The Fifth Month

The fifth month. Great times, lots of firsts. The most memorable of which was when the girls started taking cereal at 5.5 months. If you remember, these girls were HUNGRY girls. All. The. Time. They nursed probably every two hours. Once they started taking cereal, they were like two completely different babies.

Also this month -- CHRISTMAS!!! Although, technically, they were almost 6 months old at the time ... the entire month of December was spent with Christmas cheer. It was so much fun. Allen went to a training seminar with Prashant Kaul the first week in December so Grandmuggs came to stay with me and the girls. She was a blessing -- totally helped me decorate and get the house ready for the holidays. As well as give me a much needed break. She always really helps whenever she comes to visit.... lets me sleep in, does bathtime, whatever she can do to get her hands on her grandbabies. As for Christmas, We really wanted to do it up big this year since we were staying home and, of course, it was the girls first Christmas. I went to Pottery Barn Kids and had stockings embroidered and everything. I just didn't have the time to make the beautiful stockings like my mother made for Stephen and me. It was hard, though, because PBK asked me what I wanted to embroider on them. It was obvious that Emma and Olivia had to have their own... but what to put on mine and Edgar's? At first I wanted to put our names... but that just didn't make sense. We needed to have "mom" and "dad" on our respective stockings. It was so foreign to me, though! Wow, we are parents.

As I mentioned, we wanted to have the girls' first Christmas at home in Durham. Since we rotate holidays, this was Grandmuggs and Pop Pop's year to have Christmas Eve/Day. They came to stay with us the week before Christmas. We were even comfortable enough to leave them alone for a date! (Thanks to the Grandparents for watching the girls!) We went to the Fearrington Inn for a romantic dinner -- it was so wonderful. We had Champagne by the fire and everything. Bless the grandparents (especially Grandmuggs) for dealing with us (read: ME) when we got home. We really enjoyed ourselves. Pictures below:

And then my parents came to visit on Christmas Day - we had a lovely time. Granddad got the girls a jumperoo for Christmas and it quickly became Livi's favorite thing in the whole wide world. Below is a picture -- she completely wore herself out. P.S. The girls were COMPLETELY spoiled at Christmas.