Christmas #1

We usually do 4 Christmases every year. The first is the afternoon of Christmas Eve, at Matt's dad's house. Then we go to my parent's on Christmas morning, and Matt's mom's in the afternoon. We usually do our Christmas at home the day after. This year, we decided we were going to do Christmas morning at our house, just the three of us. My parents and sister came over a little later in the morning, and we had Christmas with them at our house too. So it was more like 3.5 Christmases this year. I was going to put all of our celebrations in one post, but after uploading the pictures from Matt's dad's I realize that it would be the longest post ever, so I'll do them one at a time.

"I'll help you with this one, Grandma!"

Helping Mommy unwrap

"Cool! You got me paper!"

Yummy

BRAINS!!! PRESENTS!!!

"Ooh, shiny!"

"More paper!?! It's just what I've always wanted!"

Nans quietly opens her presents, unaware that danger is lurking just behind her.

MORE BRAINS!!! MORE PRESENTS!!!

"A glitter bow! You shouldn't have!"

Happy New Year!!!!!

Okay, one of my resolutions is to start blogging regularly again. I can't promise to update every day, but I'll shoot for 3-4 times a week. In order to do this, I'm going to have to veer off-topic from the cutest baby in the universe, aka the lovely Miss E. While I personally think she is the most beautiful and fascinating person in the entire universe, I realize that the minute details of her day-to-day life are not as spellbinding to the rest of you as they may be to me, and quite frankly, it is boring to try to come up with an interesting post about our daily activities when many days our activities consist of a trip to Target and watching the Mickey Mouse Hot Dog Dance on repeat 3 times in a row. Don't misunderstand me here- there are few things that I find more amusing than a trip to Target, and I defy you to find anything that Nannies loves so dearly as the Hot Dog Dance. It just makes for boring blogging. So, assuming I keep my other resolution- to work on the squillion little (and sometimes big) projects that need to be done in our house- you will be seeing the occasional picture of, say, a newly refinished fireplace facing and freshly painted mantel in addition to photos of the aforementioned adorable infant.

The shiny brass fireplace and the sagey-olive mantel are no more!

I'm not sure what pictures are going to permanently live on the mantel, but here's what I have for now. The middle and side pictures are Nans' newborn photos, taken when she was a mere 6 days old. ::sob:: The girl on the tricycle is my sister, and the baby in the bonnet is my mama. I have a framing project in mind, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it, so for now I'm making do with what I have laying around.


We went to the mall today to get out of the house, and by some miracle/lapse into insanity by my husband, we came home with a beautiful new addition to our family. Meet Kate.

I've been lusting after this bag (the drawstring Opus in mustard) for weeks now, and when I saw it in person my reaction prompted Matt to ask if I'd like to be alone to make out with the bag. Then, in a moment of glorious, impulsive gift-giving, he bought it for me. The saleswoman asked if it was a birthday present or a late Christmas present. My response was, "I don't know what it is, but I'm taking it!" SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!

And since I can't completely deny you a picture of my insanely squeezable little stinker, here's Nannies and I in our matching coats. It's a slippery slope from here to matching Laura Ashley dresses. I'm going to have to insist that one of you kill me if I ever get to that point.

My next post will cover the kiddo's very first Christmas festivities, but that's going to be a long one. Tonight's post was just to prove that I am still, in fact, alive and well, and not buried under a pile of freshly poured concrete under the boat in Senator Boyd Boyette's garage. (That's the plot of "The Client", if you're not familiar. I'm not insane, I swear.) Adios and buenas noches!

My little spaghetti monster

We've been trying to get E switched over to table foods, so she eats dinner with us at the table now. She eats her baby food first (because if she's hungry, she's too cranky to try anything new), and then she gets whatever we're eating. On Sunday night, that happened to be spaghetti. Usually she will give the food a suspicious side-eye, bang on the tray for a bit, and eventually take a taste. Not so with spaghetti. She dove right in.

I've also been giving her banana in the morning with her breakfast, but she was having a lot of trouble picking it up. I decided to skip the teeny-tiny pieces and just give her a whole banana and see what she did with it.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, despite the giant mess, it only took about 2 minutes to get her cleaned up after spaghetti night!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nans had a great first Thanksgiving. She wasn't a big fan of the food- I still can't get her to eat any table food except for cheese- but she certainly enjoyed reading the Black Friday ads with me!

"Mama"

She said it! My baby called me "mama". Not once. Not twice. FIVE times!!!! I wasn't really sure she had said it the first time, but then she just kept going! (Yes, I cried.)

This means that I win. I wanted her first word to be "mama". Matt wanted it to be "kitty" (that was my first word).

Speaking of kitties, Nannies met some 10 week old kittens at Petco today when we were picking up cat food. They were in the little adoption center in the back corner, tearing around their cage and just generally being adorable. Nans stared at them with intense fascination for a few minutes, then she slowly lifted her little hand and started waving at them. She is the absolute cutest thing on earth! She pretty much only waves at kitties. She has done it to people on a few occasions, but whenever she sees one of the cats, she waves. Maybe she just likes them better. I have a feeling that she's going to be one of those kids who brings every living creature she can get her hands on back to our house, because when I finally tore her away from the kittens she sobbed like her little heart was breaking. It was so, so sad, yet so adorable at the same time.

I made a deal with the devil tonight.

OK, maybe it wasn't the devil. Maybe her name was Katie. But she brought up the fact that I haven't updated my blog in a shamefully long time, and people all over the room began echoing that sentiment.

So I did what anyone would do. I told her that if she documented the nights festivities on film (or digital memory card) for me, I would make not one, but TWO new blog posts for her.

Last weekend we took the kiddo to Lawrence for the day. Here she is enjoying some delicious mushed up green bean sludge at Free State. Try to contain your jealousy. I assure you, if you come over to our house, she will be happy to share.

She finally did it. She caught a kitty.

The Nans was a little upset the other night because she bonked her head on a table. Although I felt bad that she got hurt, I was secretly glad that it happened on her dad's watch so that I could stop feeling like neglectful parent, since all the bumps and bruises generally occur when I am watching her. I attempted to ice the bump with a bag of frozen peas, but E decided that the bag of peas was her eternal soul mate and insisted on crawling around and snuggling with it for the remainder of the evening. Any attempts to reclaim the bag of peas were met with the side-eye.

We attempted to smooth things over by administering her happy pills, aka tiny bits of cheddar cheese. The mission was successful. E loves cheese, but refuses to touch it herself. It must be carefully placed in her mouth by a parent. Cheese is serious business, people.

There's no real purpose to this pic, other than the fact that my kid is insanely, unspeakably cute.

"I'm going to give my mommy big hugs. Awwwwww."

Now I'm going to attack her whilst smiling angelically at the camera."
Now for tonight's festivities. You may be slightly disappointed, as there are no cute babies in this picture. But my friends are quite cute, so maybe that will appease you. We went to our friends Jess and Del's house tonight for dinner with some other friends, and some super-special unexpected out of town guests!

Chae, Danny, and Del

Danny approves!

I told you my friends are cute!

So is my hubby!

More cute friends!
Group photo!

Nannies:1, DST:0

An event which all mothers dread, daylight savings time, has come and gone. I was dreading it for weeks. I used to love the extra hour of sleep but since babies can't tell time, and, for some strange reason, don't enjoy sleeping in, I figured we were in for a not-so-great time this week. We started pushing E's bedtime back a bit at a time to try to ease her into the time change slowly. We rationalized that if we slowly kept her up later, she would slowly start sleeping in a little later, and by Sunday she would hopefully be back on her regular schedule when the time changed.

Fast forward to Friday night. We put E to bed around 7:30, which is her normal time (keeping her up late wasn't working so well). Matt got up and gave her a bottle sometime in the middle of the night and then came back to bed. And then we woke up and looked at the clock. It was 8:30!!! E is usually up by 6:45, or 7:00 at the latest! Once I got over my initial horror of staying in bed until 8:30 (I detest sleeping in), I realized how fabulous this was. She adjusted her schedule all by herself! She did it a day early, but who cares!?! We kept her an hour behind on her schedule for the day, and from Sunday on she's been back on her regular time frame. I love this kid!!!

Many of you know that I've been planning E's first birthday party since before she was born. I've been wondering for a while what to do for favors. The theme is cupcakes, so I knew I could just make some for everyone to take home, but since we're doing cupcakes instead of a cake, I really wanted to do something a little different. I recently came across Bakerella's blog where I found this adorable idea for party favors. I did a trial run tonight and I think they turned out okay. I've got about 4 months to perfect them, so I should have it down by party time. Behold, my mini cupcake bites!
What do you think?