Our favorite present

We had a wonderful Christmas. Donovan was well behaved and liked all his toys, and even more exciting, let us sleep in until 8am! No 5 or 6 am feedings! What a lovely boy. And even better, he seems to have finally gotten over his cold. My sister spent the night Christmas eve so we all got up when Donovan did and started our Christmas morning. My sister made an egg casserole and then we opened up presents while it cooked. I think this should be a new tradition. Present opening went smoothly and Donovan's favorite part by far were the bows we put on his larger presents. He thought the bow was the present. Remind me of that when we have our next child. Right about the time we woke up it began to snow! So we were lucky enough to have Donovan's first Christmas be a white Christmas. The one bummer about this Christmas was that my parents weren't able to be here with us. Sad. But they were at home safe, so if they couldn't be with us, at least they were not driving here in the bad weather. Next year will be different hopefully.

Christmas eve we hosted my dad's side of the family for our Christmas celebration. Donovan was a little on the crabby side, but I think he was mostly overwhelmed. He was so excited for the present opening, that as soon as we started he decided to poop out of his diaper. Lovely. Oh well, the life of a baby. After a quick outfit change and clean up, Donovan spent the rest of the present opening time crawling from person to person and trying to eat their ribbon &/or bows. He was so exhausted that he went to sleep at 8pm that night. A full hour earlier then most nights.

After Christmas morning at our house, Tom, Donovan and I bundled up and headed to Tom's parents house so we could do our gift exchange and spend time with them. Donovan was much less crabby that day so that was nice. We exchanged gifts, then visited with Tom's grandma, his Aunt Pat and her friend Margaret (who is pretty much an "honorary" aunt). During dinner Donovan tried his first taste of Cheerios. We are not big cereal eaters so we have yet to buy him some but he loved them so we will be making that purchase soon.

My favorite part of the whole day was back at our house though. We headed home early Christmas evening to unwind and let Donovan try to have somewhat of a normal night after all the excitement of the last 24 hours. Tom and I were trying to unpack and organize all our goodies and Donovan was just crawling around. We would look at him occasionally to make sure he was not doing anything he shouldn't be, but for the most part he was roaming around, exploring without us hovering over him. Well at some point he was crawling into the kitchen and I looked down and he looked like this.


It was just the sweetest thing. I asked Tom if he put that on Donovan's back and he said that he did not. So in crawling around, he somehow got the bow squarely in the middle of his back, sticky side down, just as if someone had placed it there. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it now because I felt like God placed it there to remind us what is most important in life. Donovan is the best present that we have ever been given. He is such a vibrant, fun kid and I feel so blessed that we get to be his parents. A healthy, happy child is such a blessing and I never want to take that for granted. So when I saw him crawling around with the bow on his back I was like "That is right. You are my favorite present".

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays from our family to yours!