Thoughts on Christmas as a Parent

Hello There and Merry Christmas!!

I absolutely LOVE Christmas time. It's been one of my favorite times since I was a kid. I loved coming into the living room with the tree and seeing the HUGE pile of gifts below it. I loved going to my grandparents home for a HUGE breakfast, and I loved all of us coming back to our house to show off what we got and start playing with everything. I remember having a friend growing up that was a Jehovah's Witness and it boggled my mind that she didn't get gifts and was okay with it!

That being said, having kids makes me wonder how many gifts we REALLY need to be giving them. Not only does it make me worry they'll have issues remembering it's about giving more than receiving, but also because they are at an age where too many gifts can be overwhelming and they get sick of opening them. I saw an "episode" that The Bucket List Family (on YouTube) posted showing their Christmas in a cabin, and when they came downstairs the kids only got one gift from each of the parents and siblings and I thought that was SUCH a great idea. I love the idea of being more minimalist with gifts and the idea of them helping pick out gifts for each other helps learn about the giving part. 

I also learned this year about a "Want, Need, Wear, Read" concept, where everyone only gets one gift for each category. Now we plan on having only one more kid (no more after that) so if we did one gift from each person then we'd all get 5 gifts, if we need the want, need, wear, read then we'd only get 4 (I'll still do some small things for stockings though) and I'm trying to decide which is best for us. One thing to know is Larry and I don't like the idea of our kids thinking Santa brings gifts because we feel that once you know the truth about him, it ruins the magic. I'd like to throw in a couple family gifts (maybe a big toy for the kids and something for the house for us? Maybe a family vacation? Something along those lines) or something that the kids don't know about so that there is a bit of a mystery with it, but I'm still working out the kinks.

I will say not relying on Santa can be complicated. For one, there's SO many movies and songs that talks about Santa bringing gifts. Then there's visiting Santa for our annual picture (why would we do that if we don't believe he's real?). Finally, there's the issue of when relatives or friends bring him up or ask what they are asking Santa for. I wish I had all the answers for handling this, but so far the best I've been able to come up with is to neither confirm or deny him for our kids. I will not say Santa brought gifts, I will not say he doesn't bring gifts. I'll let my kids figure out what they want to believe on their own. If they ask, I'll ask them who they think brings the gifts and why and see if they can make a story up on their own. And I hope they'll be able to keep a hold of the excitement and magic for as long as possible. If they ask about Santa specifically, I may lean them to more him being a character of Christmas (like Frosty or Rudolph)...we'll see how well that works out.

Anyways, these are my many thoughts, feelings, and hopefully good traditions/ideas on how Christmas will go down in our home. I hope it's as great for my kids as it was for me...and not because of the loads of presents under the tree.

Birthday Reality Check

 Copies from Instagram, because I can't find better words:

Silly fact about me: I used to want to be an actress. And one of the things I would do is pretend to be interviewed (my family watched a LOT of ET, and I'm not talking about the movie with the alien). One of the things I commonly talked about in these faux interviews was about my imaginary adult life and having a big house, lots of kids, a great husband, and how great life was and how lucky I am (I'm so dead serious, I did this ALL the time).

AS I get another year older (and prepare myself for Larry making his old lady jokes for the next 7 months), I can't help but look at my life and be so amazed and grateful that my manifestations have come true! Everything I dreamed up in those fake interviews has come true so far. I may be getting older, but life (and all these experiences, good and not so good) is getting so much better as the years come.

Lucy is SIX Months!

    I am SIX months old!

 

I like: Food!! She LOVES eating almost anything these days and hates just watching us eat. Sisters, being surrounded by people (maybe she'll be a social butterfly like Cara)

I dislike: Being hungry, being tired, being left on the floor/in the high chair/in the walker for longer than like 5 minutes and just left alone, her bottles if she's even a little tiny bit full

I am now: At her 5 month weight check she was almost 14 lbs (13 lbs 15 oz). Her 6 month check isn't until the 16th so we don't know her official weight until then. She is in size 2 diapers and definitely ready for 6 month size clothes. And rolls for days because of all the new foods she's trying (I'm convinced she likes food more than bottles).

A Typical Day looks like: 

She wakes up around 7:30 AM (though some days she's actually slept until almost 8, which is when I have to wake her up)

 

7:45 - I give her her probiotic, change her bum and give her a 6 oz bottle (usually only 2 oz is breast milk, the rest formula)

8-9:30 she plays on the swing, play mat, or whatever will make her happiest. Sometimes we'll do bumbo time, sometimes she just wants to be held.

9:30-10:45/11  nap time. No more swaddle, but she does get put in a sleep sac in the pack n play, binky in, lights out, and fan on. She usually is out within minutes.

11:00 - next 6 oz bottle and diaper change.

11:00 - 12:30 play time (swing, tummy time, play mat, whatever works) and she usually gets a poop out at this point.

12:30-2 nap time. Same routine as before.

2 - next 6 oz bottle and diaper change

2-3:30 play time

3:30 - 5:00 nap time. Same routine as before. If she wakes up before 5 then her and I will hang out while daddy works out with the older girls

5:00 - next 6 oz bottle and diaper change

5 - 5:30 play time

5:30-6 we do dinner. We JUST started giving her little tastes of food tonight at this time so she can be a part of dinner.

6-7 doing whatever for the night (aka free/play time)

7-7:45 we start our show for the night, at 7:10 ish she gets her last bottle of the night (5.5 oz) and just relax at this point. She might get a little cranky, especially if she woke up from the last nap early, but we keep her entertained until bed. If it's bath night (Sunday and Thursday for her), that starts at 7:20 ish

7:45 get ready for bed. We change her diaper, put on the owlet, put on pajamas, put on the sleep sac, lay her down and give her the binky. No more swaddling and she's good at putting herself to sleep.

This Month: We got to celebrate Lucy's first Thanksgiving and she got to try even more foods - she really likes food. She seemed to really like little bits of stuffing the most haha.

We started a lot more of Christmas decorating as well and it's really fun letting her touch everything and see it light up. I wish I felt confident enough to go out for a drive to look at lights, but maybe next year.

Lucy officially loves getting her lunch and dinner food dishes, I think her favorite thing is being put in the high chair because she knows food is coming haha. She's definitely developing little rolls all over.

We also knew we wanted to get her into the nursery by the time she turned 6 months so this last week we've been spending our time after dinner in the nursery with toys and books and the bumbo chair. I also was working on switching her closet over to the 6 and 6-9 month sized clothes so I hope that helped (we're just barely putting her in the room tonight, so fingers crossed she'll transition as well as the other girls). We also decided we need to get another pack of binkies for her crib so she has a few to find in the night.

Update on last month's goals:

• Binky work at night, or more self soothing
  
  
• Possibly move over to her own room??
  
  
• More book time
  
  
• Work on sitting up and grabbing
  
  
• More Holidays!!

Goals for next month:

• Get her used to more time in her room (for naps maybe?)
  
  
• Sitting up - she's got a good, strong core so I think sitting up will be easy for her
  
  
• Work on starting to crawl a little
  
  
• Ring in a new year as a family of 5!
  

That time I took Cara to the movies - and we stayed the whole time

So I may have mentioned taking Cara to see a movie a while ago (we went to see Ugly Dolls, but only made it maybe 30 minutes into it before we just left). Even though that wasn't the best experience I knew I wanted to try again. 

Luckily, I knew our Cinemark in Americna Fork had some really comfy seats and with the right snacks and blankets I could probably get her to sit still for a whole movie (she's been doing REALLY well with family movie nights lately) so I tried another attempt. Croods 2 has been advertised and she loves the first one so I figured it was perfect.

We ended up going to a showing during nap time (she never really needs a nap anymore so I knew she'd be okay). We got us some snacks and got comfy in our recliners and waited for the movie. I was nervous with potty training, but she's done so good with it that I wasn't TOO worried, I just told her at the beginning that she just needed to let me know if she needed to go and I'd take her. 

She ended up stealing the popcorn and leaving pieces every once in a while on the arm rest for me haha. But whatever works, right?

We luckily made it about 90% of the movie just fine and then she wanted to go potty so I took her real quick. She must have thought it was cool because the remaining portion of the movie we went back and forth between the theater and the bathroom. But it was fine, at that point you kind of knew where the movie was going so I didn't feel it was TOO important.

The movie excitement wore her out on the way home

I'm so looking forward to more movie days with this girl - movies are one big thing I miss from our days before kids so this is so much fun to have a kid old enough to enjoy being at the theater again. And this movie was REALLY cute too!

Thanksgiving 2020

Happy Thanksgiving! I am growing to absolutely love Thanksgiving, this year was MUCH smaller than normal, but that's kind of a given with everything going on in the world right now, but we still had fun.

I got to watch the parade in the morning with my girls, which is always one of the best traditions, everyone got in a good nap in the afternoon, and then we headed over to Larry's grandma's to have dinner with his mom and them. 

It was a tiny dinner party (with an unfortunate accident due to being in the early stages of potty training), but the food was really good. Unfortunately, with a new baby and potty training kids we couldn't stay too long so it felt like we just ate and left, but we still had fun visiting.

One silly part is my mom and I just happened to buy the same Thanksgiving shirt so we made sure we both wore it and took a "twinning" pic haha. 

So yeah, that's all of our Thanksgiving, we had fun, we ate lots, we took a cute family pic, and now we're going to get ready for Christmas...the best time of year!!