We didn't get Lucy anything for Christmas because she's a baby and she doesn't know what Christmas is. I tried to be excited about Christmas this year but the disillusion began when Santa's photographer took 7 pictures and only printed the one with Lucy crying. I think it's easy to get carried away when you're pregnant thinking about all the fun things you're going to do with your baby. The truth is, if you don't usually do it before you have a baby, chances are you will not do it with your child. Therefore, I did not put up a Christmas tree. We did not go to Snowflake Lane. We didn't drink egg nog or sing Christmas carols and we most certainly did not go to midnight mass on Christmas eve. Instead Dan and I opened a good bottle of wine (2007 L'Ecole Perigee for the oenophiles among you), cooked a ham and mashed potatoes, lit a fire and watched The Sound of Music. It was probably the best Christmas Eve ever. Lucy slept through the whole thing. I might have woken her up when I was singing along to the movie but that's for her own good. She will learn all the words eventually.
Christmas morning came and Lucy still had no idea it was different than any other day. We spent the day at my parents house along with Dan's parents and my relatives that were in town from Mexico. It was a lovely day and Lucy did great being cooed at and passed around all day. It's important that your baby is clean, fed, safe and loved regardless of the day. Babies innately know they're ok. They don't know there is a pile of gifts waiting for them. They don't know there's a fake fat guy in a red suit breaking and entering and eating all your cookies. I will try my hardest to make Christmas special for her when she's old enough to appreciate it. Until then, we will not be planning what to get her for her first birthday because she will not know what that is either.
I'm not a total scrooge; here's a picture of Lucy in her Christmas suit. Cute, no?
On October 24th my life changed forever. I'm not going to tell you about how happy I was that day because that's obvious and boring. My life changed forever, not simply because my heart was so full of joy and love that it nearly exploded, but because I had a nervous breakdown at 1 am when I realized I was never going to get a full night's sleep again. My life changed forever when I realized that we live in a society where two clueless new parents are allowed to go home with a fragile newborn and the only thing said parents get from the hospital is a few diapers and a huge stack of bills. My life changed forever when I was strapped to a table in what felt like a meat locker, fully aware that behind a thin blue curtain I was split open and my internal organs were on display for a team of about 37 doctors and nurses. If that wasn't weird enough, they proceeded to pull a baby out of me. A baby. A full size newborn with eyes, ears and fingers. If I didn't know it happened every day I'd think I had been abducted by aliens. Weirdest.experience.ever.
2 months later it's still a blur. We've been mixing bottles and changing diapers like robots in the middle of the night. I look at her and wonder a few things like, whose idea was this in the first place and how this baby came out with lightish brown hair and no eyebrows. I thought for sure she'd be my spitting image, unibrow and all. I hadn't considered she's 50% Dan so when she showed up with small round ears and a cute button nose I demanded a maternity test. Surely they drugged me and the c-section was a dream. The bigger she gets the less and less I believe she's mine and the more and more I fall in love with this beautiful stranger baby.
Motherhood has made me do some ridiculous things. To prove this here are some pictures from her Anne Geddes inspired photoshoot at 4 days old. Seriously, who am I?
...and then I put her in an apple bucket.
Check back in and I'll tell you about onesies (cotton torture devices) and the research I've conducted to find out what I could have possibly done in my past life to deserve such a wonderful husband and family.
