Finger Foods

We recently introduced Lauren to finger foods, as she has moved up at daycare to the "Crawlers" room (she's not crawling yet, but she likes to watch everyone else do it), and they have finger foods there. We started with bananas, which she's getting better at, but they're slimy and hard to pick up. The easiest for her to pick up is Cheerios, which she loves to get into her mouth, but as you'll see from the video, she isn't a huge fan once they're there. She does occasionally swallow them. She doesn't have any teeth yet, so she just kind of gums them down. She's a pro.

Lauren Claps Her Hands!

Lauren learned how to clap a week or two ago, and now she does it all the time. In fact, she claps when I leave after I drop her off at daycare in the mornings. I'm trying not to take it personally.

Lauren Tries to Swallow a Binky

I've been bad about posting lately. Forgive me. Lauren learned how to clap last night, and I've already taken video, so be on the watch. In the meantime, Sean had Lauren one day last week when daycare was closed and sent me this picture. He was giving her a bath and couldn't find her binky, and then realized that she had almost the entire thing in her mouth. She's full of new surprises every day.

Mornings at the Creperie

Not that we need any more proof that the Westside is the Bestside or anything, but a creperie just opened a block from our house. A CREPERIE. I will admit that most of my crepe eating while living in Paris occurred at road stalls, where the crepe was wrapped in a piece of paper and you ate it on the go or sitting on a bench or the curb. But I did have my fair share of restaurant crepes, and this place by our house is fantastic. Amazing coffee, great crepes, and fantastic baked goods, all baked in house. I'm in heaven. As is Sean. So, every weekend day since it opened, we bundle ourselves and Lauren up and head to the creperie for coffee, breakfast, and newspaper reading. Heaven.

Above, Sean walks a bundled Lauren over to Summit Street.

Below, Lauren takes in some reading while she waits for her cappuccino. Decaf, of course. We're not bad parents.

After crepes and coffee, play time with Mom and Dad.

Back at the house post-crepes, Lauren sits off her food coma and watches Miller zoom by.

Lauren Meets Santa

I'm not going to lie, part of me was hoping for the screaming child on Santa's lap photo opportunity. But Lauren was cool as a cucumber, and was pretty into Santa's beard. We waited until the last possible second (ok almost) to take Lauren to visit Santa on Christmas Eve. Luckily she got her order in on time. And no tears. Better luck next year.

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.

Family Photo Shoot with Aunt Arie