Busy, Christmasy weekend

Whew. This was one of those weekends you need a weekend to recover from. But it was all great fun.

Friday night we headed over to Bucks County to pick up a coat Tom had left at his parents' over Thanksgiving and that his sister had ferried back to this latitude. We stayed for dinner and then to help put up the Christmas tree. Or rather, Tom helped Phil with the stress-inducing parts, while four-year-old Abigail danced attendance and Susan and I watched Edith and Matthew chew contentedly on a packing box apiece. We were counting on Susan and Phil as experienced parents to advise us on baby-proofing a Christmas tree. But this is the first time they have had a mobile baby at Christmas, too. Their only advice was not to choose a hemlock.

We intended to go find our non-hemlock on Saturday morning, but after rousing us to full wakefulness at 7 am, Edith promptly went down for a nap again at 8:45 and slept through until 12:30. Since she gets far less than her daily nap quota at daycare, we wanted to give her a full opportunity to catch up. Still, it would be nice if she could go ahead and sleep in without the two-hour wakeful period, fooling her parents into getting out of bed themselves.

By the time Edith awoke, we were due in Hoboken to meet Brian and Laura's new daughter Julia. Julia was no slouch of a newborn, weighing in at 10 lbs. 3 oz. Even so, Edith looked positively Brobdingnagian next to her:



Tom and I were both slightly awed to realize just how much time has passed since May. Edith may be the littlest angel at daycare, but she looks much more like a little girl than a baby in comparison to Julia. We got a thrill out of cuddling a newborn again and as always, enjoyed catching up with her parents. When we came home, we had to read my journal of Edith's first few weeks to verify that she had, in fact, once been that young.

This morning we awoke to Edith's first snow! I don't think it registered with her at all, but Bismarck was thrilled to have his favorite ground cover back. After church, Edith and I defied the weather and headed off to Philadelphia for another friend's baby shower brunch. Edith got to chew on all her little friend Sam's toys (his teething toys appear vastly superior to ours) and giggle at cute Sam himself. Then back to Princeton and church for Advent Night. We made several Christmas tree ornaments, ate up heartily at the potluck, and sang Christmas carols. Afterwards Tom taught an adult ed class while Edith crawled laps around the church library for two hours. Finally, back home to another romp with Biz and bedtime. We're pooped!