Ruby's First Christmas

Even though she won't remember it, I wanted to make Ruby's first Christmas amazing, because, well, it was her first.  It was far from perfect, but it was still pretty darn awesome!

My girl got into the holiday spirit by helping with the presents.  This meant eating a lot of curling ribbon, and some wrapping paper.  Who knew that curling ribbon is like crack for babies?

It also meant testing out some cardboard boxes.  This one was a perfect fit!

Soon it was Christmas Eve.  A friend of my mother-in-law's gave Ruby this ridiculous Christmas elf outfit...  Which I have to admit, was actually really cute on her!  I dubbed her "Jingle-Toots" as her elf name.

She was a big fan of that snowflake ornament.  Whenever we were near a Christmas tree, she'd hone in on one particular ornament, and that would be the only thing she'd want.  She was obsessed with a glass ornament at my mom's house, and when my mom tried to hand her other ones, she'd push them away and go for the glass one.

By some sort of Christmas miracle, it also seems like she's thinking about maybe crawling?  She folds herself in half (like above) and tries to go, but ends up on her face.  

Elf shenanigans aside, Christmas Eve Day was actually pretty stressful.  I'd decided rather last minute, that I was going to hand make some gifts for my parents.  However, a super clingy baby and a husband that was rarely home, made it so that my to-do list was HUGE by Christmas Eve Day.  

Which unfortunately meant that she spent most of the day like this:

She's an angry elf.

But come bedtime, we snuggled her into her Christmas pajamas and sent her off to bed.  It took a while to get her to sleep.  Perhaps she was staying up for Santa?  I was up until 11:30 finishing up my list, and that was even with leaving a few of our parents' gifts to be wrapped in the morning, ugh.  At least I had 24 hours of A Christmas Story to keep me company.  I decided that they do that for all the parents out there who are up late at night playing Santa.

Christmas morning came, and we found our stockings stuffed, and presents from Santa under the tree.

Ruby checked out the unwrapped "big" Santa gift, then we got right to business opening our stockings.

Look at my big girl standing on her own!

She was pretty excited about it!

And, yes, she there was more curling ribbon to eat!

When stockings were done, we happily opened up the rest of our presents from family and Santa.  Ruby was a good girl, and got everything on her list.  Mr. G got a Seahawks jersey, and thanks to Mr. G working two jobs this month, and cashing out a ton of PTO at his old job, I also got severely spoiled!    I got some great "little" presents, and one "BIG" present...  Which is a topic for another post! ;)

One of the things that bit the dust in my Christmas Eve to-do list stress was the making of our traditional monkey bread Christmas breakfast.  So Mr. G made us some eggs, then we had to get our rears in gear!  Showers were taken, more presents wrapped, diapers changed, and the car loaded.  To grandmother's (and grandfather's) house we went!

During our haste to get ready, we saw a few snowflakes mixed in with the traditional rain, but over the mountain on the way to Mr. G's parents' house we had a real white Christmas.  

When we got there, we discovered that Ruby perfectly matched Grandma's Christmas tree!

She also decided that her Uncle Kevin was motivating enough for her to want to try to crawl for real to him.  She couldn't quite figure it out, but she tried really hard!

After opening many more presents, we packed up the car again, drove back over the mountain to home to drop the dog off (she doesn't get along with my mom's dog), then over to my mother's house for Christmas part 3.  If that sounds like a lot of driving, it was.  I didn't look at the milage, but we spent at least 3 hours in the car on Christmas day.  Not doing that again next year!

At my mom's we had a turkey Christmas dinner.  Ruby got to eat her famous sweet potato casserole (sweet potatoes, apples, and pears baked together), hang out with her uncle, "auntie" (my brother's girlfriend), and other grandparents (my dad and stepmom).

And of course, open more presents.  Pretty much all of them under grandma's tree were for her.

After all of that (and a little bit of Elf watching), it was time to take our tuckered out little lady home.  I have to say, she did remarkably well for all of that traveling, excitement, stimulation, being held by tons of people, and staying up past her bedtime.  First Christmas a success?  I think so!  I can't wait until next year (at our own house)!