Other December Happenings

Here's the rest of our December highlights and a lot of pictures:

Over Thanksgiving we installed a mantel on our fireplace, and here it is all decorated for Christmas. I did get Dayton's stocking finished in time too!

I spent an afternoon in Bridget's classroom helping the kids make "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers and a ton of candy. There was plenty of candy consumed as well as brought home on the finished house.

As part of the décor for our church Christmas party, they asked families to decorate tables with items representing a family Christmas tradition. I chose to display our Christmas book advent basket along with the books we had opened up to that point. This is only the second year we've done this, but we love it! There are so many cute Christmas books out there, and I have a hard time not buying a bunch more. I'll probably add one or two new ones each year just to expand our collection. This year I bought The Polar Express and The Christmas Sweater.

Last year, our kids missed out on getting to see Santa due to some unforeseen circumstances, but this year they got to see him twice. The first was at Kneader's (one of my favorite restaurants) when we got to go have breakfast for dinner with Santa. Chunky Cinnamon French Toast for dinner and see Santa? Yes, please! Felicity was excited up until it was our turn. She bolted in the other direction and started to cry a little. I scooped her up and got her to at least sit on my lap next to Santa. Dayton slept through the whole thing in his car seat.

Our second visit with Santa was at a Christmas party with Nate's extended family. Felicity actually sat on his lap this time without any difficulty. She even ran back to him after her turn was over because she wanted to give him a hug.

Bridget has always loved Santa - even as a baby and toddler.

Even Dayton got a little cuddle from Santa.

As for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we spent it right here at home with just the 5 of us. We've traveled for the last 2 Christmases and decided after last year and even Bridget requesting it, that we would stay home. I didn't really want to travel with a new baby anyway. We enjoyed our traditional turkey dinner on Christmas Eve.

And then the kids got to open some new pajamas that night. Bridget loved her fleece Rapunzel PJs.

Felicity was pretty excited about her new cupcake PJs.

On Christmas Day we enjoyed watching the girls open presents. Bridget moved from one gift to the next pretty quickly but wanted to play with every single one later that day. Felicity was a little slower at opening because she wanted to stop and play with each toy after she opened it.

Dayton was content to just lay on the floor and watch everyone open presents.

My dad and Bev were going to come up and spend some time with us on Christmas Day, but my dad came down with the flu.

And to finish off the month...New Year's Eve! Our kids don't care about staying up yet, and part of that is probably because we haven't really explained that part of it to them because we don't want to encourage it yet. Heck, Nate and I rarely stay up until midnight either. To make it a fun evening, we've made fondue for dinner and dessert our New Year's Eve tradition. We had a great time and probably ate too much.

Definitely a great end to a wonderful year!

2 Months Old

Seriously, I love this kid. Now that he's much more alert and smiling, I not only get to enjoy snuggling with him, but I get to look into his bright blue eyes and see that cute smile more and more all the time.

He's definitely at his happiest just after he's eaten and had a diaper change. And he's even starting to laugh a little.

I wish I could say he was sleeping through the night and getting on some sort of a regular schedule, but I'm not that fortunate yet. He usually sleeps for a 5-6 hour stretch at night and then wakes up to eat and goes right back to sleep for another 4 hours or so. And he does generally go to sleep around 9 pm and is up for the day around 7:30-8:00. But daytime is still unpredictable. During the day, he loves to be held to sleep. If you try to lay him down anywhere no matter how asleep you think he is, he almost always wakes up within a couple of minutes. So his days of taking long naps seem to have passed unless I hold him all the time. It certainly is making it harder for me to get things done.

And because he started out big, he's still a big boy. Here's his stats from his checkup:
Weight: 16 lbs. (98th percentile)
Height: 24 inches (87th percentile)
Head Circumference: 41 cm (92nd percentile)

I'm certainly getting some strong arms from carrying this kid around all of the time. I should also mention he's in 3-6 month or 6 month clothes, and even a few of the 3-6 month stuff is almost getting too small.

I'm hoping this next month brings longer stretches of sleep at night and a more regular schedule during the day.

Dayton's Blessing

Today was this handsome boy's baby blessing at church.

Nate likes to give me a hard time because I didn't make Dayton's blessing outfit like I did for the girls. But it's not my fault that patterns for boy's blessing/christening outfits are either way too summery for this time of year or way too girlie/ugly. Instead I bought an outfit and made an alteration to it. The cute little vest he's wearing had a super big and ugly collar that went all around it. A few minutes was all it took to remove it and sew the vest back together, and it looked much improved. What a cute boy!

 

The blessing was perfect, and I'm happy to say that Dayton didn't fuss at all. I'm so grateful to the wonderful woman in our ward who has the amazing ability to take notes short-hand, so she's able to take notes during the blessing and then transcribe them so we have a written copy of his blessing. She did the same for Felicity, and I love it!

 

Those that participated in the blessing circle were Nate, Bishop Bradford, Grandpa Scott Waldron, Grandpa Ian Wilkinson, Uncle Brant Waldron, and Great Uncle Blaine Holmes.

 

Afterward, we squeezed people into our house for some lunch and family time. It was a beautiful day!

A family picture with Nate's parents on the left and my dad and his wife on the right.

I'm so lucky to be this sweet boy's mom!