Lauren's First Christmas

We had a great first Christmas with Lauren. She was more into it than we thought she would be; of course she didn't care about the presents as much as she did the wrapping, boxes and bows, but still, she was kind of into it. We started our tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve. Sorry Aunt Jane, it was yours! I know how you hate the Christmas Eve present opening tradition! But maybe the fact that it was Lauren's first present opening experience will make you feel better about it. She loved the bows. And the crinkly wrapping paper.

She also thought the hedgehog ornament was pretty cool.

For Christmas, I gave Sean the best present of all: baby Lauren. Not sure what the facial expressions below mean.

I was feeling motherly and went out and bought stockings at the last minute. Thank you, World Market. One for Sean, one for me, one for Lauren, one for Aunt Arie, and one for Miller.

Our tree was kind of bare ornaments-wise, but I figure that's what baby's first Christmas is all about; you start out with nothing and then build on every year. Luckily my family must know me because we received ornaments from Aunt Jane and Grandma and Grandpa Power. The tree is much less Charlie Brown now.

A soft blocks set from Grandma and Grandpa Power.

Lauren's favorite present: The cardboard box.

Santa brought Lauren an alphabet blocks set with different styles of typography. Santa is so thoughtful to our design scheme.

(Great) Aunt Jane made Lauren a book that told her all about the hedgehog that she knitted and felted for Lauren. It was very, very special, and Lauren seemed to know that Aunt Jane had put a lot of hard work and thought into it.

Below, Sean gets creative with wrapping.

Lauren eats her Christmas breakfast of oatmeal, yogurt and applesauce. Yum.

Check out the snow outside.

For Christmas Eve some of Arie's friends were supposed to join us for a make your own pizza party, but the snowstorm kept them at home. It continued to snow all of Christmas day, and is still snowing. We had our own make your own pizza party and went to sleep early since I, with the worst timing ever, came down with a cold the afternoon of December 23rd.

On Christmas morning we had mimosas with freshly squeezed orange juice (thank you Arie) and opened presents. For Christmas dinner we made filets, which is a tradition I could get into. Hope that everyone's Christmas was as wonderful as ours; Christmas as a mom is so much better than Christmas as a kid. I think that surprised me.