I'm having a hard time believing Christmas is over. It came and went so fast this year. I fully enjoyed everything about it this year: the anticipation, the present hunting, the baking, the festivities. Annie is at an age where she doesn't fully understand what's going on, but she loved all of the get-togethers and present exchanges. And of course the toys that hung around after everything was over.
Annie had a wonderful Christmas. We had Christmas with Paul's Mom and Harvey on the 23rd, Christmas Eve with my family at our house, and then Christmas Day at my Mom & Dad's. She loved every minute of it. She needed a little help learning how to open the presents, but caught on pretty quickly that toys came out of that wrapping paper.
More Presents? 12.25.09 from porkchop on Vimeo.
She got some wonderful gifts. Favorites include a tea set, a dollhouse, a cool Scanimation book, a Magnadoodle, and a set of bristle blocks (that she loves to pour over her head for some reason). Oh, and several new DVDs, which make Mommy & Daddy happy for something a bit different after watching the same things over and over! 
Best of all, she got some great quality playtime in with her all of her grandparents, aunts, and uncles over the past week or so, which is pretty much her favorite thing right now. I love seeing her get so excited about family time. We're going to enjoy that as long as possible!
Right now we're nursing a post-Christmas cold (Annie & Paul) and enjoying my 2-week vacation to the fullest by holing up in our cozy living room during our coldest snowstorm of the year so far. We're reading lots of books, playing with our new toys, and watching our new movies. Paul's finishing up his last hour at work before coming home for the rest of the week. Yup, life's pretty great. It can stay this way a bit longer if it would like (well, except for the cold, of course!) :)
She can get up the stairs in 20 seconds flat.
She loves bath time, especially touching the water coming out of the faucet.
Christmas morning we woke up and opened our presents from Santa. She had a grand time helping rip the paper off. We made the rookie mistake of leaving her big gift in the box rather than assembling it before-hand, so we quickly put that together so she could check it out. A few weeks before Christmas I saw a commercial for a crawling/cruising/standing toy from Fisher Price. I had to have it, it was so damn cute. And she loves it, so yay! Paul stood her up to see the monkey at the top the first time she played with it, and within days she was crawling right over to pull herself up to play with him, and pulling herself up to stand on pretty much everything else too. We have a super baby, I'm telling you.
So after playing hard with her new toys, she promptly passed out and slept through present-opening at Grandma & Grandpa's. Luckily she woke up before my mom had to leave for work. She got lots of great presents from Grandma & Grandpa: a car/walker, a puzzle, a book about what snowmen do at night (one of Kev's old favorites), a stacker toy, her first baseball tee, a gloworm that she really loved and needed us to take it out of the package immediately, and her very favorite, a package of popping blocks. She hasn't let those out of her sight since! 
Christmas dinner was delicious as always, desserts were fabulous, and the game playing was so fun we ended up staying until 10! We played lots of Meg's Wii and lots of Apples to Apples, a gift from my parents. Annie took a mid-day nap for an hour or so (her Dad slept for 3 hours!!) and then took a 3-hour evening nap. We think she thought it was time for bed, because she doesn't usually sleep that late for evening nap.
New Year's Eve turned into a celebration of our first year of being parents: instead of our usual wild parties (not really), Annie and Griffin had a play date and the parents and Uncle Kris had some yummy pizza and Apples to Apples (an easy game to play in the living room while corralling crawling and toddling babies). Fin lasted until 9:45, which amazed all of us! Kris stayed on and played some Texas Hold Em with us after Kelly, Mike, and Griffin left. We all had a great time, and it was a nice, relaxing way to ring in the New Year as a family. 
So now our baby is 7 months old and she is crawling and standing all over the place. I am amazed and proud at how strong she is and how quickly she is learning how to do these things, but at the same time I'm hoping it all starts to slow down just a little bit. I don't want her baby-hood to pass by too fast, I'm enjoying it way too much! But at the same time every time I see her do something new I get a flash of all of the great stuff still to come, and I am so excited to watch it all play out. 
Oh yeah, and in other news: our bathroom sink broke on Christmas Eve, so everyone had to wash their hands in the kitchen sink all night. This past Friday, Paul's muffler fell off in the intersection before our house on his way home from work. Then the same Friday night we came home from celebrating Paul & Kaggie's birthday and our furnace was not working. So there are our 3 things, that's enough for us, okay universe? Counting our blessings: Paul got a beautiful new bathroom sink installed in time for our New Year's Eve gathering, we were able to get a new furnace installed in just a few hours the day after it broke by some very nice men from Crossfield (who saw we had a baby and made sure we had heat again as soon as possible and for no payments/zero interest for 9 months, thank god), and Paul rarely drives his car, so it's not an emergency to get that fixed. But still, hopefully that will be the end of it for us for a while!
She is healthy, happy, beautiful, amazing, and has shown us what true unconditional love feels like. Her smile melts my heart. I've never felt this kind of grateful in my life.
On our way up to find Niagara-on-the-Lake, we saw a sign for the butterfly conservatory and decided to check it out. I'm glad we did, we really enjoyed ourselves. Plus, it was fitting that we visit there: we released butterflies at our wedding as a tribute to my grandmother (the one Annie is named for). She loved butterflies. The butterfly house was huge and had a million butterflies (I don't really know how many they have, it just seemed like a whole lot), and the Niagara botanical gardens surrounded the house. Gorgeous. We saw lots of flowers and trees that we want for our yard. Annie was enthralled with the butterflies when we first walked in. So cute!
On our way out of the conservatory, I got a phone call from my sister Megan. I didn't answer right away because we were packing up the car, so when we got in the car to start driving to the falls, I listened to her message. She said to call her back when I got a chance, she had exciting news. I said, "She is so engaged." Paul got all excited. I haven't been wondering when they were going to get engaged or anything, so I don't know why I thought that right away. She and Tim have been together for 7 years and there was no doubt in my mind that they would be married someday. He is wonderful to her, and they are perfect for each other. They are both in grad school, and have a lot going on, so it made sense for them to wait a few years before getting married. But as soon as I heard that message I was so excited. I'm glad I turned out to be right, I might have been disappointed! ;) Paul was like, "call her back, call her back!!" Sure enough, Tim proposed that morning at a cider mill near their apartment in Michigan. Yay!! And too cool that they got engaged on our 5-year anniversary. Tim had no idea, but was pretty pleased with himself when Meg told him. How perfect is that?? So now we're all thrilled and excited for their wedding, which should be the summer after next. Can't wait! 
So after that excitement, we checked into our hotel right around the corner from Clifton Hill, and took a walk down to the falls. It was getting dark, the falls were beautiful. After our walk, we stopped by the restaurant that shares a parking lot with our hotel. We ate on the patio because it was beautiful out. I had spinach gnocchi and Paul had some sort of meat (I'm pretty sure it was steak). :) Their bread was fabulous. The staff was really nice and loved Annie. We got free dessert to go because they screwed up our ticket in the kitchen so it took a while for our food to arrive. Which figured because Annie was happy for the amount of time it would have taken us to get our dinner if they had brought it out on time. She got cranky when we were waiting and I had to hold her while I was eating. Which is what we end up doing at home a lot of the time anyway! She has a knack for getting fussy right when we want to eat. She's such a good baby otherwise though, I really can't complain about that one thing!
We never did end up going to Niagara-on-the-Lake, we spent too much time walking along the falls. We wanted to go down to the barge stuck at the top of the falls to read the plaque about it because Paul had never seen it, and all I could remember was that two guys were stuck there overnight. I told him I thought it happened in the 30's, but he couldn't believe that it would be stuck there that long. Turns out it happened in 1918! They saved themselves by opening the bottom doors which wedged into the rocks. It's amazing that they survived. Plus they probably had no idea how close they were since it was dark. Terrifying!
Anyway, it was a really long walk, but we enjoyed it. I fed Annie in the little park by the barge and Paul took a little nap on our blanket. On our walk back the sun came out full force and we saw rainbows over the falls. 
Overall, a wonderful way to celebrate 5 years of marriage, and the next phase of our marriage as parents. Yesterday a woman at the outlet mall was telling me how cute Annie is, and then said, "you are so lucky." She was so right. 
(Paul was in the exact same position in our bed, but you'll have to take my word for it because I didn't have the nerve to take a picture of him sleeping. The flash might have woken him up and he's a grump in the morning!)
We've had a really nice weekend. Friday night Annie stayed with my parents and sister while we went out for a date night. We went to the mall food court for dinner. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that it's one of our favorite places to eat out: Paul gets his Chinese and I get my Camille's Cafe. Yum. After a quick dinner we went to see The Dark Knight. SO. GOOD. I was worried it wouldn't live up to the hype, but it did. We really loved it.
After our walk we went out to meet Paul's mom and stepfather for some ice cream by the lake in Canandaigua. It was such a beautiful night, breezy but not too chilly. Everyone out there was so friendly, saying hi to each other, admiring all of the cute dogs and babies. We had a really nice visit. We did our grocery shopping after that. Another wild and crazy Saturday night!
This afternoon we lazed around in the backyard, Gus & Georgie munching on the big bones we bought them. And now we're inside for dinner and a nap. The rain held off just long enough: it's starting to thunder and sprinkle now. A perfect weekend to close out my maternity leave. Now I'm off to get our things together for tomorrow. I think we're ready for our new routine.
We've had such a wonderful summer together. Lots of lunches in the park, long walks, ball games, snuggling in the chair, singing Sesame Street and Disney songs, shopping... I was looking through her pictures the other day and was so surprised to see just how much she's changed over the past 3 months. Her hair is so much longer, she's got bigger eyes and fuller cheeks, and a chubby belly. She's so much more alert now, and talkative. She loves chatting with me while she eats, or when she's having playtime on the floor. She stares at me all the time, smiling away. I love that I make her happy. 
Our last few days have been really nice. Last weekend we had lunch in the park with Sarah & Michelle from work. It was gorgeous out, and we had a lovely little picnic. Saturday we went to a purse party and cookout at Robyn & TJ's. Annie bought her first purse! I love that this was her second purse party. I've never been to a purse party in my life before this summer, and she's been to two! Here she is loving up her new purse. It's almost as big as she is.
That night we came home and watched Michael Phelps win his 8th gold. So exciting! I'm really glad I was out on leave throughout this Olympics, everything good is on so late. Everyone has been sleep deprived lately. Ironic that I'm the one with the new baby and I'm getting the most sleep! 
On Monday Aunt Meg & Uncle Tim were here for a visit from Michigan. We all had lunch at my Mom's house. Annie was fussy until we realized that she was just bored sitting in everyone's lap and just wanted to lie on the floor for some playtime. She was a happy girl after that! It was really nice to see Meg & Tim before they go back to school, we've missed them. Can't wait til they come back!
Tuesday we went to work for one more visit before I go back. We had lunch with Robyn & Nicki and then went to visit some more friends. It tired her right out--she fell asleep in the car right after we left, so I took advantage of it and went shopping for some fall clothes. Wednesday was a rough day. She needed a nap all day but refused to sleep. I got her to sleep once in the crib and when I opened the door, George made a racket and woke her up. Arg! That night I went over to my Mom's to take my sister driving and when I came back she was passed out on the couch. I knew she was tired, darn it! She's so stubborn when it comes to napping...
