First Christmas

We are back home after a whirlwind first Christmas for Blake. We celebrated early with Grandma and Grandpa (a.k.a. Pappaw) here Tuesday night before we left town. Blake wasn't really sure what to think about all the presents, boxes, and paper everywhere, but I would have to say that her favorite thing of all of the great presents she received was her little bendable Pinnochio. She's chewing on it in this picture!
Then, after Tim worked a half-day on Wednesday, we set off for Frisco to see Grandpa and Grammy. It was Blake's first big trip in her new car seat! But, like her other seat, after about 4ish hours in it, she had had enough! If I had my way, I would squish Texas to make everyone closer together.
Grammy and Grandpa put Blake to bed that night so Tim and I could go see Bleu Edmondson (love him!) at Hank's with Tim's brother Juan and some friends. Great concert!!

Here is our cutie pie in her Christmas Eve outfit. Yes, it's Polo and yes, Tim picked it out. ha ha! We attempted at wearing her cute new shoes for Christmas Eve mass, and they stayed on her part of the time...
A small blizzard blew in that day. (I know if you're used to snow it was nothing, but for me, it was a blizzard!) Mass at 5:00 was so crowded as everyone was trying to go before the roads got worse. P.S. We are still working on Blake's inside voice! We always try to sit in the back of church and luckily we were forced to stand by the door it was so crowded.

Then we celebrated Christmas at Tim's Grandma Petra's. Let's just say that there was lots of good Mexican food and lots of family! We had to leave before gifts because of the roads, Blake's overdue bedtime, and partial meltdown.
Christmas morning Blake went to scope out the tree and did notice that many more presents appeared than were there before. Can we say spoiled??
Blake was showered with gifts from grandparents, great-grandparents, family friends, aunts, uncles, and her mom and dad! We saved our gifts to open on Christmas day. Then that night we had a little Christmas party with friends and played an "As-seen-on-TV" white elephant game. Thanks for whoever brought what I received. ha ha.

All in all, a great Christmas, but also tiring!!! I am glad to have a week off to settle back in, do laundry, unpack, and organize all our new stuff. Thank you to everyone for all our gifts and memories.

9 Month Check Up

Well, I am off from teaching for 2 weeks (yay!) but am not feeling so great. Hopefully I feel better before we go to Frisco to visit Tim's family. So sorry, but no picture today! Blake had her 9 month well check this morning, and I was looking forward to her first visit with no shots, but she ended up getting her seasonal flu booster and the H1N1 shot, which she'll get a booster for in 30 days. Blake has gained 2 pounds and grown 2 inches since her 6 mo. checkup, which puts her at 30 inches long (97%) and 19 pounds 4 ounces (80%). I prepared myself for the fussiness and slight fever Blake usually gets from shots... but knock on wood- so far she's so happy! My little monkey is crawling all over the house these days, pulling up on everything, "walking" down the couch using her hands, and getting into any and everything! And I wouldn't want it any other way!

9 months

Oh.My.Gosh! Really 9 months already??
Today's conversation went something like this...
"Mom, don't you know by know I'm not going to sit still???"
"How about we read this book instead?"
"Ok, I'll stay in the chair! WOO HOO!"

Blake is such a busy child! (I think every mother of a young child says that...) But she really is. She is crawling now, and really fast at that! She loves to look at the Christmas tree and pull the ornaments off! So only the top 3/4 of our tree is decorated. And just today as we were all three sitting in the living room, I looked over at Blake who was STANDING, holding onto the couch with one hand while waving the other hand around. I can't believe my baby is standing! Slow down life!!!!
Blake still wears size 12 month clothes, size 3 diapers, and weighs about 19 pounds. She has 5 teeth, with the 6th one about to poke through any second now. We go for her 9 month check up on the 21st, so I will update with more specifics then.

All I Want for Christmas...

is never to see Santa again! ha ha.

Needless to say, Blake did not enjoy meeting Santa this weekend. So, you can think I'm terrible if you want to, but I really wanted to have Blake's picture taken with Santa (and hopefully will every year). And really all kids have the crying-in-Santa's-lap pictures and then later the happy-to-tell-Santa-what-they-want pictures, right? I know I've seen my brother's, sister's and my own!

We tried to get used to Santa first, and Blake spent some time just looking at him and not knowing what to think. I really thought she was going to do okay. But just as soon as we stepped back to get out of the frame, she starting SCREAMING and CRYING! Poor baby! The photographer actually asked us if we wanted to take the other couple of frames so we could have one to pick from. Yeah right, ha ha! We just said we'd take it, scooped Blake up and checked that off the lists of things to do. Merry Christmas!