The Babies' First Christmas

Well, the babies made it through their first Christmas with flying colors (and Shae and I somehow survived too). It's been kind of crazy around here lately with grandparents, Christmas, the New Year, trips to the zoo (more on that in another post), and other stuff (more on that in another post too), but I finally have a few minutes to try and recap Jackson and Ella's first Christmas. We posted some pics from Christmas over in our gallery.

Monday (the 22nd) my Mom and Shae's parents got into town. I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff I should say about how great it is to get together with our families for the holidays and all that, but really I was just happy we had three new people to hand the munchkins off to. So with all these people to watch the babies you know what happened the first morning everyone was here? Shae and her dad went Xmas shopping and the grandmas went shopping and I ended up alone with both babies for half the day. How does that happen?

Tuesday night as we were preparing for bed Shae just blurted out "I think the babies are going to sleep through the night tonight." The fact that Ella had slept through the night about three times ever and Jack hadn't even really come close didn't seem to change her feeling. After I pointed these facts out to her and mocked her for thinking there was any chance we would get a full night's sleep we turned off the lights and drifted off. Sure enough, both babies slept through until Lunchbox woke us up at 6 the next morning.

Fresh off a full night's rest it was time for Christmas Eve. After a pretty laid back day we headed over to John and Leah's (Grace's aunt) for their Christmas Eve party. The babies were a big hit (and I found even more people to pawn them off on), and I got to meet a few more members of Shae's family. After the party, it was home to get everything ready for Santa and get Jack and Ella to bed. Everything went pretty smoothly, and although the twins didn't both sleep through the night (they haven't repeated that trick yet) they were pretty good.

Jack must have known it was Christmas morning because he started the day off with a nice present for me: a nice morning dump. Jack must be a big fan of Christmas (or he felt really good after his poop and puke) because he busted out his first real smile for us. He'd given us little grins before, but on Christmas morning he let loose with a great big smile and kept smiling at us for about 10 minutes. Ella has been smiling for a while so she wasn't very impressed, but the rest of us were very excited.

After Jack was done smiling, it was time for the really good stuff: opening presents. Instead of recapping everyone's presents I'll just say that everyone got lots of good stuff (especially me). Thanks everyone. The babies got lots of goodies, but since they got so much stuff at their showers Shae and I got to reap the benefits. I think this will probably be the last year we get much for ourselves, but it was a great Christmas.

That's about it for the recap. I'm sure I forgot to mention tons of stuff, but the babies are crying and need some attention. It's a week late, but Merry Christmas everyone!