Chloë's first Christmas

We spent Chloë's first Christmas in Seattle with my parents. She turns out to be an excellent traveler. She had no problems with her ears, even on the flights back when she had a cold (which is better than I did); she loved walking through the airport, riding in the carrier and watching the lights and the people; she was able to sleep most of the way out and part of the way back. We connected through Dallas on the way out, and through Chicago on the way back, and got caught in the Chicago traffic jam--we left Seattle three hours late and arrived to a canceled flight, couldn’t get on standby or another flight until the next day, and ended up spending the night in a hotel without our luggage. Except for kicking off her socks in protest when we tried to get her to sleep (at nearly midnight, Central time) in the hotel crib, she even adapted well to that.

She had a great week with her grandparents. I hardly saw her at all except to feed her and put her to bed, but she was happy to introduce them to her ways and accept their adoration. She was introduced to aunts, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, great-uncles, and carrots, and loved them all. She got so much stuff Mom and Dad are having to ship most of it back to us (plus Aunt Kris packed her present in a mailer box, which was pretty awesome). A year ago we had no baby stuff. Now we've got more baby stuff than almost anything else. There are teethers, balls, rattles dolls, toys that sing, squishy books for the bathtub, soft books for chewing, hard books for reading.

We had Snyder family Christmas the day we got back, and except for sleeping through most of it (due to having gotten only about six hours' sleep that night and another couple on the plane and in the car, which wasn’t nearly enough) she did well there, too. She certainly got plenty of loot, including an exersaucer, which is good because she's almost outgrown her swing.

Yesterday we finally had our nuclear-family Christmas. Her gifts from us were a stuffed dog which she opened herself (with help), a pendant with her birthstone, and a Christmas ornament. She got four other ornaments so this last wasn't exactly necessary, but it was important to me--my parents gave my brother and me an ornament every year to help out with our trees when we moved out, and I want to do the same for my children.

So Christmas number one was a success. Now we've got to teach her certain pieces of etiquette, such as thank-you letters, but her penmanship isn't the best so those probably won't go out very promptly.