Baby's First Christmas

Merry Christmas from Lane!

Our Christmas Day began with Lane sleeping until after 8:00 a.m.! We were shocked. I nursed her and then led her out into the living room. She lit up and threw her hands in the air (a new thing she does when she's excited) and immediately bee-lined it for her Haba blocks. A few minutes later she played with some of the letter-link crabs.


Oooh, new blocks!

A little later she discovered her piano, shape sorter, and giraffe puppet.


She likes to carry the piano around now...showing off her strength!

We played a bit, snacking on our Asian pears and chocolate, and then went into the kitchen where we feasted on pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes (just pumpkin pancakes for Lane) I had made on Christmas Eve. We drank coffee from America (thanks, Aunt Teresa!) and Shannon ate more chocolate.

We got cleaned up and Lane got her Christmas dress on.


Cute dress, huh? We had to make due with pink tights since the white ones my mom sent haven't arrived yet.

We bought her this dress before she was born. We knew that we wouldn't be in America for Christmas this year (hence no Christmas dresses available), and all the dresses were on sale after Christmas, so we went ahead and bought it. It fit her just perfectly and she was able to get around in it just fine. It was really funny, though, when she'd drop something and it would land underneath her. She'd keep leaning over, picking her dress up and trying to look between her legs. It was too funny.


Lane's first dress with a petticoat.

I started some rolls for dinner, we played some more, ate lunch (leftover pizza), and put Lane down for a nap. We relaxed while she slept and when she woke up we headed out the door to some friends' place. It was 65 and a gorgeous day. We had church and ate turkey (yes, we found one! But I didn't get a picture of it before it got massacred.), and then we booked it home in order to skype with all of our families. The streets here were packed. We couldn't figure out why on earth it was so busy...Christmas here is just a regular 'ol day, but it seemed busier than usual. It took us about 15 minutes longer to get home than it usually does.


Some of Shannon's haul from his dad: Auburn stuff in the newspapers and magazines.

When we got home we skyped with Shannon's parents first, then my parents. Then we got Lane to bed, and then Shannon and I watched Miracle on 34th Street. We hadn't seen it in years. We watched Christmas Vacation yesterday, much to Shannon's relief...he was so scared we weren't going to work it in!

Today all of our decorations are put up, the tree is down, and things are back to "normal." We have company coming this weekend and we're moving in 12 days so it didn't make sense to postpone putting up the tree. Neither of us feel like Christmas is over. We don't really feel like it's come yet. I think that having classes and having to study and things like that contributed to the lack of it feeling like Christmas.

I find myself mourning the fact that Lane's first Christmas came and went and we didn't really do any of the fun things that I remember doing as a kid. But then I tell myself: she won't remember this Christmas. She probably won't remember next Christmas. And she might not even remember her third Christmas. We'll be in America for her fourth Christmas, right about the time that she'll definitely have memories associated with the holidays. And by then we (hopefully) won't be learning a new language and our way around the city, what we can find to make our traditional recipes with, and so on. By then we'll have time to watch movies and bake cookies and make gingerbread houses and cut out paper snowflakes and read Christmas books. It will get better. One day Christmas will feel like Christmas again. One day.


Merry Christmas from the Scarbroughs!