She’s eating solids and loves everything. Rice cereal, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, the occasional banana, and pears. She’s in 6-9 month clothes with the length getting iffy on some of those pants. She’s taking good naps and is back to sleeping through the night. Her first tooth just came through on the bottom middle! She can sit up, she can roll over, and she loves playing with noisy toys now.

We had a really fun weekend celebrating Christmas with my parents and sisters’ family in town. Penny absolutely loved watching and playing with my sisters’ kids, and they were so good at playing gently and including her. Next week we’ll see the other side of the family, and I know she’s gonna love interacting with Matt’s nieces and nephews as well.

Our days have been busy hosting parties and guests, but this week it has started to calm down and we are back to the usual – laundry, errands, a trip to the library and out to pick up Matt’s Christmas gift. She continues to be great when I drag her all over kingdom come, although she hates riding in her carseat, which will make our drive to NJ next week very interesting.

For every rough night we have had in the past month with constipation and teething and growth spurts, we have three or four fabulous days together, and I still can’t believe how blessed I am to have her as my daily companion. When I realize that I am halfway to my breastfeeding goal (if I can make it that long! UGH!), I realize how quickly this first year really flies by. I have a feeling the second half will speed by even faster than the first with all her many upcoming milestones.

And as for her smile, well it just melts me.

From Daily Daguerreotype

This year I feel obligated to include a photo for the first time in a long time because we have something gorgeous and brag-worthy to show off. Need I remind you?

From Daily Daguerreotype

So I’m planning on putting together photo cards at Shutterfly. I’ve already convinced Matt that we need to get our Christmas tree as soon as we get home from Thanksgiving in NH so that we can decorate it and pose for a Christmas family photo shoot. Meanwhile I need to determine just which card I want to use.

I’m also going to make my Christmas shopping a bit easier this year by using my cute daughter’s smile to personalize a few gifts. Who wouldn’t be a sucker for Penelope smiling back at them from their cup of coffee?

My fingers are itching for that first cold night in December when I get to snuggle up on the couch in front of the fire with a cup of cocoa and start addressing envelopes. And then the fun of checking the mail those weeks before Christmas to find cards from my friends and family that wind up decking out one of our doors each year. I am jubilant just thinking about it!

* Many thanks to Sarah for tipping me off to Shutterfly’s Holiday Card blog promotion!

I continue to be somewhat non-plussed by the holiday, and will likely pass that on to my daughter unless there is a major sea change in our household. We got her a pumpkin which we will carve this weekend. We got candy, which I am doing an extraordinary job of ignoring. I had plans to make her a turtle costume which never happened. Frankly, I can’t bring myself to spend $15 on an infant teddy bear costume. So I think this year she will just dress up as herself – the darn cutest kid you’ve ever seen.

This morning before Matt left for work he asked what we were going to do this weekend.

“How about we work on trimming out the kitchen windows? Maybe go to the park. Ya know, stay home for the most part.”

I hate to be a party pooper, and I’m glad so many people have a lot of fun on Halloween to make up for my lack of enthusiasm. Personally, I’m a little too busy daydreaming about dashing through the snow.

Have a happy and safe Halloween! What are you and yours dressing up as this year?

This past weekend we finally got around to buying a piano – our Christmas ’09 gift to each other. We had hoped to find a cruddy old thing on Craigslist that sounded good but needed a facelift so we could paint it bright yellow. Don’t ask – something about our passionate love for Elton John. But instead we found a great deal on a nearly new (10 years old!) piano in great shape, so on Saturday we drove down to Murfreesboro with the very helpful Roberts brothers and moved the piano into our living room.

The look is a bit more formal than what I’m going for in the living room, but I can make it work. Having the piano has finally lit the fire under my butt to get the room looking a bit better, so I have ordered my curtain fabric online and can’t wait to get my drapes made. Yesterday while out browsing with Penny I fell IN LOVE with a clearance upholstered armchair and ottoman at HomeGoods which sparked the typical reaction that happens when I fall in love with things.

I couldn’t pass it up. And I wanted to buy it to replace Matt’s chair (The Dragon Throne) which we bought on the cheap under false pretenses a few years ago, and I have nearly-hated ever since.

But anyone who has ever tried to replace a man’s Dragon Throne will tell you that it is worse than pulling a cat’s teeth. It’s worse than having your house burn down. Nay, even worse than seeing an enormous cricket on your cutting board on the countertop. (Yes, the horrors belong in that order.)

Typically Matt doesn’t put  up much of a fight with my design choices. He might roll his eyes or give me a dubious glance, but he has learned to trust me and, in the end, be amazed. But replacing his Dragon Throne with this lovely, shapely, Danish modern chair was not going to happen. Regardless of the ottoman and my puppy eyes.

Even so, I made the purchase and spent last night moving furniture around in the room to see how we could accommodate both chairs as a compromise. I tried. I tried really hard. And I love having two armchairs as well as the sofa for extra seating.

Except I don’t want one of those armchairs to be Matt’s current Dragon Throne. I want the Dragon Throne to live upstairs in the den… and…

Now I want to get another chair.

With a few more aches, pains and divorce papers, I hope to have our living room up and running in the next month or so. Just in time for us to have to move everything around again to put up a Christmas tree.

Because… CHRISTMAS!

I caught a stomach bug that was goin around, and I’m pleased to say that it gave the Hof and I some good preparatory experience for what I’d imagine D-day will entail: multiple calls to the midwife (who was kind enough to coach us through my stomach bug in the midst of delivering babies), many, many clean towels, and my exclamation to everyone I was wheeled past in the hospital that “I’M TWENTY NINE WEEKS PREGNANT!” for fear they would inject me with some drug unsafe for my daughter in utero.

You hear these horror stories of people who were given a drug they were allergic to because their emergency medical band fell off, or a dosage gone wrong because the nurse was overworked, underpaid, and just needed a vacation forheavensake! Well I was determined not to be one of those people and questioned everything that went into my IV – what would the side effects be and um, hi, but my face is tingling, just as an FYI. At one point, when I reminded the nurse that “I’M TWENTY NINE WEEKS PREGNANT! And is this safe for the baby?” she responded with a snarky, “the doctor wouldn’t have prescribed it if it wasn’t safe for the baby.”

So that’s when I just shut up, told her she had gorgeous hair, and turned on the tele to watch Ben Harper on Austin City Limits. About five minutes after that miracle-working hydrating IV, I was ranting to Matt about how STUPID Reliant K was, how Ben was just letting it all go to pot, and myohmy how I LOVE THIS IV!

The whole ordeal was really rather comical (aside from the moments when I really feared my daughter was in danger), and we had a stupendous weekend with family although it was cut short. My biggest regret? Not being able to eat my sister’s slow-roasted Chicago beefs. I cut all of that meat the day beforehand and didn’t even get to taste it!

Now that we’re home, my system is slowly returning to normal. And frankly, as I head off to the grocery store today to fill our empty fridge, I look forward to doing so with a non-existant appetite – something I haven’t experienced in seven months. You really can’t imagine how nice it will be to walk past the bakery and not fight with myself over whether or not I need to buy five chocolate cakes… one for each workday BECAUSE I WORK SO HARD!

1. In six more months I’ll be embarking on the life of a stay at home mom. I know it’s going to be fun and overwhelming and lots of hard work, but I am confident and think it will be a wonderful experience. My one major concern is losing what I have with Matt. If you haven’t figured it out yet, he’s my everything, and there is nothing I enjoy more than spending quality time with him. It really does fuel me. I know that our time  together will be harder to schedule, but I really want to commit to leaving energy and time for just us – even if it’s just five minutes a day.
2. Now that we have a backyard our time outside has actually shrunk because we don’t need to harness Berlin up and take her on a walk. I miss the hour that we used to spend outside every day, and I want to bring that back. Of course, the weather is pretty crummy now, but come spring and summer, you better see me outside more or else.
3. I’m going to start my very first garden this year! I’m likely to screw it up royally, but I’m going to try my hand at developing a green thumb. If nothing else, I aim to have really good fresh cucumbers.
4. Baking. I hate baking. I hate measuring things and being accurate. I’m a cook who loves to throw a bunch of things into my saute pan and come out with something completely unplanned. So I hate baking. But I’m going to try to bake something once a month.
5. Stay on top of our doctors visits. I need to find a good PCP for us and a pediatrician for Little Friend. Plus we could both use a trip to the eye doctor, and a dentist that is a little closer to our house.

A short list, but I think quite manageable. Do you have any good resolutions this year?

I’m going to do that thing that all bloggers do at this time of year. And I’m sure you’re sick of reading posts like this, but be grateful that I have officially stopped writing Christmas letters to include in my Christmas cards. You no longer have to suffer through that, so you can suck it up and deal with one teensy little post about my 2009.

• At the beginning of the year I emotionally strong-armed Matt into buying a new car. While it was one of the best purchases we’ve ever made, we have both agreed that I am never allowed to emotionally strong-arm again. Female manipulation is the world’s worst character trait, so let it be said that the 2008 Nissan Versa was my last experience with it. Although, Honey, the baby really wants a Subaru Outback.
• I had to say goodbye to my last living Grandpa. I really do miss him very much. And now I’m watching as his wife fights cancer. It doesn’t make sense at all.
• We packed up our apartment in Taxachusetts and drove to the nation’s reddest state where Matt had gotten himself a nice new little job to pay the bills. I had never been to Tennessee before but decided before stepping foot across the state line that I would love it. And I do.
• I got pregnant and eight weeks later lost the very first thing I had ever loved as much as Matt. This experience changed me more than anything else I’ve experienced in my life. It might sound cliche, but there really isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about that baby and miss it.
• We met some awesome friends in our new hometown of Nashville that helped to overcome some of the sadness of leaving really great friends in our old hometown.
• We vacationed with family in familiar and beautiful places.
• We bought our first house.
• We demolished the kitchen in our first house.
• We rebuilt the kitchen ourselves.
• We bought a lawnmower and I learned how to mow a lawn.
• I got pregnant again. My first trimester sucked so much that I truly hope my terrible memory kicks in and blots it out of my mind forever. But, I got to see its little self on an ultrasound and hear its little heartbeat – easily some of the most incredible moments of my life.
• I used a barf bag on an airplane.
• I joined a gym.

There were so many highs and lows in 2009 that I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I hope 2010 is a little less eventful. Although we’ll be bringing a baby into the world which is the opposite of uneventful. Plus the final season of LOST is coming up, and they have a lot of action to cram in. So never mind. I guess 2010 will be pretty eventful as well. We’d probably get bored without all the action. And Mom always said we weren’t allowed to use the word “bored.”

Happy New Year, y’all, from Matt, Priscilla, Little Friend, Mojo and Berlin… bless her heart.

But tonight starts a long string of date nights for the next two weeks. We’re headed out to hear the Grammy award winning Nashville Symphony performing Handel’s Messiah. I think this will be the third time I’ve gone to hear the Messiah, the previous trips were evenings spent as a little kid getting all gussied up in a taffeta Christmas dress, driving into Boston as a family and having dinner at a nice restaurant before going to hear the symphony.

Tonight will take a heck of a lot more work than the Messiahs of my childhood. I bought a pair of maternity pantyhose that are currently glaring at me from across the room. And I have a new version of the pregnant woman’s Little Black Dress that luckily requires less squeezing than is typical. I still haven’t unpacked my jewelry, so I anticipate a frenetic last-minute search through boxes in the basement for a pair of earrings. I also expect to BAWL during the “Hallalujah Chorus” because I am a Hormonal Christmas Mess.

But tonight is just the kick-off. Tomorrow night is Matt’s office holiday party. Then we have a fun New Years bash to attend where I have been enlisted as the designated driver, a position I am more than disgruntled about accepting. To all of these celebrations I intend to wear painfully high heels because the one plus of being the pregnant woman in the crowd is that nobody makes you stand for very long. If I can’t have champagne, at least give me a seat.

So cheers to the holidays and the obligatory holiday parties. Because I need to wear something other than a hoodie at least a few days a year.

I took a look through the preview, and the illustrations are just gorgeous. Great work, Ginette, and I can’t wait to read it for myself!

This means I need to finish all of my Christmas shopping, my Christmas cards, do all of the wrapping, go to various and sundry Christmas parties, hit Handel’s Messiah, visit my BFF in Louisville, put together a gingerbread house and eat it, bake Christmas cookies and eat them, and pack up clothes and breakable gifts for extensive traveling – all within the course of a week. I also could use a haircut. Oh, and check in with the midwives office to see if they have the swine flu vaccine yet. And maybe buy a few more maternity clothes?

But the light at the end of the tunnel is a snowy New Hamsphire. And a belly full of my mom’s Christmas cookies which put all other Christmas cookies to shame. And fires in the fireplaces at night. And staying up late with my sisters to talk about everything under the sun. And nieces and nephews in footed pajamas. And snow angels. And caroling. And grandmothers.

And in the middle of the night when I get up to pee and I realize that I’m hungry, I’ll tiptoe downstairs into my mom’s kitchen and I’ll pull out some leftovers from the fridge. Or steam two lobster tails that my dad has received in the inevitable Omaha Steaks corporate Christmas gift. Two because I’ll wake up my sister to eat one – we’re both pregnant and due a month apart – the only people who could get away with eating the prized Omaha Steak lobster tails. Although it’s been a bad economy – the lobster tails might not arrive. PLEASE SEND THE LOBSTER TAILS! TWO PREGNANT WOMEN’S LIVES DEPEND ON THEM!

There will be many conversations around the living room – all going at the same time and escalating at the same time until we wake up a napping baby because of our volume. And it will all be my fault because someone (most likely my brother-in-law) will have me so politically riled that I will shout out something dreadful like “I WOULD HAVE TAKEN THE MORMON!!!” And perhaps that’s what I look forward to the most? The great conversations about politics and religion where our minds are constantly being sharpened.

In the afternoon the guys will all go into the music room and sit by the tree reading through their new stack of books that they have received as Christmas gifts. It will be completely silent in there except for the swishing of pages being turned in unison. And the girls will muse in the kitchen about how we always wind up asking for practical household items that our husbands will also benefit from, while they still get to be kids and ask for books and cds that they want. There will be much eye rolling and then the conversation will turn towards whether or not a Boppy pillow is really a necessity.

I’m living for this Christmas break, not just to visit home, but also to finally spend some time with Matt who’s been working like a madman. And it will all be made even more perfect by the fact that my parents home is not a construction zone. We can put the hammers and reciprocal saws in the rear of our memory for a little while and enjoy not having to remember when was the last time we took the dog out to pee?

Does it make sense now, why I love Christmas so much? Why the lights and snow and tradition are so important to me? I grew up in New Hampshire, the place where Christmas is perfect.