Christmas was a little different for us this year. Not only do we now have Nathan to celebrate with, but because Gary is converting to Judaism, we are not celebrating it in our house like we have in past years, but instead did the celebrating at other people’s houses. We were still plenty busy though!

Christmas Eve was spent with Oma’s family at Big Mom-Moms (Gary’s grandmother). We camped out with Nathan by the food table, which has somehow become our usual spot. Everyone enjoyed playing with Nathan, and he enjoyed all the attention.

Christmas morning is my favorite. We go to Gary’s sisters house to open presents with Gary’s immediate family. Its a warm and lazy morning sitting by the fire, eating a huge breakfast, and opening lots of presents. Nathan got through a couple of his gifts and then got tired and needed a nap. After that he spent the rest of the morning playing with some new toys and having fun with Oma, Opa, Aunt Julie and Uncle Jason. We were lucky that he fell asleep as soon as he hit the carseat and took a nice long nap, because that evening we went to the annual holiday party with Opa’s family.

Cousins Jacob, Ben & Nathan on Christmas Morning

Family Picture, Christmas Morning

Considering how wacky Nathan’s schedule was for the holiday he did really well, and even when he got fussy he was easily distracted by all the new faces. It was fun to see so many family that we only see once or twice a year, and I can’t wait until next year when he can run around with the other kids…though I’ll probably feel differently when I’m chasing him all over the place!

There are more pictures from Christmas here .

We celebrated our first Hanukkah with Nathan last week. It was a nice family holiday. We had a menorah for each of us and Fen even got in on the action with a Hanukkah cookie each night.

Nathan got to open a present every night and by the end of the week was getting very good at tearing open the paper. The last night he tore it all off, pulled it out from under the box, threw it aside and went for the box. Guess he was really getting the idea!

I think his favorite present was the Amazing Animals Train. We also gave him a Tickle Me Cookie Monster, thinking he’d get a kick out of it, but so far it just scares him!

A special treat was a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Bob during Hanukkah. They came for the weekend and it was great to have them there to spend time with Nathan. He loved playing with them and trying to grab Grandpa Bob’s beard. We had Oma and Opa over for dinner one night while they were here, so Nathan got completely spoiled by all four grandparents at once!

There are more pictures in the photos albums from Hanukkah and from the December visit.

In just the last few days Nathan has started some serious Baby Babble. He’s now saying DeDe or DaDa a lot, and will repeat it over and over. There have been some other sounds in there too, some G’s and other things I can’t quite identify yet.

It amazes me how quickly he went from making vowel sounds to this new babbling! It’s really fun to see him do, especially how his mouth changes shape when he’s making the new noises.

Well, Nathan has finally entered the ranks of the omnivores. Last week we fed him meat for the first time. He had Chicken and Apples and he simply loved them. There was no “getting used to it” phase. He just dove right in and went to town. In fact, the second time he had the chicken, he liked it so much he had a bigger smile than I have ever seen on his face. I don’t know if any of you have tried to eat while smiling, but apparently it is pretty hard, especially without teeth, so the food kept running out of his mouth. But he’s gotten the hang of smiling between bites now.