Baby's First Christmas

We celebrated our first family Christmas with our sweet baby boy. Even with all of the traveling and forgetting important baby items (I'll get back to that later), it was an amazing first Christmas. Santa visited Landon and brought WAY too much. We need another house just to store all of the new toys, books, movies and clothes that Landon received.

Every year since Paul and I got married, we have alternated holidays with our families. So this year was the year we spent Christmas Day with my family and Christmas Eve with Paul's family. So Wednesday morning, we drove down to Loretto (an hour later than we had planned - traveling with a baby is much more difficult than we imagined!). Paul went hunting with his brother Luke and we hung out watching Landon most of the afternoon and night. On Christmas Eve, we celebrated Christmas with the Lamm family with a late lunch and presents. Then we packed up the truck and headed back to our house for our first family Christmas. It's our tradition to watch "A Christmas Story" and "It's a Wonderful Life" over and over on Christmas Eve, so we did just that until about 2 in the morning! I'm sure this is the last year we'll be able to do that since Landon will be a year old next year and will likely want to watch Christmas cartoons. We got up early Christmas Day and cooked breakfast while the little man slept, then fed him and opened presents. Landon got his Mommy and Daddy some great gifts, but he is obviously the best gift we could receive!

After the presents were opened and we packed up, we headed out to my parents' lake house at Center Hill Lake. As soon as we arrived, Landon woke up and was starving. So we unpacked the car and looked for his bottles. We had packed 8 bottles - half of which were already prepared - but they were no where to be found. It finally dawned on us that we had left them sitting on our brand new kitchen table (thank you Mom and Dad!). Since we were in the middle of no where on Christmas Day, nothing was open around us. My dad graciously volunteered to drive 30 minutes away to Lebanon to a 24-hour Walgreens that was open to purchase a couple of bottles. Meanwhile, we had formula that we left at the lake house (not sure why we didn't think to leave bottle too though) so we mixed some up in a bowl and began feeding him with a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon. But that was not getting enough in his little belly fast enough, so we grabbed a nasal aspirator (unused), washed it, and filled it with some formula. It was odd but it did the job until the new bottles arrived! Because of this setback, we had to wait almost 2 hours later to eat. Paul, my sister, her friend and I were going to the Titans game that night, so when my dad got back, we ate really quickly, opened presents and then quickly changed to drive to Nashville to pick up Melissa's friend and headed to the game.

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas, albiet eventful and busy, but it wouldn't be a Paul and Nicole Christmas without the craziness! Landon will get used to it!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and hope your New Year is just as fabulous. Pictures of Landon's first Christmas to come soon!