Christmas Traditions - Part 2

Last year was our first Christmas with Lily. On Christmas Eve we had a bit of a crisis and ended up spending Christmas evening at the emergency vet. It was a rough couple weeks, and I have to say, I had a pretty good pity party for myself. It wasn't at all how I wanted my 1st Christmas with my baby girl to go. But when I think back, I remember playing with her in the waiting room and how happy she was and her little smiles. I guess I learned that I should be content no matter what the circumstances are. This year, I was really excited that things would be different, and I have been cherishing every moment.

One of the things my family normally does every Christmas is to make a decorate Christmas cookies. My mom will make sugar cookies from scratch and then me, my siblongs, and my cousins would ice and decorate them. Well, we majorly cheated this year - I bought pre-formed cookies that only had to be dropped on a cookie sheet, and I bought icing too. I have no excuses for myself other than bad time management. We still had fun, though!

tasting some icing

Daddy is so funny!

The women in my family have a tradition of giving each other ornaments for Christmas. Lily will join in around the time she is in high school, just like I did. For now, I wanted to do something different with her regarding ornaments, so I decided I would like to make one with her every year. Hopefully in future years we can get really crafty, but this year we just took it easy and she painted one. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of her paiting it since she and I were the only ones around. But, here is the finished product.

Hopefully I will have many ornaments created by her decorating our tree one day.

Something new we started this year was getting a birthday cake for Jesus. Totally makes sense, right? We decided on red velvet since the colors red and white have special meaning for Christians.

Red - symbolizes Jesus' blood that was shed for us

White - the purity we gain when Jesus' blood washes away our sins

 Christmas morning Lily found her star for the final time. Then she placed it back next to baby Jesus.

This has been an amazing experience for all of us. She has had so much fun each morning finding the star, and it has taught us a lot as parents. It has helped me to think of ways to talk about Jesus, and I am hoping to continue that as we move forward.

Pictures from Christmas morning:

playing angry birds with Papa

 wake up, uncle!!!

getting tickled 

reading the Christmas story

opening presents

I'm pretty sure we now own every toy in the world.

watching "A Christmas Story"

yummy mashed potatoes

We had a very Merry Christmas, and I hope you all did as well!!!

15 Months

Lily was 15 months on the 17th. This post is late, but I have been so busy, so I figured I'd just wait until after her well baby check-up with the pediatrician.

Height - 31 inches
Weight - 22 lbs

Her vocabulary has EXPLODED recently. She has a new word every day. She can say mommy, daddy, Nana, Papa, nana (for banana), apple, cheese, 'ank oo (thank you), cup, car, ball, star, keys, bag, baby doll, yes, no, puppy, kitty, turtle, fish, night night, bye bye, hi, wash, all done, Austin, Barlow, uncle, boo-boo, and probably a bunch of stuff I am forgetting. Right now she will not even attempt to say anything that starts with a J. She tries "Lily" every once in awhile, but tends to stay away from words that start with L, too. She still signs "please" and "more" even though I'm pretty sure she could say them if she wanted. I am always amazed by her comprehension. She understands pretty much everything I say, and can follow a whole bunch of commands. My favorite is "put it back" - that command is my best friend :) Right now her favorite word is "no". Anything she doesn't like gets a "no" in response, and sometimes she will drag it out with a whine. She was sitting on the floor the other night playing and Clay's toe touched her, which she didn't like, so she whined "nnnoooooo" and twisted away. We just kept poking her with our toes because we thought her response was hilarious, haha. I can see that this "no" situation is going to become a battle pretty soon. But, that's okay - I'm ready. I'm pretty sure she will cause just as much trouble as I did as a child, and I hope to be exactly like my mom, who was nothing if not consistent. We didn't get away with anything. She won every battle, and we knew it.

But Lily is just as sweet as ever. I am told by her teachers that she has a very nurturing nature. She holds the hands and helps all the little kids that are smaller than she is. At home and at school she carries around babies and stuffed animals and kisses them and pats them on the backs. I love when she lays one of her dolls on a pillow, pats its back, and tells it "night night". She also stopped at the playground when a little girl was crying in her momma's arms. She walked over and stared at the little girl and put her hand on the momma's knee until the little girl calmed down. These are the moments when I am proudest of her. I hope she maintains a sweet spirit as she grows up.

We moved her into a bed, and she has slept in it 4 nights now. There are no real issues to report. The change doesn't seem to have made any difference to her. This morning I heard little girl high pitched chattering and when I went in her room she was lying in bed snuggling her bunny and talking to it. 2 of the mornings we have found her sleeping on the floor - haha. I was not surprised. She moves around so much in her sleep.

This 2nd year truly is going faster than the 1st. I can't believe we are already over 3 months into it. These past 3 months Lily has made strong bonds with her preschool teachers and her friends. I love watching her play with her friend, Barlow. The other night they were taking turns pushing each other around in a doll stroller - it was so sweet.

I'm going to use some of our holidays pics as her 15 month pics - hopefully sometime soon I will get around to doing our Christmas post. 


She loved spending time with her cousins.

Christmas Traditions - Part 1

Clay and I have been talking for the last few weeks about Christmas traditions - ones we already have that we would like to pass down, and ones we would like to start for our little family, and we finally concreted some decisions.

This discussion was actually kicked off last year when I was listening to a morning radio show and heard them talking about Elf on a Shelf. The first thing I thought was "how have I never heard fo this thing before?" The radio host was saying that they had to ban the elf to downstairs because the kids were so creeped out that they didn't want it near their bedrooms. I don't think all kids are scared by it, and that is not the reason we will not be doing Elf on the Shelf. The reason is that I want to teach my daughter to be "good" because she loves Jesus, and she loves her parents, and the Bible says that if you love Jesus then you show Him by being obedient. I do not want my daughter only behaving for the weeks leading up to December. I don't want her learning to only be good because the elf will tell Santa she is bad and so she only behaves so she will get presents. Worldly goods are not a proper motivation in my opinion. But, I also can't use Elf on a Shelf because we don't do Santa. Elf on a Shelf makes Santa front and center every morning. We get our picture taken with Santa and we watch him on tv - but we don't pretend he is real. So what's the point in having an elf? That's not what Christmas is about. Clay and I had an argument about this before we ever had kids. He wanted to do Santa with our kids because it was so magical as a child. I am so happy that after actually having a child that he has changed his opinion. This is mine: the REAL Christmas is so much MORE magical than Santa!!! What is more magical that Jesus being born so that He could die to save us? We have so much fun and do so many activities leading up to Christmas, why would we need to make-believe? Reality is plenty for us.

I am not about bashing other people's decisions, and I have yet to hear about it this year, so maybe it's not as popular as I was led to believe, so what is the point in all this Elf on a Shelf talk then? Well, I very much liked the idea of waking up Lily and having her excited to look for something every morning. I get what initially draws parents to the idea of this. It DOES sound like a lot of fun. So last year I came up with a plan on how to do this in a Christ-honoring way - and we get to start this year!

I got two wooden stars from Joanne's and glued them together, painted them, and glued beads on them. This might be the most bedazzled star ever, but what can I say - I am not incredibly creative - but I love sparkles :)

Clay and I will hide the star every night. And since Lily knows the shape of the star already, that will make this extra fun. We will look for the star every morning, and that can prompt us to tell her why we are looking for the star - that the wise men followed the star to find Jesus (we are always looking for a way to work Jesus into our conversation - it's not hard - He made everything! - Deut. 6:6-9). Then on Christmas morning, can you guess where she will find the star? Over the nativity, of course! And every Christmas morning as she gets older she will come to realize that the star will always be over the nativity, because it leads to Jesus!

Can you tell how excited I am? I love finding ways to make secular Christmas more about Jesus, and I have been waiting a whole year to implement this idea!

So, technically, yesterday was December 1st, but it snuck on me, so I wasn't finished creating the star. The different coats of glue and paint took several overnight dryings, but I scrambled to get it finished last night, so we started this morning.

 Lily didn't have any problems finding the star this morning -it's pretty obvious she was really excited about it. It wasn't exactly in a place that was hard to find - right in front of the tv in the middle of the living room, but we wanted her to really get the concept of finding it the 1st morning we did it.

She had a great time playing with it, gave it kisses, showed it to her bunny, and really didn't want to give it back. Then we I put it on a high shelf out of her reach, she kept walking over and pointing at it.
We could not be more thrilled with how well this went - she thought it was so much fun!!!

Another tradition we are starting this year is a calendar counting down to Christmas. This will be a first for us. I made the calendar because I wanted to decide which pictures would be in it. There were 2 reasons for this - 1. I knew which pictures she would get excited about, and 2. I wanted to make sure there were no Santa related pictures. I really don't have anything against Santa, just like I have nothing against Elmo, or any other cartoon character. I promise. But, I figured she is going to get plenty of Santa at the mall and on tv, and people always ask "What did Santa bring you?" We will probably watch Santa and Rudolph related movies. She has even already had her picture taken with Santa. It permeates our culture and will be everywhere. So, if I am making something, why not try to make it more about Jesus? There are pictures of candy canes, wreaths, and other symbols that represent Christmas, but no Santa. I just want to make sure that Santa isn't so prevalent that at some point she misses the true meaning of Christmas. I want to parent with intention. I want her to know that in our house, Jesus is the most important thing, and in a time when we celebrate Jesus's birthday, He will be the thing we see the most.

(Please ignore the maps - took this pic in my office)

Lily looking to see what is under December 1st.

 Checking out the star.

 Pulling off the cover off of December 1st - the countdown has officially started!


Our third daily tradition is reading the Christmas story to Lily every night. Some nights we will do this straight from the Bible, and other times we will read it from a different book.

These are our 2 books - the one on the left has the Christmas story broken up into 31 pieces written in kid language and includes Bible verses and songs with each. The one on the right is the Christmas story in kid language, and has the Bible verses in the back. I love that - marrying something they can understand with the actual Bible.

These are the traditions that we will celebrate every day of December leading up to Christmas. The point in all of this is that being a parent has convicted me in a lot of ways, since passing down my faith to my child is the most important thing I can do as a parent. One of those convictions involves how I celebrate Christmas. I can't do Christmas the way I used and be nonchalant about everything - like I said, I want to parent with intention. We say every year at church that Jesus is "the reason for the season" and then we read the Christmas story on Christmas morning, and that's pretty much it. I can't say that everything that is a part of secular Christmas is harmless and fun and move forward with the status quo. My mom pounded into my head when I was a child that she would have to stand before God one day and answer for how she parented me, and that sticks with me now that I'm a mother myself. Hopefully this process will make Jesus front in center in how we celebrate - it's His birthday after all. Not to mention, it's tons of fun!!!

We have more traditions, but they are one time events, so more posts to come later in the month.

Christmas with the Pastor, Etc.

Last night was "Christmas with the Pastor" at our church. It is how the church kicks of this month's celebration of Christmas. When we arrived they had all of the Christmas lights up around the campus, and the main hallway outside of the fellowship hall was decorated with a bunch of Christmas trees. It was really beautiful, and I really started to get in the mood for Christmas. It's different here - because it's warmer, it doesn't *feel* like Christmas. But, I think last night changed that. At "Christmas with the Pastor", the kid choirs sing a bunch of songs, which is really cute. Lily loved it and was clapping, dancing, and watching intently.

What's great about Christmas with the Pastor is that there are kids EVERYWHERE. When Lily squeals outrageously loud, no one notices! It was such a fun experience to be singing Christmas songs at church, with my baby girl, and to not have to worry about whether or not she was behaving perfectly.

Here are some cute pics of the decorations and the service:

Lily is a huge fan of fist bumping:

She is also a huge fan of kissing. It's really cute, though (for now).

 After the singing, Dr. Powell had all of the kids come up to the front. They sat on the stage and filled the floor in front of him. I don't know how I expected this to go, but I hadn't anticipated how amazing it would be. Dr. Powell was so animated and good with the kids. He had figurines for every character from the donkey and the camel, to the three kings, to Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. As he told the story, he showed each character to the kids. It was quite a feat that he was able to keep so many entertained for the whole 15-20 minutes.

Aftwerwards, the church provided cocoa and cookies. Lily took a couple bites of her cookie, but didn't seem to think it was anythng too special. She made a pretty funny face at the cocoa - wasn't a fan of that AT ALL.

Lily with Papa and Dr. Powell:

Lily with Nana and Papa:

(we seem to have lost our tights and shoes at some point)

I dressed Lily in a green velvet dress last Sunday for church. Clay tried to tell me it wasn't December yet, but since it was after Thanksgiving, my opinion is that Christmas dresses were officially allowed. I'm glad I was able to find a short sleeved one at the consignment store, since it was over 80 degrees outside.

I am OBSESSED with these next few pics:

 And today it is officially December!!! I guess the weather decided to act like it is winter (kind of) since the high is 72 today - I'm pretty sure that's as cold as it gets here. But, I was excited, because I could finally dress Lily in some of her fall-ish clothes.

She decided to taste a rock this morning and kept saying "uck" afterwards.

Not sure what happened to the lighting on this one - it was the best I could get of the 2 of us. Taking a picture of yourself with a large professional camera is a lot harder than with the regular small digital one.

Sitting in Daddy's lap while Mommy loads up the car:

She must have thought she was going to drive, because she got really excited:

 I got a close-up of her eyes on the way to school, because people are always asking me color they are. I really have no idea. Inside they ususally look gray or maybe a greenish-gray. When sun shines on them then sometimes look tan, or like in this picture they look kind of green with brown in the center. 

I'm super excited it is finally December. I'm ready to start doing all of our Christmas traditions with Lily. But I will finish this post with these amusing pictures - she always tries to attack me at least once while I am taking her picture, and wants to get really close to the lense - I think she thinks she can look through and see me from the other side :)