Christmas and New Year's

Christmas

One month old

She got pretty skinny for a while

December was a crazy month for us. We took Mia home from the hospital after a day. We struggled with nursing for weeks. She lost a whole pound and we worked hard for almost three weeks to gain it back. She’s a gorgeous little chunk now, though, with beautiful squishy cheeks and fat rolls on her legs.

Making a gingerbread train. Notice Scout in the bjorn.

For the most part, she’s been a pretty agreeable little peach from the beginning, aside from the nursing issues. For the first month, all she wanted to do was eat and sleep. Seriously. When she wasn’t sleeping, she wanted to eat. All the time. When I say “all the time,” I mean like 10 hours a day. I’ve discovered there aren't very many things I can’t do while nursing. Thankfully she was skilled enough (or desperate enough) to nurse in the Baby Bjorn while I did pretty much everything.

I’ve also discovered that having two kids doesn’t double the work. It at least squares the work. Especially when one of those kids is Josh. I love that boy with all my heart, but he sure is a unique little creature and it takes no small amount of work to keep his life moving along smoothly.

Jed and Crystal have been a great help and have taken Josh a few times when I needed a hand.  We went with them to the ice slides they make every year in North Pole while YaYa was still here.

We celebrated our 7th anniversary pretty quietly with Pizza Hut. Although not the best pizza available, Pizza Hut holds a special place in our hearts as one of the only American foods we could obtain in China. It brought back some pretty awesome memories.

Mario is actually asleep here.

Christmas came and went almost as quietly as our anniversary. We kept our tradition of having Chinese food on Christmas Eve and enjoyed some fantastic wonton soup and one of our favorite Chinese staples, eggs and tomatoes. 

Wonton soup

 We also had our second annual Christmas Camping (sleeping under the Christmas tree). We actually got to do the Santa thing and set up Josh’s presents the night before. Mario constructed an awesome marble run from Grandma Leslie and Papa that Josh really enjoyed on Christmas morning. 

We spent a fun evening with Jed, Crystal & Co. for Christmas dinner. They put me in charge of desserts. We had crème brulee, homemade chocolate cream pie, homemade truffles, and a citrus custard tart. You could tell it was a Foutz affair because there was at least as much dessert as there was dinner.

The only reason we knew the New Year was being celebrated somewhere was because of the fireworks outside our windows. I think we passed out from sheer exhaustion long before midnight.

Happy holidays to us, I guess!



The dress in the pictures below and to the right (and other photos scattered through the blog) is one of a few that my great-grandmother Josephina made for me when I was born.  My mom was thoughtful enough to keep those beautiful dresses for when I had my own daughter, as well as some lovely handmade quilts from the same great-grandmother (Scout is sitting on one in this very picture).  They're in great shape and I hope I can keep them safe to give to Mia when she has her own daughter.  Thanks, Mom!