Fun 'Firsts' with Baby A

I am very, very thankful that we chose to stay home for the Thanksgiving Holiday this year.

Yes, it would have been nice to see family and have a massive dinner and lots of desserts and do the whole big event. But, at the end of the day, it was really special to be home with my family. My core family. Me, my husband and Baby A. That's my family. It's great to have our parents and siblings involved, but what's really important and what we sometimes lose track of, is that we, the three (almost four) of us are our core family unit and we need to start creating our own memories.

So in that line of thought.

Baby A and I made blueberry muffins for breakfast Thanksgiving morning. She helped mix, she helped pour, she helped fill the tins and everything. She thought it was great and I had so much fun sharing that with her.

I spent each evening leading up to Thanksgiving putting one piece of the dinner together so that come Thursday, all I had to do was put everything in the oven. We were having a late afternoon meal and I bought a tiny turkey so nothing really had to be done before 1 in the afternoon.

I was able to spend the whole morning with Baby A watching the Macy's Day Parade. There were sections of it that I cried through to see her enjoying it so thoroughly. They had musical numbers from some Broadway shows that she just loved, like the Cinderella one. Completely mesmerized. She loved all the balloons and floats and of course when the Sesame Street float appeared she thought that was great. It was amazing to watch the parade through a 2 year old's eyes.

We put up Christmas decorations and her reaction to all that was great. We don't have a tree yet but will do that this weekend.

It was a wonderful and quiet long weekend at home that I think we enjoyed even more because we knew that our 'quiet' weekends are very quickly coming to an end and that life with a newborn is approaching. Even more than that, life with a newborn and a toddler. I don't expect that quiet will be part of our vocabulary until sometime next Spring, hopefully.

Last night when we put Baby A down for the night I told her that today she was going to go see Mama T. I wasn't sure if I expected drama after four days home, but she was thrilled. She immediately lit up and said 'And Max and Hunter??' who are her two little buddies. She even woke up this morning saying 'go see mama t, see Max and Hunter.' I love that she is so happy there and that she has her friends.

All in all, it was exactly what we needed as a family, for ourselves and for each other as we wind down toward the next stage in our adventure together.