Fail

Maribelle's first visit with Santa:

FAIL

Major fail, you might say. At least we didn't pay $20 for her to sit on some mall Santa's lap, only to be traumatized at the mere sight of him. This was a free Santa, so we had a laugh about the whole thing while she was in tears (is that bad?!). I tried to salvage the moment by jumping in the picture, but even that didn't help much.


Just so you don't think her entire day was ruined, here she is showing off one of her (many!) new tricks: giving kisses. They may be big, open-mouth, fish-like kisses, but they are super sweet nonetheless.

We spent most of the weekend consumed with Christmas preparations, mainly of the decorating kind. Our house is officially festive and bright, and I'm so excited to share my most favorite time of year with our Little Miss. And she'll be relieved to know we have no plans of subjecting her to another visit with Santa (at least for now).

Gobble Gobble

This little girl has given us so much to be grateful for this year. So we're giving extra thanks this holiday for all the love, light and life that Maribelle has brought to our lives.

From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving!

Chillax

Life has been so full and busy lately. And with the holidays and a certain someone's first birthday just around the corner, our days are bound to move at an even faster pace. I can hardly believe my Little Peapod will be one in a few month's time! All the moms at daycare keep saying how Maribelle is losing her baby face and starting to look like a toddler now. Where has my baby gone?!?!? It seems like it wasn't all that long ago that she was this noisy little grunty lump of a baby that we would swaddle and carry around the house in the crook of our arms. And now, that same little girl wants to do everything for herself, without much of mommy or daddy's assistance.

Yes, the days go so fast.

So Jeremy took us to his favorite spot over the weekend so we could take it slow for a few hours. I have to admit, there was a bit of resistance on my part because frankly, I have an issue with relaxing. I would much rather run some errands or do something that puts us ahead of things. But then I just end up cranky and exhausted, and that's not what makes for a good mommy.

So, on Sunday, we played.



We slept.


And we enjoyed the view.


We relaxed, as a family, and it felt oh so good.

Phasing

In the 10 short months we've known her, our Little Miss has been through ALL kinds of phases. There's been the super sleepy phase, the no napping phase, the "I hate my stroller" phase, the "I can't poop phase," the tantrum phase, and now, regretfully, we are in the "I can't stand baby food and just want to feed myself" phase. And my hunch is that this phase is a little more about gaining independence than it is about the squishy, mushy stuff called baby food. Needless to say, mealtime takes a bit of extra effort these days. If it's coming at her mouth on a spoon, she either clamps her mouth shut, shakes her head or just plain makes it IMPOSSIBLE to get it in her jaws. However, if it's finger food, she's much more interested. This morning she tried scrambled eggs and scarfed them down. Earlier this week she devoured (as much as a baby can devour) Grandma A.'s meatloaf, and we've been loading her up on her old favorites, cheese, crackers and blueberries. In fact, we've resorted to shoveling spoon fulls of vegetables or fruits in her mouth while she works to pick up a morsel of her favorite foods. Yeah .... meal times take FOREVER these days.

Here's a sample of the head shaking tactic she's been using to shun away any sign of baby food (no thanks to Grandma's encouragement and her amazing impersonation of Amy Winehouse!).