Alethea's First Christmas

Alethea had her first Christmas this year.  So much fun!  I was a bit bummed out at first because I couldn’t find a first Christmas outfit anywhere that was in size twelve months.  I finally found a cute penguin outfit at Babies R Us that had an inkling of babies first Christmas written in the background so I got that one.  I think she looked super cute in it too and it will be one she can wear even after Christmas.

She isn't looking but you can see her cute little penguin shirt. :-)

Because Alethea is still so young and because we were traveling all over for the day, we didn’t really do much in the way of starting Christmas traditions with Alethea.  However, we did have a lot of fun brainstorming the things we want to incorporate in our Christmases of the future.  The most important thing about Christmas is most definitely making sure that the celebrations point toward Christ.  We have been discussing a lot whether we want to incorporate Santa into the celebrations and we are still not convinced of how to incorporate that tradition while still keeping the focus on Christ, but we haven’t ruled it out completely yet.  A few traditions we discussed that we want to incorporate are: read the Christmas story from the Bible, have a nativity (probably little people) that Alethea can play with/learn the story of Christ’s birth, give three gifts each Christmas to signify the gifts from the three wise men, advent calendar/wreath to count down days to Christmas, and make an effort give to something/someone outside our family (not sure what that will look like yet).  We might end up incorporating other things, but these were some of our brainstorms this year.

As I said, much of this didn’t happen this year because Alethea would not really understand it yet, and this is probably our last year celebrating Christmas however our parents have chosen to because we want to be at our own home for any future Christmases.  This year we were in Syracuse with Ben’s dad for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.  We put all the presents under his dad’s Charlie Brown Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and Ben’s sister Rachel gave Alethea the sweetest cabbage patch baby dressed as a turtle before she headed to Rochester for the night.  Then when Alethea woke up on Christmas morning we opened presents.  She had a blast opening both her presents as well as ours.  We got her a Little People zoo train and her Grandpa got her Scout the puppy from Leap Frog.  She loved both of them!  Ben got me Glee Karaoke as well as Scottie McCreery’s debut album and I got him a new disc for disc golf as well as a gift card to Firehouse Subs.  This was the first time since we have been married that we actually got each other presents and it will definitely be a tradition we continue because it was a lot of fun surprising each other.  We also went over to Ben’s Grandma Dorothy’s and Alethea got some more loot there, clothes, books, a snail alphabet toy, a state quarter collection they had started for her, a few other fun goodies.

Sporting her Christmas dress for Christmas Eve 

With her cabbage patch doll on Christmas Eve

Snuggles with Mommy on Christmas Eve

Charlie Brown Tree

Investigating her presents

Digging in

  

Seeing what Daddy and Grandpa are up to

Christmas morning family photo

On her way to Rochester Christmas day

Then, because it was Alethea’s first Christmas, we went to Rochester to spend the afternoon with Ben’s mom and some of his extended family on that side.  We ate a yummy meal and then spent a while opening presents and fellowshipping together.  Alethea got some more loot here too, including some new BumGenius 4.0 cloth diapers, money toward college, some clothes, an awesome wooden puzzle that spells out her first and last name, a few ornaments, a Hal1mark story book about Christmas, and a cute stuffed bear.  Then we had saved her stocking for Rochester so his mom could see her open something from us and in it she got some more board books, a bath book, crayons, and yogurt melts. J 

Investigating her ornament

Bows are more yummy than food ;-)

Christmas night family photo

Christmas was a busy day that I really feel like we majorly missed celebrating the true reason for the season.  Several months before, Ben and I had already begun to discuss how we were thinking this would be our last Christmas going to celebrate with extended family on Christmas day so that we could focus on starting our own traditions.  To help simplify things and give us more time to focus on the true reason for the season, Christ, we will be trying to stay home for Christmas in the future.  Thankfully Alethea isn’t old enough yet to understand the story of Christ’s birth because if she was, I am disappointed in how little time Ben and I have spent making the focus of Christmas point toward His birth.  I think it partly took having Alethea, and reflecting on how we want to teach her about Christ's birth, in order to see the fault in how Ben and I have celebrated past Christmases even as a family of two.  Next year will be different, and I am excited to teach Alethea the joy and the true reason for all the gifts and celebrating on Christmas!

Now I don’t want to end on a downer note, but I just had to reflect on what I have learned from our first Christmas as a family of three.  We had a lot of fun seeing family and enjoying the blessings that they are in our lives.  God is good and we were truly blessed this Christmas with much more than we could have ever expected.

10 Months Old! Wowsers!

                Can it really be that 10 months of her life have past already?  It just doesn’t feel like that is possible.  She is growing up nice and healthy with just a few hiccups.  With being out of town for the holidays last month, we didn’t make it in for her 9 month check up until this month.  At 9.5 months she weighed in at 19lbs 6 oz and 29.75inches long.  The doc said she is developing on/or ahead of schedule and is looking great.  The only hiccups were that she now officially is taking after her mom and mamaw and has eczema and she also has an ulceration on her hemangioma birthmark.  The eczema has just meant more baths and creams, but unfortunately, along with the creams, her hemangioma has meant a lot of pain for her, but I think it is finally settling down.  (and supposedly that is just part of the process of it going away) She is still eating 3 solid meals, nursing 4 times a day, taking two 30 to 45 minute naps, and sleeping 11 hours a night.  This schedule is working well for us so I am not sure what I will do when she changes it.

A little harder to get monthly pics

Maxin' and Relaxin'

                She is quite the great little eater.  At this point, she really eats very little pureed food.  I only make her pureed veggies for her to eat when she is not too interested in the finger food type.  She has been able to eat a lot of what Mommy and Daddy eat for meals, but just cut up in small serving sizes.  Kiwi, bananas, zucchini, squash, beans, and cheese (lots of cheese) are a few of her favorite finger foods, but she really does great with most.

                This year we put up our Christmas tree for the first time in 3 years (since we usually are gone for two weeks over Christmas) and she loved it.  We decided that the only reason we wanted to put it up was for her to experience it, so we let her enjoy playing with it to her heart’s content.  We do fake because I can’t stand the smell of real and Ben has allergy issues too.  We just put several ornaments down low that she was allowed to play with and she did very well with the tree overall.  So fun to see her excitement over it! J

investigating the ornaments

She loves this ornament, but she can't quite get it off the tree.

                A few fun things from this month are that she had her 9 month photo shoot at the beginning of the month and we love how they turned out.  Our friend Anna did such a wonderful job capturing the cuteness that is Alethea.  She also knows how to make kissy noises/faces which is super cute and she does a fun lip smacking thing imitating her daddy.  So cute!  Her curls are starting to show up more and more, especially when she gets done with a bath or gets sweaty.  I love it!  One of the things that I have loved about this month is that she has really started to enjoy interacting more and more with other kids.  She has so much fun with her buddy Molly (especially) who is 5 months older than her. We have also switched her to the convertible car seat finally (probably well overdo).

9 Month photo shoot fun

I love this one!

Bath time fun with Daddy

convertible car seat for the first time on the way to church

               At the beginning of this month, we were in KY for Thanksgiving and she had so much fun spending time with all of my side of the family.  And she thoroughly enjoyed all the attention.  Our family tradition is to have chicken and dumplins for our Thanksgiving meal and Alethea got to try them for the first time.  She loved them!  (Too bad there isn’t much health benefit in them for a little baby.)  Then at the end of the month we traveled up to NY to visit Ben’s family and she has had fun meeting lots of new people since his mom and sister were the only ones who had already met her.  Lots more celebrations for Christmas still to be had.

Helping unpack at Mamaw and Papaw's new lakehouse

Cheering for Kentucky!

Yummy Thanksgiving dinner

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Early Christmas presents

Walking around at Grandmas in NY

Reading with Grandma

                This month has been quite the transformation in mobility.  She has been walking between things for a few months now and at the beginning of this month she started talking 6 to 7 steps without walking toward anything.  We knew walking for real was just around the corner and on December 12^th she wowed us all.  We were at our church small group bible study and she just started walking all over.  Then she didn’t walk hardly at all the next day so I thought it was just a fluke.  However, on the 14^th, there was no turning back.  She is officially a walking and pretty much doesn’t crawl anymore.  My baby girl is WALKING and she started just a little over a week shy of 10 months.  Crazy!  And we thought we had our hands full before. J 

Walking around all bundled up to go for a stroller ride in cold NY

This is from her first day walking...she is much better now, but I haven't videoed it again

                A last little cute tidbit is that she has begun bobbing up and down whenever we turn music on and a lot of times it seems like she is trying to sing along with me when I sing.  I love it!  I am really hoping she loves music as much as me…I can see that being a ton of fun over the years.

                She keeps growing up so fast, but we are doing our best to enjoy every minute of it. I could go on and on about how much we are in love with our sweet little girl and how she wows us with pretty much everything she doesn’t, but I think that is enough for this month's update.

her first baby doll from Granpeg

A little fun with 41 weeks and 3 days out

helping Daddy drive at the festival of lights

Who needs toys when you have a laundry basket

Frisbee golf family date and she loved it

41 weeks 3 days in...41 weeks 3 days out!

I can't believe it!  Alethea has officially been a part of our family outside my belly as long as she was inside my belly.  So fun!  Here is a little fun I had with paint to show the progress:

We had a little fun trying to get pictures of her like we did when she was 2 weeks old.  Wow, it's a lot harder with a wiggly baby. :-)  Thankfully we got the above cute one, but here are some of the bloopers:

9 Month Photo Shoot!

We had Alethea's 9 month photo shoot in downtown Charleston, SC. It was so much fun walking around town and finding fun places to take pictures. Big thanks to our friend Anna for taking them for us. Here is a sampling of the goods...okay so maybe a large sample. :-)

Love this one!

I love that she is looking up at me...good thing you 

can't see that she was actually mad at having to pose. :-)

Had to have one with the hat

Evidence of her one and only tooth :-)

Taking family pictures is so fun!  Hopefully I will still be saying that for years to come :-)