warrant her seeing him every day for the next few days. Apparently the risk of infection is pretty severe with one this size, and there's no sense in risking it by letting it go unattended. So that means she needs to see him tomorrow, which in turn means departure time gets pushed back further.

After leaving the office with my boyfriend pirate with a sweet eye patch, Jesse and I talked about the pros and cons of driving to CT with all that's going on. The doctor appointment tomorrow morning was scheduled for 7:30 a.m., but it's located an hour in the complete opposite direction from our intended travel route. Coupling that with the fact that Jesse really felt miserable again today after spending time out of his cave trying to be social, we decided that maybe it would just be best to stay home. Strike #3. You're out!

So here I sit, 11p.m. the night after Christmas, updating you all on what could have been a pretty crappy Christmas. In all honesty, we've really made the most of it. Eily had fun, we took some super cute videos of her (to be posted after editing), and we got to see at least a few of the people on our list. I'm still not sure what Jesse did to make Santa CLAWS so angry, and I'm not sure I want to know. We have a few theories, but in the interest of keeping this blog family-friendly, I'll politely keep them to myself.

For those who look forward to Santa's visit each year, I hope he treated you all a lot better than poor Jesse.