Christmas 2014

I  always loved Christmas.  The food, gift giving, food, sweets...it's pretty fantastic. However, with Miriam, Christmas is not just great, but amazing again.  The preparation; baking, grocery shopping, gift wrapping, was so much fun with my little sparkly helper along.

"M, let's get a picture with the tree"

Rocking the Target cart.  "Wheeee"

Wrapping gifts is easy.  Do we have more tape, mom?

Christmas Eve had a whole new focus.  Although M has no idea who Santa is yet, we followed him online all day, put out cookies, wrote him a letter for her stocking, and Jason and I got to play Santa for the first time...i.e. we drank egg nog and put toys together all night.

Christmas Eve breakfast at La Bellavia

Christmas Eve walk in the park

Opening our Christmas Eve gifts, new pajamas all around!

Cooking Christmas Eve dinner.

"Santa...I tasted all our cookies!"

The image I will forever have in my head of this Christmas is Miriam on Christmas Day, in her fleece night gown, tights, slippers, sticky-out-ponytail, chocolate and biscuits all over her face, bouncing from one edge of the house to the other with her new toys.  Play with kitchen, color on table, push dolly, put dolly in other pushy thing, push dolly again, back to the kitchen...repeat, repeat, repeat until you collapse in an exhausted pile of tears!  It was brilliant.  She is not really crazy about opening presents yet (our last gifts weren't opened until about 3:00 that afternoon), and when she does finish meticulously, carefully opening each package, she would break again from opening to play with the toys all over again.

Baby!!

Santa's all ready!

New kitchen!

Breakfast.  Yes, that's all 3 bows in her hair.  They were stocking stuffers and she wanted all three:)

Wow!  A new table!

Going, going going!

Daddy's gifts:)

We ate, drank, and were very merry. I loved every second of it, and cannot wait until next year!  A few other pictures from the past few weeks...

Recovering from a time change is tough.

New trick: teeth brushing.  Miriam brushes her teeth at least 3x a day!

Her new "Choo Choo" blanket.  A napping must.

Other new obsession: cuties.  She eats at least 4 a day.  Highest count was 5 in one sitting.

Her hair is so long she rocks the spiky pony daily.  I love giant bows!

Because Maddie never gets any blog love...here she is getting a drink.

Sporting one of her Christmas gifts, a "Choo Choo" t-shirt.

Still a favorite: hummus & celery

Thank you cards in the works.