11 month state of the Willa address

Just one month to go in her first year!  Just looking at this picture I'm astounded by how much she has grown.  Gone are the days when I had to prop her up and shoot very quickly before she slid down in this chair.  She has even started posing a little, since she has gotten to know this routine after 11 times in the hot seat.  Excuse me while I get a little emotional!

So, her stats.  As of this picture she had taken her first steps (November 28th) while she was playing with me on the floor.  She was cruising on the chaise part of our sectional and walked over to me where I was sitting on her playmat.  It was two or three steps together, and I screamed in excitement!  She did it a couple more times that day, but silly me, I forgot to get my camera out in favor of staying present with her.  So that moment will exist in my memory :-).  She still wasn't confident enough to walk spontaneously, but every once in a while we could get her to walk while her hands were occupied or she was surrounded with people.

She hasn't cut any new teeth, but given her sleep regression, I thought that she must have by now!  For about a month and a half she started to get up every two hours again, wanting to eat.  At least once a week she would wake up and refuse to go back to sleep for the next two hours.  Those were dark weeks, y'all.  We were all SO tired, all the time.  It got difficult to follow my clients in session, and I unloaded my woes on my coworkers almost every day.  This continued until December 20th or so, but I'll fill you in on all that in her 12 month post!

She is still nursing a lot, but she has started to love saltines, cheese, and yogurt more than anything else.  Seriously, I can get a whole meal eaten while she chows down on cheese and crackers!  She has learned how to sign her own versions of "more" and "all done," and I am very excited to be clearly communicating with her.  She always smiles super big when we do, so I think she does as well!

She now has a couple of words, "up" and "mama," and Jeremy is working very hard to get her to say "dada."  Sadly, she's actually closer to "puppy" and "ball," but we'll blame that on phonetics not affinity!

Our little miss is growing like crazy, I can't wait to celebrate her first birthday very soon!

Getting ready for Christmas

There are so many things to do before Christmas, and having a little person that simultaneously needs fun things and takes my free time has only made it more challenging this year!  Because I knew there would be a lot of demands, I started my knitting projects way early this year.  The two ones I wanted to accomplish the most was a "Weasley sweater" for Willa, and a stocking that she can have for years to come.  Since I started in October I was able to get both done, woohoo!

I think I have an unhealthy fixation on the letter W

On December 5 we attended the Greensboro Lights Festival downtown since our company holiday party was at the same time in the office.  All of the activities were free and open to the public, and we had a good time walking around with her in the carrier until the crowds got to be too much.  Here are some highlights:

Willa's first time sitting with Santa, she was totally calm if a little bewildered

Remembering her affinity for bands, we made sure to stop and listen to the 

local high school's brass band play Christmas carols

Who doesn't love giant holiday wind socks?

They made fake snow for the little ones, who clearly should have been warned that 

it was made of soap suds, and therefore not the tastiest stuff ever!

I was worried about how Willa would do with a tree this year.  I always love to get a real tree, both for the smell and for the ritual of choosing just the right one.  However, our little miss loves to put anything she finds on the floor in her mouth, including (and especially) dog hair and little bits of paper.  I just knew that I would spend a decent amount of time chasing her down and prying needles out of her mouth if we got a real tree.  I briefly considered an artificial tree for this reason, but then I realized that since she is just learning to walk and steadies herself on anything within arm's reach, she would be likely to topple the thing onto herself.  Thus, I took this year to experiment with a tree alternative.  I always loved the trees made out of book arrangements, and when Jeremy suggested using our built-ins in the living room, I jumped at the chance to play with it.  Behold, the result:

I grabbed every green book in the house, a couple of baskets, a stack of Real Simple magazines, and some white bowls/bud vases to assemble a rough outline of a tree

Then we added our favorite ornaments by wedging them between stacks and pages, on top of vases, and from light clips I stuck to the front of the shelves

And here it is all lit up!

I think it was a nice compromise, although I look forward to next year when she is (hopefully) old enough to be safe with a regular tree.  If not, we can always bring this out again, it was quite easy!

The last big thing to accomplish this year was the first year I got to play with taking pictures for our first family Christmas card.  I bought her a pair of red and white striped pjs for just this occasion and scoured Pinterest for cute ideas.  I really liked pictures of babies with lights, so I took these:

No, she didn't actually eat the light.  I swooped in right after I snapped this!

Why do I have to do this, Mom?

We ended up choosing two different styles of Christmas card because I just couldn't decide between the two,  Hopefully if you are reading this you got to see at least one of them!

So that's my super long post on Christmas preparations.  Get ready for the even longer one on actual Christmas celebrations!

Willa's First Thanksgiving

Willa's first Thanksgiving was spent here at home.  My mom came to visit the week before while Jeremy was overseas on a business trip, and then my dad and brother came the day before Thanksgiving to spend the rest of the holiday week with me.  Jeremy was unexpectedly called away for a family emergency for the week of Thanksgiving, so I am grateful that my family was already planning to come so that Willa and I didn't have to be alone.  We definitely missed him, but we were able to have a good time.

I was in charge of the meal for the first time, so I had to make sure I planned closely to cover all the bases.  I made the pies the day before, and even decided to get a little fancy:

It says "thanks." It was delicious.

My dad and I decided to try to tackle smoking the turkey, which Jeremy usually does very well.  While it cooked for six hours, I enjoyed sharing the Macy's parade with Willa.

She was transfixed by the marching bands!

I shot a little bit of video of her watching it too.  She went BANANAS for the Sesame Street float, and got the closest to clapping that she ever had!

After all day in the smoker and lots of care and attention from my dad, the turkey was hot and ready and pretty fantastic looking:

Yum!

We loved it, but I think Willa was thrown off by the new texture of it.  Either way she looked pretty cute eating it!

Maybe next year she'll have a taste for it!

Unfortunately the timing of dinner was right during her naptime, so she (and I) missed the rest of the meal.  Oh well, leftovers are just as tasty!  We missed Daddy, but we appreciated our time with family, and were glad that he could be there for his parents. 

Next stop, Christmas!