New Year, Lots of New Things

Well, let's start with Christmas. It is the 8th year Rob and I have spent together! Traditionally, we spend Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with Rob's family. Since I had to work Christmas Eve this year, my fam came down a few days before for dinner. It was fun.

My mom, brothers, sister, and brother-in-law

Every Christmas Day that I can remember has been spent at Rob's sister's house. We go and open presents with them, gorge ourselves with an all-you-can-eat breakfast, then go to a movie, and the fun doesn't stop there. We then get together with the WHOLE family and exchange gifts and have dinner. That's what we did this year.

My nieces and nephews got Rock Band, so we also fit that in the mix too. So fun.

Alaina's first Christmas was more fun for us than it was for her. She had more fun crawling around to everyone else's things saying, "Oooh!"

Here's Rob trying to put Alaina's toy together. He always gets this cute intense look on his face when he's fixing things.

Now for New Year's...the last few years we've had our own version of an Iron Chef competition with Rob's family. Last year we were given a bag with marshmallows, 7-up, and chicken. We had 2 hours. Rob and I struggled to find some sort of chicken saucy thing, and thought we had it until we tasted our sickly concoction. It tasted more like throw-up than any kind of sauce. We started over and came up with something that wasn't so bad. We decided that we wanted to reduce the stress involved (Rob and I were yelling at each other last year...we both wanted to be the head chefs) and thought we'd do an Around the World Tour. We were all assigned a country and had to make an authentic dish from that place. We had Mexico and made the best, biggest Kick-Butt enchiladas ever! We also had to bring a dessert we'd never made before, so then we all loaded up on yummy desserts. It was so much fun!

Of course on of the biggest highlights of this year so far is Alaina's first birthday! We had a pizza party with our family and did the traditional small cake for her to dive into and a larger, less slobbered on cake for the rest of us.

She loves, lOVES, LOVES her cousins and played with them all night. I stand corrected-she loves all her cousins except for Kamryn, her very adorable cousin just a month younger than her.

Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy-truly a trait of the Natural Man. I guess we were all born with it because my one year old daughter has a horrible case of it. Anyone else could play with her toys except Kamryn. She pulled her hair and hit her and screamed a horrible scream...this is a side of my daughter I didn't know existed! I am scared for both of our futures. The thing she is most protective of is her daddy. Rob held Kamryn and Alaina flipped her lid. She's so sweet otherwise...

I took her to the doctor for her one year check and here's the stats:
*Weight: 22lbs 14 oz (65%ile)
* Length: 31 inches (96%ile)
* Head Circumference: OFF THE CHARTS! The doctor even said, "She still has a big head!"

I cried when she got her shots. I'm the wimp! No one told me until right before that she'd get a shot in each leg and each arm. The nurses told me to hold her hands down, then they prepped the sites and Alaina just looked at them and me with wide, scared eyes. Then they shot her in the legs...then the arms! I saw her twist and contort in horrible pain and look at me with her big blue eyes and I broke. But about 2 minutes later, we were both fine, at least recovered enough for a photo opp. Okay, I'm a nurse people! I poke people all the time! What's wrong with me? Way more of me is a mom than a nurse...that's what.

I love my little girl so much and can't believe how fast the last year has gone.