54 weeks old
Christmas, pictures, santa and stuff
December has come and gone and with it so has Lily’s first birthday (a separate post to come) and Christmas. These events have brought up a lot of emotion and some questions. Mainly about Santa and weather or not we are going to tell Lily that Santa is a real magical guy or something else. This is something that Waldo and I have talked about since before Lily was born. Waldo remembers his brother breaking the news to him that Santa isn’t real (sorry to burst anyone’s bubbles) when he was about 4 years old and I don’t actually remember believing in Santa ever really. I don’t think that our non-belief in Santa hindered either of us in our childhoods and then there’s the whole issue of lying to Lily which I just don’t really want to do. It’s funny we know that we will just tell Lily the truth about my Mom being a lesbian. It wasn’t a decision that we had to make, we just knew that we wouldn’t lie or try to skirt the subject, like some people we know. So then why is this whole Santa thing harder for us? The only decision that I have come to about Santa is Lily looked really cute being held by him in front of our tree this year.
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Since Lily’s birthday is three days before Christmas I was having a hard time deciding if I wanted to send out Christmas cards or first birthday photo cards. Then my friend Starr (Gramma Starr) gave Lily a beautiful princess Christmas dress so Christmas cards it was. One weekend we went and bought a Christmas tree and wreath fixings and rented a Santa suit (more on that in a second) and set up a whole scene in our kitchen and went to work. I took like 294 pictures over the course of the weekend. I’m no professional and all I have is a couple year old Sony point and shoot but I was pretty pleased with a lot of the pictures. Lily was a champ and posed for hours.
This is one of my favorites
This was Lily first taste of sugar, it happened totally by accident. We gave her the candy cane thinking that the thin wrapper would keep her clean. We didn’t take into account how sharp her teeth are.
The scene we created on our kitchen table
A couple weeks before our Christmas photo shoot I was telling Waldo that we were going to have to brave the mall one day soon to get Lily’s picture with Santa. He laughed and said that there was no way that Lily would let Santa hold her so (totally jokingly) just rent a suit and I’ll play Santa. He didn’t expect me to run with it. I showed him. I asked on facebook if anyone in our area knew where I could rent a Santa suit and was told to call the local costume rental place. For $25 we got the suit for 24 hours. It was money well spent. We had planned on taking some funny Santa pictures like Santa with his head in the oven but ran out of time.
When we were taking pictures I thought it would be great to do a picture with Lily standing up holding Santa’s hands. Waldo just put the jacket and the gloves on and for some reason it freaked Lily out big time. I was really surprised because she could still see her Daddy’s face.
The next day Waldo let Lily play with the jacket and wig for like two hours before he put them on and then she watched him as he got dressed. She was much more comfortable with Santa this time.
We tried taking some pictures in front of the tree as a family but we had lost all daylight by then so I wasn’t happy with any of the pictures.
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Christmas was a nice quiet event at our house this year. We woke up and opened our gifts and then Jack came over for a while. I made dinner for everyone and that was our day. We didn’t very many pictures somehow.
This little car was a birthday gift
It’s funny to remember that Christmas day 2008 we were bringing our 3 day old baby girl home from the hospital. Crazy what a difference 365 days makes.
**edited to add: It was the Christmas pictures that I was hinting at here.
53 weeks old
You didn’t think I’d stop at 1 year old did you? We enjoy our Monday photo sessions too much to stop.
Our little geek in training
1 year old!
Dear Lily Bean,
Well we survived your first year. It has been such a wild ride and Daddy and I have loved every minute of it. In a very short 365 days you have gone from a tiny helpless lump of lovable newborness to a fast crawling somewhat independent big girl. You are a true Mommy’s girl and I love it. Daddy called you my BFF the other day and I realized he was right. You love getting kisses from Daddy and I and if you’re in the mood you will give us kisses. You are such a sweet girl.
We are still co-sleeping and loving it. When you take naps (which are usually very short) and when you first go to sleep at night I put you in your pack-n-play which is in our bedroom. When you wake up at night I bring you to our bed and we snuggle all night long. Waking up to your sweet smile is the best thing in the world and I’m in no hurry to change things. It would be nice if you took up a little less of the bed though. I have no idea how or why someone so small can take up so much room. I’m squished between you and Daddy and sometimes I wonder how Daddy doesn’t fall off the side.
We are still nursing champions. It took us a little while to get breastfeeding down to a science but once we did we were good to go and at this point I see no end in sight. Ok, so maybe I do. Right now Daddy says he would think it was a little weird if you were still nursing if you were older then 2, we’ll see how it goes. Nursing is still your main source of food but solids aren’t far behind. You love to feed yourself and do so with zest. I haven’t found a food that you won’t eat. For a while I thought you hated bananas but I think it was just that they were mashed up, once I started giving you bite size chunks of banana you were a happy girl.
You are finally getting a little more hair. Up until this month you had just the hair you were born with, you never really lost any but you didn’t grow any either. I still can’t do anything fun like pig tails or anything but its nice to just look at. It’s such a pretty color too. It’s sort of red, I can’t wait to see what it will look like when it’s longer.
Daddy and I have always known you were perfect but as I’ve stated before your doctor was worried about you. Well we went to your 1 year well child check up the other day and your doctor finally agrees with us. Yay. You are still a tiny pip-squeek of a kiddo and that is fine with us. You weigh 15 lbs 2 oz which puts you in the .14 percentile, you are 26 3/4 inches long and that is 2.7 percentile and your head is 16 3/4 inches around which is 2.38 percentile. Your head is finally on a growth curve and the doctor says that when we go back in a couple of months if it’s still on the curve they can take the small head diagnoses off your chart. That is such great news. At 12th old you are currently wearing mostly 3-6 month size clothes. I really wish clothes were marked using weight or something.
There are so many other things I want to write about so that I remember them when you are all grown up but I don’t know how to put them into words. Like when you think something is cute you sort of duck your head down and smile really big. Or like when your expression melts when you are scared or the one time we hurt your feelings. There are so many other things that I want to write about but words just don’t do them justice. We are trying to take as much video as we can but you love the camera so usually as soon as we start recording something (which isn’t as often as we wish it was) you just want the camera and stop doing what ever it was. I think taking more videos will be my number one New Years resolution.
You are the most shy and sensitive kiddo that we know of. It’s funny but in the 12 months that you have been in our lives I think the longest I’ve been away from you is 45 minutes I think twice, and you were with Daddy during my absence. Daddy and I are really the only ones that get to hold you and when we are around strangers (and sometimes people that you know pretty well but haven’t seen in a little while) you cling onto us like you are sure they murdered someone the night before and you are their next target. All of this is to say that when Daddy and I were talking about this the other day I summed it up perfectly, you are the perfect kid for us and we are the perfect parents for you. We don’t care that your shy and that we can’t leave you with anyone so we can go out by ourselves. We are both very shy so we understand it and hopefully will be able to gently teach you to learn to deal with things.
Some other things to note… You have three very cute teeth. Daddy says you are such a stereotype with that one upper tooth. You have the best laugh. We spend a lot of the day playing and making you laugh. I love it. You are cruising along all the furniture, I’m sure walking is in our very near future. By the way I don’t’ think I’m ready for that just yet.
Happy 1st Birthday Baby Girl!
Love,
Mama
