My fear of Christmas

I was dreading the arrival of Christmas. Wait, let me give you a little background first.

Before Megan was born, we had an entire ROOM that we didn't use for anything at all. We intended from the start that it would be our future child's room. So when we were pregnant, the formerly empty room found a life all its own.

Of course, then along came Megan. Her stuff soon filled her room...and the rest of the house. We feel totally maxed out on space here in our condo on the prairie. And, as anyone with kids knows, as they go through ages and stages, they get lots of new stuff and there is lots of stuff that is no longer age-appropriate.

That brings me to my dread of the impeding holiday of lots of new stuff. I just couldn't see where it would go. Megan is an only child and an only grandchild with very doting family members who love her very much. You can see where I'm going with this.

Then my mom came to visit and basically saved the day. She helped us go through a bunch of stuff and decide what to keep, what to toss and what to prepare to sell in a rummage sale in the spring. When it came right down to it, a lot of the stuff we decided we didn't need was stuff that we had long before Megan. There were entire closets full of things we had moved in with that we had never used in 5+ years! We kept the momentum after she left and cleared out even more stuff.

Now that we're on a roll with parting with things and there's actually a little room to spare around here, I am breathing a little easier when I look at the mountain of gifts under our Christmas tree...and those are just from the Arizona family! I don't begrudge the generosity of my family, I embrace it for the joy it will bring my daughter...and for the feeling I'll get next time we purge our stuff!

Megan catches Frosty in his counting error

We've been Tivo-ing holiday specials for Megan all month and watching one every few days. Tonight's installment is the original Frosty the Snowman.

When Frosty comes to life the second time, he tries counting to ten, but misses a few numbers. Megan, always on the ball, said, "Hey! That's not right!"

Looking back

Like lots of parents, we've got hours and hours of video footage of our daughter. (Don't even get me started on the sheer number of photos we have.) We just bought a wire that allows us to move it from film to the computer. Todd's been working on getting it all onto the computer.

We've been spending the past few hours watching Megan grow up. It's hard to remember now all those moments that we thought we'd never forget. Thank goodness took the time to record them! (Todd admits that he thought I was being quite obnoxious at the time, but he's loving reliving the moments.)

One of my favorite clips was her first smiles and giggles. She's been a ham forever!

We seem to have a lot of footage of her dancing. Now she dances all the time. When she is excited about something, we'll say, for example, "Let's see your grandma's coming to visit tomorrow dance!" or "Let's see your fruit snacks dance!" and she'll do her own interpretive dance moves. But looking back, she's been dancing since before she could sit up by herself.

And she's always been chatty. Even those first images of her when she was only a few weeks old, she was chatting up a storm. We're watching a clip now of her from this time last year. She was already using 3-5 word phrases like, "Mimi want to see hockey!" and "Love you, Daddy!"

What a girl. :)