Santa Baby

Here I am in the back seat Mom’s seat of our trusty 4-door sedan heading back over I-90 to Beantown after a week-long holiday tour in Buffalo.  The flicker of oncoming headlights are putting me into a trance as I mandatorily look up to ward off the car sickness that’s seeping into my gut.  My head is bursting with words after Lyla’s first Christmas experience.  So what else to do but type it all out on the 8-hour ride back?  Okay, 9 hours counting the newly acquired diaper pit stops we’ve picked up this year.

A Baby’s First Christmas. 

A new mom can envision the dreamy day from the moment the little one is growing inside her tum.  (Minus the St. Pauli Girl bottle in the shot – nice job honey.)  We cannot wait to pass on the red & green decorated torch of excitement from the time we were a little girl counting down the days until Santa Claus was coming to town.  Going to pick out the biggest evergreen Dad could jam on the car roof while Mom knew it would jam into the living room ceiling, hanging up the 3-d felt calendar that you’d race down the stairs each December morning in order to beat your younger sister at hanging up the puffy wreath from slot #16 and onto the velcro tree, and of course squeezing out the overstuffed Toys R Us Holiday Catalog/Bible from the now undersized mailbox so that you could flood the pages with red-marker circles around all of the hottest toys you begged to be under your tree that year.  I think I would even write the catalog page number in my letter to Santa –

2)  GameBoy Travel Light p.63 section b

3)  Rollerblades in lime green/purple size 6 p.94 section d

…Who does that?!  

I can only envision our years to come of sending off Lyla’s letter to Santa from the red North Pole mailbox sitting quietly at the Post Office, setting out a plate of energy boosting carrots & celery for that Rudolph that we keep singing about, or watching the Santa Tracker on the 11:00pm Christmas Eve news right before I tuck her under the covers over those unbearably cute seasonal pj’s.  The excitement that fills the air on that magical Christmas Eve is like no other when you’re 7 years old. An excitement I’m sure is multiplied times 10 as you see it through your little girl’s 7-year old eyes. 

Handmade stockings by Great Grandma Carol.  Think she’s improved since Troy’s 1981 rendition?

But rewind it back to 2010, where Lyla is only a wee 8-months old, and Mom & Dad get a “practice run” at this whole Santa’s Helper deal. 

Lesson 1:  Inspect all fragile gifts before walking out of the store with them, better yet an inspection before Christmas Eve at 9:00pm would be best.

Let’s just say her fish tank did not make it under the tree this year.  We told her Rudolph took too sharp of a turn into Hingham and forced Santa to bring the tank back to his workshop to have fixed just in time for her 1st birthday.  Damn reindeer.

The before shot.The deceiving after shot.

It was a nice and relaxing Christmas.  Grandma & Grandpa Dolly spent the weekend with us as we declared to the family that such a momentous morning at our own home was in order for her first.  We read The Night Before Christmas as our bedtime book on that chilly December 24.  Christmas carols were a buzzin’ in the background.  It was so perfect I was waiting for the Christmas mouse that’s illustrated in the book to come out of a perfectly carved hole in our wall with his mini Santa hat on to join us for some cheese and wine.  Lyla impressed us with holding off her present-unwrapping excitement until 7am the next morning.  Bright colored toys and clothes were unveiled to a babe who was more into throwing around the crinkly tissue paper that costs $1.00.  And I loved how she took a nap midway through the monstrous pile of gifts she had laid out in front of her Bumbo perched self – my kind of girl.

Perfect gift to open during her morning nap.

She’s loving to gaze at the white wonderland outside our picturesque window during this time of year as well.  Why is it raining milk?, she ponders from the living room.  Love this moment I caught the other day as it was the first time she had seen snow. And was mesmerized.

Oh, and it’s official….we have a jumper.  Even when the girlie is out of her new toy, she will jump in your arms with her new-found frog legs.  So freaking funny.

But the jumping was cut short as we packed up “Santa’s Sleigh” and headed to Buffalo to ring in the new year. 

And here marks the beginning of my DSLR world…

The other rockstar – Lyla’s cousin Livi.

2011…wow.

It’s no secret that 2010 was such a year of change.  Change for the better.  Change for the right view on life.  One might look at our year as a pain-in-the-you-know-what move across the country, cramming into a house half the size from our last, a pregnancy interrupted with a replacement of all doctors, new jobs to figure out in an unknown city, a birth with a devastating diagnosis of Down syndrome, the daunting days of heart surgery, and a life turned upside down. 

But now let’s look at it from my new post-Lyla perspective: Troy’s hard work paying off with a promising new promotion, moving into a quaint waterfront house with views out of the movies over the ocean, being closer to oh-so-important family as they could feel our new member kick with a hand on my belly after a short drive over, the new adventure of Boston with it’s uncharted parks and old-town streets filled with salty air, the Down syndrome community that has OPENED OUR EYES and embraced us with open arms, a slice of heaven located between concrete walls called Children’s Hospital Boston that would seamlessly fix our little girl’s heart with ease, and our lives not turned upside down – but inside out.  All of the unimportant outside materials have been tucked underneath as life’s warm insides have shown us that love conquers all, generosity exists to be given to those in need, kindness is to be shown to strangers, open-mindedness for all that are human, and to look for the good in life.  I’m in love with our wake up call and am thankful for every 2010 decision that has gotten us here today.

So here’s to 2011.  I’m excited to see where new senses of hope and adventure will lead my newborn soul to.  New year.  New paths in the right direction.  New endless discoveries that may have been hidden if it weren’t for our little 2010 miracle.

Cheers to everyone and Happy New Year, New Me.