Christmas Eve!

Ayden slept like a rockstar last night (for him anyway)! We put him to bed in his crib around 9 and he didn't wake until almost 12:00. When he's alone in his crib he usually needs my help falling back to sleep every 45 - 60 minutes. Once we are all in bed together for the night it's better, he just finds the sleeping long stretches alone thing kinda tricky. We'll get a two hour chunk every now and then but 3 hours is a new record! A sleep update is a whole different post all on it's own but the older he gets the better it gets. He is totally growing into sleeping just like Dr. Sears told me he would. :)

I am just so excited to be a mommy for Christmas! I got all of our wrapping done last night because I really wanted to enjoy the whole evening without having to stay up until the wee hours of the morning and spending Christmas morning feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. I heard that the Elves finished wrapping Ayden's presents last night too so they are ready to be delivered tonight!

Our Christmas Eve tradition is to have dinner at my parents house. We've had the exact same Christmas Eve dinner every year that we've all been home for the past 22 years: apricot glazed cornish game hens, peas &mushrooms, salad, cranberry relish, wild rice and rolls. Obviously we passed on the grains this year but still filled our plates with yummy meat and veggies. Ayden was a huge fan of the game hens, he ate every bite (that wasn't thrown on the floor...).

After dinner, my dad always reads The Night Before Christmas to the kids.

As you can tell, Ayden was SOO into it...  Maybe next year?
His shirt says I'm on Santa's naughty NICE list! :)

We made sure to get some family pictures in front of the Christmas tree and had a small gift exchange. David's parents were there and in their family it is tradition for the children to open one gift on Christmas Eve so they brought a gift for Ayden and my sister's 2 kids. Ayden gave his grandmothers each an ornament signifying his first Christmas and I gave my boys (and myself) Christmas PJs. When Ayden gets a little older we'll also include some sort of game, book or other sort of activity that we can all do together that night.

As for this year, we changed him into his new Chrismas PJs before we left my parents' house and he fell asleep on the way home. Now he's tucked into his crib and David and I are going to get the house ready for Santa's arrival and do a few things to get ready for tomorrow. We are hosting Christmas dinner and I want to get the house as ready as possible tonight so we can take it easy tomorrow.

Ready for Santa!

We got new Christmas PJs too!!

Yay for old traditions, new traditions and for Ayden's first Christmas. I have to admit, I am going to be a little sad when it is all over but I know it will just get more fun every year!

~Sarah