'Tis the Season!

After lots of warnings and "advice" from other parents young and old-er, we took the plunge and put up our Christmas tree the first weekend in December. Now usually I am pushing Chris to get everything out the weekend after Thanksgiving, but for some reason my "hurry up and decorate" attitude was dampened this year by the little person in our house. I could only imagine how curious she might be about the Christmas decorations since she finds new things to "eat" and "play with" in my regular decor on a daily basis.

To our surprise, Addie has been wonderful with all of this. We accomplished a lot of decorating during her naptimes on that Saturday and she was SO funny when I went to get her from her afternoon nap and brought her out to see the lighted tree. "OOOOOH" she said in amazement. I stood her by the tree and asked her what she thought of it and I could just tell she wanted to touch it with all her little heart. She would reach out like she was going to touch it, then slap her hand back really quickly. So funny! Now that it's been around a few weeks, she's getting more brave and will actually take some of the ornaments off...but hands them right to me when I ask her to and we "redecorate" together. So basically I'll say "Bah humbug" to everyone who told us it was "going to be fun" in grumbly voices because we're loving every minute of watching her explore and test the waters when it comes to what she can and can't touch. Luckily, I do not have many breakables and she really can't hurt anything anyway so that makes life easier.

Here she is taking her chance at touching the tree...SO serious!
We are anxiously anticipating the excitement of Christmas morning when Addie has her first experience opening presents. I'm sure it will be so much fun and I'm also sure I'll cry with joy. She better get lots of practice on Christmas day because two days later she'll be celebrating again for her own birthday. I have told many people that I am in denial that she's already going to be 1! It seems like yesterday we were hanging out in the hotel, I mean hospital (The Women's Hosp. is SUPER nice and I had a HUGE room!) waiting for her to be born. Another flood of emotions for me on her birthday as well! Forget Mother's Day in May---my true Mother's Day celebration is going to be December 27th!!!

Along with all the other things that keep me busy during the Christmas season, I have been super busy making Addie's stocking, Christmas outfit and dress. My dear mother is giving me the hardest time about Addie's dress simply because I am the type of person who HATES dresses. I am more of a pants kind of girl myself. I harrass my mom all the time about putting me in little fancy dresses when I was younger. The dress I made for my sweetie is not fancy by any means, but it does include a built in pettycoat--(if you don't know what that is, it's just an additional layer to make the dress more "poofy"). It turned out to be adorable and it even matches her stocking. She'll probably only wear it once (maybe twice), but the fact that it's finished and was a heck of a lot cheaper to make than it would have been to buy is all that matters to me. We're (being me) still pondering which outfit she should wear for our Christmas card picture--it might turn out to be the pants outfit (that's actually a dress with pants that match underneath--she's wearing the pants and shirt in the top picture). So, I'll include some pictures here of her in her "fancy" dress incase they don't make the cut for the Christmas card.