Merry Christmas!!!

I hope you all had the most amazing time this holiday season.  I'm still coming down off the high of being a parent at Christmas.  This was Ruby's second Christmas, of course, but her first where she actually kind of knew what was going on and it was SO MUCH FUN!  Since I've been pretty much MIA from the blog the entire month, I need to go and do a little recap of the holiday season.

We kicked it off with a visit to our favorite tree farm to find the perfect Christmas tree.  It was freezing cold that weekend.  Like, in the 20s, which it basically never is in western WA.  So Mr. G declared that he was absolutely not cutting down our tree, and if we wanted one, it had to be a pre-cut.  Ha!

We found the perfect tree - tall and narrow.  Emphasis on the tall.  Somehow we ended up with like, a 10 foot tree!  Luckily we have oodles of ceiling height in our living room.  I also remembered that they have a Santa at this tree farm.  We tried seeing him last year, but he was on his lunch break.  Not the case this year!

Ruby was NOT into sitting with Santa.  In the pic she's asking for me, lol.  She didn't cry, but she didn't like it.  Funnily enough, after that day she would say, "Ho ho ho!  Lap?  Picture?" over and over.  And if you'd ask her if she wanted to sit on Santa's lap and take a picture, she'd say, "yeah!!!".  Goof.

So we took her to see Santa and get our "real" picture done in her Christmas dress.  Mr. G had the great idea (not) to go after nap to the mall Santa on a Saturday.  Which meant we waited in an hour long line right at dinner time.  But Ruby was a total rockstar.  She loved the reindeer flying over the center of the mall, and the people watching.  When it came time to sit on Santa's lap for her picture, she was again, not into it.  And offended by the camera's flash.  So we ended up with our second annual awkward Santa pic.

Our plan was to take Ruby over to the Red Robin at the mall for dinner after.  You have to go outside the main mall to get to it, and as soon as we stepped out the door we were stopped in our tracks by a HOARD of people.  We'd forgotten about Snowflake Lane, a nightly music/light show they do out there.  It was insanity.  So we bailed and headed back towards home (where there's another Red Robin).  It was after 8:00 before Ruby got any dinner, but she was totally chill!  We were so impressed with her ability to hold it together in a weird situation, and so thankful.  We were totally aware that not every toddler would put up with that!

At home, we decked our halls with our giant tree, our handmade stockings, a gingerbread man garland (because of the "five little gingerbread men in a row" song we learned at school), and the Pinterest felt Christmas tree.

Plus Christmas jammies, plates, Santa sippy, reindeer antlers and festive outfits.  Ruby loved it all, but was especially obsessed with reindeer.  In fact, she can now say the word "reindeer" incredibly well.  Christmas comes out "ki ki", and Santa is just "ho ho ho", but reindeer she's got.

I tried to do as much shopping online as possible (ha!), and nearly broke my hand making many of the gifts as well.  Ok, not really, but basically every nap time was dedicated to crocheting or sewing, and now my hand absolutely needs a break.

Ruby's handmade Christmas consisted of a dolly, play food for the kitchen Santa brought her, and an apron & oven mitts as well.

I also made a scarf for my step-mom.  Did I mention my hand hurts?  Ha!

Finally, finally the presents were wrapped, the cookies were baked.  After going to two separate grandparent's houses last year, we vowed that Christmas would henceforth be at our house (or at least it would this year).  So the house was cleaned, and it was finally Christmas Eve.

Ruby helped me check the mailbox for some very last-minute gifts (and our Christmas cards, argh!!!), in one of her festive outfits.

In case you're wondering, both Snapfish and the USPS are on my naughty list.  Art.com and FedEx are on the nice list (and Art.com makes the most amazing photo calendars).  In fact, FedEx delivered gifts at 7:00pm Christmas Eve.  Talk about cutting it close!  We were sad that they didn't knock when they dropped them off, as we had a box of homemade cookies all packed up to give the driver for being out on Christmas Eve.

Since we were hosting the next day, we wanted to keep our Christmas Eve dinner simple.  So I surprised Mr. G & Ruby with a homemade Christmas tree shaped pizza.  They both loved it so much - I think it may be a fun new tradition!

Ruby and I made pumpkin pies after dinner.  Well...  We tried to.  I guess I overfilled them, but right after they went into the oven, one of the pies dumped custard filling all over the bottom of my hot oven.  What a mess!!!  I had to turn it off and wait for it to cool down so I could clean up and try again.  Let me tell you - scrubbing out my oven was not what I pictured myself doing on Christmas Eve.

Ruby didn't want to go to sleep (maybe she wanted to wait up for Santa?) so I scrubbed, while Mr. G put her to bed.  Then I had to get to work building the play kitchen we Santa got her.  That thing was no joke.  But by the light of the tree, and with the Christmas Story marathon getting started on tv it was pretty fun playing Santa!  Oh, and the pies baked perfectly after that, so we were off to bed.

Ruby woke just before 6am (barf) so I brought her back to our bed so we could sleep more.  She & Mr. G snored away, but I never got back to sleep.  So I got up, made some coffee and baked our traditional Christmas morning Monkey Bread, and made sure Santa's loot looked perfect.  Finally, it was time for our little girl to see what the big guy had brought!

First peek at the tree before coming downstairs.

Toys!

She wasted no time getting into this bag!

We finally had to point out the kitchen to her, but then it was pure joy!

Time for stockings!

Serious unwrapping concentration.

Daddy and Braidy had to help her "opo" this one.

And then I stopped taking pictures and we got to opening the gifts under the tree.  Ruby got into ripping the paper and had herself a grand old time.  The kitchen was a HUGE hit, and the crocheted eggs I made her seem to be her favorite.  Which is good, because they were a major PITA.  Ha!  Once gifts were opened, we trekked up to the kitchen for our traditional Monkey Bread and eggs for Christmas breakfast.  Ruby thought she'd died and gone to heaven with the sugariness of it.  Then she went back to playing and we got to work cleaning up before family came!

As I stepped out of the shower, Mr. G came in to tell me he'd gone to start the ham, and smoke was POURING out of the oven!!!  We're guessing there was some dish soap residue from when I'd cleaned it out the night before (that pie mess wouldn't come out without it, but I thought I'd rinsed it completely).  But it was so strange because we'd cooked the pies and bread without a problem!  Our house smelled HORRIBLE and was full of smoke, so we had to open all the windows.  A bit later, he told me that it was ok and now the ham was cooking.  So who knows what happened, but I guess this was the year we almost burned the house down.  Twice.

When I was getting Ruby into her Christmas dress, she told me she wanted to go down and "cook eggies".  Which is exactly what she did.  And I died of the adorableness of it all.

Soon, our relatives came pouring in.  My mom, dad & stepmom, Mr. G's parents and brother, and my older brother, sister-in-law, and niece were all here.  The only one missing was my little brother (in DC with his girlfriend's family.  I stopped taking pics again and just enjoyed it.  Everybody brought food that we grazed on all afternoon.  Ruby and her cousin Frankie (almost 5yrs) played together the whole time.  It was the first time I'd really seen her play with another child, not just alongside, and it was so amazing.  

We skipped Ruby's nap, and even though we could see her getting more and more tired, she was SUCH a little trooper.  Her sweet, charming self the whole time.  Not one single meltdown.  It was more that I could ask of any toddler, and we all just marveled at her.  

There was more gift opening, of course.  Ruby played Santa.  As long as you told her who a gift was for, she'd hand it to the right person.  It was adorable, of course.  Then more eating, drinking, being merry.  Oh, and my brother brought these remote control helicopter things, which basically turned the men into little boys.

We Skyped our other brother.  Talking to his nieces was the highlight of his night.

Ruby could barely keep her eyes open anymore, and just about fell asleep in Mr.G's arms.  So he took her up to put her to bed, and she fell asleep mid-diaper change!  That's a sign of a kid who enjoyed some Christmas, I think!  Our family gathered their things, and everyone made their way out to go home.  Mr. G and I cleaned up a little bit, but decided just to leave it and watch the last few minutes of the last airing of a Christmas Story.

All in all, it was a perfect day.  A great shindig with the family.  Everything turned out great, everyone got along and had a good time.  And best of all, Ruby did.  We couldn't have asked for anything more.

I hope that all of your holidays were as wonderful as ours, and merry everything from our family to yours!

Merry Christmas to Me!

Sooooo...

That "big" present I was talking about in my Christmas post?

Yeah.  It was this:

To say I'm pretty excited about it is kind of an understatement.  I've been lamenting my little point and shoot for ages, and the majority of my pictures of Ruby have actually been taken with my phone.  Sad! But no more!  I now have the potential to take some good pictures.

I still have to learn how to use it, but it's been fun so far playing around with it!

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)!

Week in iPhone Pictures

Whoops, I did it again.  Here's two weeks, since apparently I can't keep up!

December 16-22

Sunday:  Goofing around on the bed, as usual.  A Pinterest project - Ruby's first Christmas ornament.  Silly girl, after a bath.  Monday:  First snow of the season.  Playing blindfolded?  Chubby cheeks.  Tuesday:  As done as our tree was going to get.  My goober girl.  A ghost (we dig playing under blanket forts)!

Wednesday:  Silly toast-face girl.  Target shopping!  Having a lot of fun with the curling ribbon.  I got my first hair cut since August 9, 2011 (seriously).  Thursday:  Almond bark for our party at baby class. A festive group of babies.  Friday:  All prettied up in front of the Christmas tree.  Just a few of our Amazon boxes arrived...  Saturday:  Look what else Amazon delivered! ;)

December 23-29

Sunday:  Cuteness in a car seat.  Sitting in the "big girl" chair at breakfast!  A pretty wrapped white elephant gift to take to mom's night out.  Monday:  Jingle-Toots, the elf.  Making some sugar cookies.  Tuesday:  Opening her first Christmas stocking.  A little bit of white Christmas, heading over Tiger Mountain.  Trying to open presents early at Grandma C's house.  Checking out the tree at Grandma S's house.

Wednesday:  Good morning!  I guess she got hungry in the car?  Thursday:  Trying out some Cheerios.    A black bean goatee at our lunch playdate.  Friday:  Velcro-baby.  Some TJ's shopping.*  New shoes.  Saturday:  "Helping" with the laundry.  A finished nursery project!

*My mom works at a different TJ's store.  I'd texted her that picture, and she showed it around at work. Her manager told her to print it out, so that they could put it on their customer wall(?) because she is one cute customer!

Merry Christmas!

I hope your day is as happy as Ruby is when she's eating plastic!

Santa Baby

On Saturday, we finally took Ruby to see the big guy.  Yep, Santa.

I've pretty much been awaiting this moment since last Christmas.  And I won't lie, I was hoping for a crying picture, too.

After having a REALLY hard time finding a Christmas dress for her that I liked, in her size (have I mentioned toddlers have much better options for just about everything?  I'm pretty picky with my Ruby-style, but she's still rockin' the 6mo sizes), we had to try to find a time to actually take her.  I didn't want to do evenings or weekends -hello, no long lines with a baby!- but Mr. G just started a new job, so his schedule is kind of whack.

Which means we went on a Saturday.  To one of the busiest malls around here.

Waiting in the Santa line.

Actually?  It wasn't that bad.  We were only there about 40min, and Miss R lasted about half that time in her stroller even!  Mr. G also spent most of that time in the Starbucks line.  Yeah.  The Starbucks line at the mall is almost worse than the Santa line...

While waiting, we saw Santa's reindeer flying:

And these two goofed around (actually, she spent a lot of time trying to drink his caramel macchiato):

Then, finally, it was time to see the big guy.  We hit the jackpot with Santas - he totally looked legit.  We were certain Ruby would cry.  By this point, she wanted to be held only by me and was starting to get hungry.  At the very least, we figured she'd pull his beard, but no.

She sat down on his lap and just stared, deer in the headlights.  Then the flash started going off.  I never use a flash, so on the rare occasion she encounters one, she gets this WTF look on her face and is all annoyed afterward.  So that's what we were dealing with.  The "elves" were trying to make her smile, and were like, "Oooh, she's a serious baby."  But they finally got her to crack one.  Sort of.

She looks like a complete and total goober, and not much like herself.  I'm holding out hope for a crying picture next year.

Ruby's dress is from Baby Gap, tights from Target, shoes from Old Navy (a long time ago), and headband from Etsy seller Cocolicious Couture.

O, Christmas Tree

Last weekend, we finally made it out to purchase Ruby's first Christmas tree.  The past few years we have gotten real trees, but we'd always procrastinate and end up going to the Home Depot a few miles away, late one December evening after work.

But not this year.  This year, we were going to go do it right, and chop down our tree.  Would you believe Mr. G had never cut down a Christmas tree?  Crazy, right?  Well, he'd never had a real tree before me either.  I can barely believe it.  Did they even have fake trees 30+ years ago?

Anyway, we still hadn't gone by last weekend, and I felt like a bad mommy for not having a tree yet (even though I know she doesn't care, I want her first Christmas to be magical).  This meant we had to go then.  It also meant that we had to go in the pouring rain.

They were obviously thrilled to be having their picture taken.

We trekked out into the trees...

Looking for one that was juuuuust right.  This one didn't pass the test...

But this one did!  This was the one!

So daddy got to work chopping it down.

Ruby helped, by being adorable.

Then we dragged it out of the field (only to learn later that they had tree wagons, boo).

The tree farmers put it into a funny shaker to get any loose needles off.

Then we strapped it to the car before heading home.  Please excuse the doofy look on my face.

Santa was also present at the tree farm, but sadly, we did not get to go see him.  He was on lunch, and we didn't feel like standing around with a cold, wet, baby.  Actually, she was pretty warm and dry, but we were soaked because the sky really opened up right when we were tying the tree to the car.

And here she is:

Yes, I chopped the top off with the picture.  Mr. G hadn't put the topper on yet (and actually hasn't still, he needs to get on that)!