Emily's First Christmas

Lucky for us we have lots of family around which means every year for Christmas we have lots of opportunities to celebrate. This year for Emily's first Christmas we enjoyed lots of food, fun, family, and surprisingly snow.

On Christmas Eve at my sister's house we enjoyed watching the snow fall, opening up presents, and creating gingerbread houses with graham crackers. We created everything from a tiny cottage to a rich fancy colonial house. It was fun to see everyone's creation and their version of the gingerbread house.

Richard's creation - the tiny cottage.



Grandma and Uncle Jonathan's creation - the traditional country colonial cottage.



Madeline and Aunt Sandra's creation - the rich fancy colonial house. They even had reindeer food out on their lawn...ooo la laa.




Anthony's creation - the RV (after all, the camping gingerbread folks need a house too).




Uncle Grant's creation - the redneck one room school house (you know, because redneck gingerbread kids need an education).




Emily opened up her first gifts - a worm that moves and makes noise from Aunt Sandra and Uncle Grant as well as an adorable set of headbands and bows from Grandma and Grandpa Jim.




However, I do believe in the end she enjoyed the wrapping paper more than any of her gifts (go figure).





Christmas Day

On Christmas day we enjoyed lounging around the house and watching Emily open up her gift from her Grandpa and Grandma Sharon.



(Yes, those might be boring socks and clothes, but that is what she wanted - she told me herself)



Finally, we ended the day with good food and great company at Richard's Aunt Marilyn's house.

In the end, I don't think we could have asked for a better couple of days. In fact, both days were absolutely wonderful!

Jumparoo

For Emily's Christmas present this year Richard and I found an awesome deal on a very cool Rainforest Jumparoo. This thing by far has been the best source of entertainment for Emily and I swear her little baby heart went nuts as soon as she laid eyes on it's bright lights and fun animal sounds. In fact, not long after she was in it was she screeching, playing, and jumping herself into paradise. All I can say is YAY for technology! I do believe it has saved this household from complete madness.




I couldn't resist making a video of her. I hope you all enjoy!

Poor Baby...

Emily has two different chairs. One of them lights up and makes noise when she kicks it with her feet and the other one is a less entertaining rocker that has three dangling toys attached (one of which makes noise). Because Emily mostly uses the chair which requires her to kick in order to activate the sounds and lights, she has become accustomed to moving her feet in order to make stuff work. The only problem with this, is her rocker does not quite work in the same way. Instead, one of the rocker's fairly large plastic toys hangs overhead and requires her to pull it's string in order for the music to start playing. In the past this hasn't been a big deal, but tonight as I was cleaning and as Emily was sitting in her rocker trying to entertain herself, she would periodically start crying her head off in pain. Of course as the brilliant mom that I am, I could not understand why I would see her kicking her feet happy one minute and then as soon as I turned my back she would be crying. Finally after several times it occurred to me what was going on. Every time this cutie would kick the chair for the music to play, the dangling toys would go flying around her head and inevitably the middle toy would end up landing smack dab into her face.

The poor thing probably thought she finally had it all figured out.

5 Months Old and Fabulous

Officially 5 months ago this little princess came into our life at a whopping 4 lbs 3 oz. Although she started out tiny, Emily is now about 14 lbs. with adorable chubby cheeks and the cutest little double chin ever. Her days are not only filled with lots of talking, squirming, rolling, and wiggling around on the living room floor, but whenever she gets a chance she loves to stand and bounce on her feet, watch her hands move, and observe closely the world around her. Currently her favorite things are Word World on PBS, toys with sounds and lights, sweet potatoes, and listening to Christmas music.