Thankful (11 months, 1 week)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I certainly enjoyed my first Thanksgiving! It was a bit sad though as this was my last major holiday "first." I will admit that I really don't remember a whole lot about last Christmas as I pretty much slept through most of it. I will be much more entertaining and fun (and Mommy and Daddy will be less exhausted and Mommy will feel 100% better) this Christmas! Have you heard of the song that goes, "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go!" Well for us it was more like over the rivers and through ridiculous traffic to get to Grandma's house! Our usual 2 hour trip was more like 4 hours plus a dinner stop! It took us nearly 2 hours to go from Roseville to Lakeville! Instead of having pizza dinner at Grandma's like we planned we ended up at the DQ in Lakeville as we were all crabby and hungry by the time we made it through the Twin Cities. It was fun for me as I got to have some toast from a chicken strip basket and I got to watch myself eat because I could see my reflection in the window. It's amazing how entertaining I can be!

When I got to Grandma's house I was really tired but as soon as I walked in I saw all kinds of toys waiting for me. Sleep was going to have to wait as I had some serious playing to do! I eventually went to bed and when I woke up I had even more excitement. There was an awesome parade on TV. I loved all the singing and stood up against the TV dancing.

When I woke up from my nap there were lots of relatives there for Thanksgiving dinner. Before we ate, I served appetizers to my cousin Austen. Austen and I like to play together a lot!

Here I am all ready for my Thanksgiving feast!

Bring on the turkey!

So Thanksgiving dinner wasn't all I imagined it to be. I had turkey and sweet potatoes but I thought I was going to get to eat a big piece of turkey...not pureed turkey. Mom said next year I can have whatever I want and if I start chewing my food better I can have bigger pieces of food.

After dinner I set up afternoon tea at my own little table. It was just my size!

Here I am with Grandma having a tea party. Mmmmmmm yummy tea!

Grandma and I love playing tea party. I also had fun feeding tea to my baby doll. She also really likes tea. Just in case any of my readers didn't realize this, but we really didn't drink tea. It's called playing "pretend." Pretend is pretty fun and less messy than real tea.

On Friday I stayed at Grandma's house while Mommy and Daddy went Christmas shopping. I showed off my dancing skills, had a nap, and played a lot which sounds a lot more fun than shopping. I accidently sneezed while I was eating my breakfast and sprayed oatmeal all over Uncle Steve's face. Oops! At least it wasn't peas!

After they got back from shopping it was time to go home. On Saturday when I woke up from my morning nap I was so surprised when we came downstairs. Our house had been transformed into a winter wonderland! Mommy and Daddy got most of the Christmas decorations up yesterday as a result of 2 good naps and Mommy and I running errands and staying out of Daddy's way.

This is me in front of the Christmas tree this morning before church. I was excited to finally wear this outfit. It's been in my closet since January or so! Gotta love the after-Christmas sales!

I have noticed that all the ornaments on the bottom portion of the tree (within my reach) are all the hard-to-break, don't-have-any-fancy-parts-that-I-could-eat-variety. Kind of a bummer I'd say! The cats and I are having a competition to see who can get in more trouble due to Christmas decorations. So far the cats are winning. I've actually been pretty good about leaving the ornaments alone.

What else is new with me? I'm doing better with my standing. I'm starting to gain more confidence. I've taken a few more steps on my own but still much prefer to be hanging onto something. Usually my steps come when I'm hanging onto a toy and forget that a toy can't actually keep me up. I've been very chatty this week. Some new things I'm saying are "mom mom" and "num num" Still no sign of my next set of teeth but I've been doing my teething behaviors so Mom and Dad think there are some more on the way.

That's all folks! I'll leave you with a video of me dancing to the Macy's parade.