Christmas 2010

We had a great Christmas this year. It's hard to believe last year I was feeling a little under the weather because I was newly pregnant, and now this year we have our baby with us to celebrate the holidays.

We spent the night of the 23rd and all day on the 24th in Indiana with the Ralph family. We had a fun day of Santa visiting (Gwen had to miss that this year, she fell asleep RIGHT before he arrived), then watching some of the kids open gifts from their godparents, then doing the adult gift exchange, then eating a nice dinner.

Christmas morning we got up and hit the road, stopped in Mahomet to shower, do a load of laundry, and repack, then headed to Morton. Once the Boekers were done with Jason's Christmas, we started our night. We ate appetizers while the kids opened all of their gifts from my parents and from their cousins/aunts, then we had dinner, then us adults exchanged gifts and opened gifts from my mom and dad.

Joanna's in town from Florida, so last night we got together to eat dinner at Darah and Evan's. Gwen got to meet Jo and Eric and we got to catch up in person!

We had a great year celebrating Gwen's first Christmas!

Teeth!

A few weeks ago, Gwenna started been a little crankier than usual and we were trying to come up with reasons why. After trying a few things, I started noticing that she was slobbering a lot and putting my hands and hers to her mouth immediately when they were free...all signs of teething. I looked it up, and usually babies don't teeth until a few months later, but when I looked in her mouth, I could see her bottom middle gums were a bit swollen and I could see something under the surface. People warned me that it can take up to a month for a tooth to cut through, which makes for a fussy baby, but last week, her first tooth popped up! The fussiness continued and 3 days later, the second one cut through. I hear the top ones come in pretty soon after the bottom ones, so we will see if her little teething stage continues. I feel bad for her, she's so little still to go through pain :(
We spent last weekend at my mom and dad's and went to Iowa Saturday for my mom's family Christmas party at "The Barn"....Katie and her family got here from AZ early enough to come. I forgot my camera, but hopefully will get some from my sisters later. It was a fun party and of course, Aunt Carol entertained us all by dressing up as an elf for the little kids. She was made to be a preschool teacher!

Monday Reese and Nolan came over while Robin took Mara to an appointment. Reese was so cute with Gwen. She kept wanting to try different headbands, socks, and clothes on her. We had fun playing dress-up!

Tuesday Katie, Kristie, my mom, and the kids all came to visit. The kids played house with Gwen's dolls and her crib and baby gear, us older adults chatted, and Scarlett and Gwen observed it all! I didn't realize how wimpy Gwen is, but about 3 times, a kid would make a loud noise and she would startle and start screaming! I think she needs to get used to noise because in both of our families, there are a lot of kids around all the time!

Tomorrow we leave for our Christmas traveling. Evansville for Adam's Christmas, then Morton for my Christmas, then Chicago for a baby shower, then back to Morton to ring in the new year!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Besides coming home for Christmas and having it be snow covered when we arrive, I haven't experienced the whole process of watching out the window and having it look normal then snow covered an hour later in more than 3 years (for Adam, 5 years). So this past weekend when we got a LOT of snow, it was exciting for us! It made me get into the holiday spirit!

Just in the past week, Gwen has gotten to be so much older acting! She plays with her toys by herself and just bounces and squeals and giggles at them. She loves her playmat still, but now also bounces in her excersaucer, grabs at things on tables, loves to have dolls "talk" to her, loves to look at books and cartoons/children shows, etc.

She's having some major physical changes too. We started noticing she's losing her dark hair (she's getting bald spots in the back, haha) and her legs and arms are starting to feel more solid! Our main news is that last week she started fussing and after putting the pieces to the puzzle together (drool, fussiness, sucking fingers), I looked and noticed a little something that looks like it's budding in her bottom gums. I thought I might be imagining it, but my sister's kids got teeth super early (about 4 months). Poor Gwennie, I hope her first tooth cuts through fast. Until then, we are bff's with her teether, oragel, and infant tylenol!