Christmas 2012

McKenna's birthday falls a couple of weeks before Christmas. Being her first birthday, she wasn't overly excited about it, and she already has more than a lot of children, so this year we decided to give her birthday presents to a local charity that passes them along to needy families at Christmas. While everyone thought we were being very generous, secretly we were just too cheap to buy replacement batteries for the 5,000 electronic toys she was guaranteed to get. Her birthday came and went with a party at a local daycare (which she hated), gifts from us (which I ended up unwrapping), and a birthday dinner (which she threw to the dogs). My daughter is truly a gift.
Over Christmas, on the other hand, she seemed to really come out of her shell. She played with her older cousins (as much as a 1-year-old can), ate cheesies by the fistful, and actually helped with the unwrapping of her gifts. This was also when she really got the hang of walking - she saw all of her older cousins running around, and something seemed to click, and she started walking independently that night. It was pretty neat. Experiencing Christmas through the eyes of my daughter was truly amazing. Her excitement over unwrapping a new Bubble Guppies story was contagious, her giggles when she first crawled through her inflatable play tunnel were adorable, and her favorite part of Christmas... unwrapping the packs of squeezable fruit. Words cannot express how much that kid adores pureed fruit packs. Although we didn't get to spend it with our families, we created some new traditions with our precious daughter. It was truly a Christmas to remember.