A Very Christmassy Weekend

My Christmas decorations are finally up!

I have to say, it is very difficult to get anything done with a 7-week old, let alone hang anything delicate or which requires hooks, lighting, electricity, or live branches.

Thank God for my mom who is willing to drive 3.5 hours anytime to see her granddaughter or my Christmas decorations would consist only of the boxes of Christmas decorations scattered around our house.

I was asked, when complaining about how much work it was to put them up, why I would even bother- after all, I have a new baby, and who is coming to my house to see the decorations anyway??
BUT, I LOVE CHRISTMAS and NEED my decorations, so to me, it was worth it :)

Saturday was the last step in decorating our house: we needed a tree!

We told MiniM.E. we were going to get a tree and she was so excited that we managed to snap a few good photos of some excitable smiles (or maybe I was just making really stupid faces and talking in a ridiculously high-pitched, sing-song voice... you'll never know...).

 And then she was SO excited that she fell asleep.

Sleeping doesn't last very long anymore, so after a few minutes we were ready to head out.

We decided on Ellm's Farm for our Christmas tree this year because you got to choose and cut your own.  They had trolley rides out to the farm and hot cocoa and cider and donuts and most importantly, reindeer!!

It was everything it promised to be, with the exception of the reindeer.  Turns out they were no longer living.  SO SAD!!!  Especially because I wanted a picture of MiniM.E. riding on one.  But I guess they probably would have allowed that anyway... sounds like a law suit waiting to happen.

It was a very Christmassy great time.

We found our tree and Bob cut it down

We tied it to the car

And enjoyed some hot cocoa, all while MiniM.E. slept, even through the photo op at this um, awesome? train with a hole cut-out for faces...

Yesterday, MiniM.E. put the first two ornaments on the tree!

SO CUTE!!

Alright... fussy baby- must go!!

My Baby is Growing Up...

Before I get to posting about anything substantial, here are some photos from our long weekend:

This is where MiniM.E. sleeps at our house (in the pack-n-play under the changing table thingy so the cats don't accidentally jump on her...) but we couldn't fit it in the car... 

so this is where she slept at my parents' house- why did we spend so much on a pack-n-play?

trying out the new hat

resting up for the big trip

excited to leave... 

enjoying the comfy comforter

unsure about shopping on Black Friday

nice couch...

sleeping in with Daddy

MiniM.E. turned six weeks old on Saturday.  It's funny that when you have a new baby you mark the time first in days, then in weeks, then in months... then in half years... and sometime between kindergarten and fifth grade you just use years.  And eventually you don't want to remember how many years old you are.

But I digress... the point of this post is that MiniM.E. is growing.  She was so tiny when we brought her home and I kind of wanted to keep her that way.  You don't really notice something growing when you see it every day, but I think she just went through some pretty major growth-spurting, because a few days ago when I woke up and carried her down the stairs what used to feel like a Cabbage Patch doll suddenly felt like a bag of bricks.  Not to mention the fact that I'm squeezing my poor baby into clothes that have probably been too small for at least a couple weeks (what? that outfit isn't supposed to look like a spandex jumpsuit?).  But the biggest milestone was switching from newborn diapers to size one.

Looking back, apparently I should have made this switch weeks ago... however, being a new mom, I didn't realize the signs of a diaper being too small... those red marks around her legs- those have always been there, haven't they? and the fact that it's really hard to make the diaper tall enough in the front AND the back... well, she's just getting taller, right?  And maybe that's kind of the case- she's still pretty long and skinny...

While home for Thanksgiving we met up with one of my oldest friends and her 11-week-old.  He'd just moved up to size TWO diapers... which made me think... are MiniM.E.'s diapers too small??

So I decided that once we finished off the size "n"s, I'd move her up to size one.  But every time I changed her I couldn't help noticing that I was squishing my baby into teeny-tiny diapers when she really wasn't so teeny-tiny anymore.  I just didn't want her to get bigger...


To celebrate the last day wearing my favorite jungle outfit, MiniM.E. decided to show off all her new smiles:

...I also snapped a couple more non-smiling photos :

And finally this morning, I packed up all the newborn diapers and all the "spandex jumpsuits" and replaced them with roomy size ones and bigger clothes.  She seems much happier now.

and she fits in the NEW jungle outfit!!