Christmas Cards

For years, our mailbox has been filled with photo cards around the holidays. It's so fun to see updates from everyone and to watch the little ones grow over the years. So this year, for Mary Ellen's first Christmas, I wouldn't dream of doing anything different. I used Shutterfly to do her announcements, and I was so happy with the quality and the quick turnaround (not to mention that I use Shutterfly for all of our photos anyway), so we'll definitely use them for our Christmas cards, too.

But now the tricky part. How do I make Mary Ellen's first card memorable? Shutterfly has so many cute Christmas cards. You can check them out for yourself here, but these are just a few of my favorites:

Since we've taken more than 1000 photos of Mary Ellen in her first 4 months of life, maybe I should make it easy on myself and choose one with lots of photos.


I love how this one has a spot for captions.

This one's just sweet, and I love the message.

Choices, choices! Maybe I should start with the photo and go from there, which means I get to dress Mary Ellen up and try to get the perfect photo. What a great way to spend my time. I love this time of year!!

Note: If you have a blog, Shutterfly is offering 50 free photo cards if you write a blog post about their cards. How cool is that? Click here to get more info.

Mary Ellen's first plane trips

So a friend of mine recently accused me of having too good of an attitude on this blog. She said I was too, "Oh, a poopy diaper! Wonderful!" I understand why she's read that into the blog, though, because early on I promised myself that I would not use this as a platform to complain. I have wanted to be a mom for too long to go spewing out minor complaints to the masses, and in reality, I love all of it - the good, the bad, and the ugly, too.

But to be fair - this is all really hard work. While I love figuring out the mom stuff, my life is a series of days filled with nothing but figuring it out. It's tiring, and I'm sure any parent out there can empathize with me when I say that sometimes I just wish Mary Ellen would say, "Mom, I need you to sit me up so I can burp. Then I'll stop crying." or "Mom, thanks. Even though I'm crying, a new diaper was exactly what I needed. I'll be finished with the tears before long." And I while I know that won't happen, some sort of validation would be awesome.

So here's a story that I've been meaning to tell for the past few weeks. I hinted after our St. Louis trip that we didn't have such a good flight back. Here you go, Amy. Here's my "it's not all roses" story.

The flight up to St. Louis was perfect. Brian was with me. We had Mary Ellen's infant seat on board so she could snooze in comfort. She had a few kind strangers in view that she could smile at. It was all too good to be true.

For the flight home, I thought I'd made all of the right plans. I had a great boarding number. I was super organized with my belongings so that I wouldn't be frazzled at security and have to take my mind or my eye off Mary Ellen. She did great in the Baby Bjorn for as long as I needed her to, and she settled back into her car seat until we had to check it at the gate.

Then we boarded the plane.

Mary Ellen started to cry as soon as we handed our boarding pass to the attendant. I knew she was hungry, and I'd planned to feed her as soon as the plane took off, but she had other plans. So once I'd found my "discreet" window seat, I started to feed her. I had my nursing cover, which was nice, but it also caused the other passengers to have to stare a little bit harder to figure out what I was doing before they bolted off to find any other available seat besides the one next to me. I was the single least-desirable seat mate on the plane - which would have been great had there been any empty seats on the flight. But, alas, there were none, and eventually I was joined by a 20-something Dude. He was less than thrilled to be seated next to me and (looking me up and down) asked only, "How long is this flight now?" Nice.

Back we pulled from the gate, and pffft! Mary Ellen filled her pants. The plane hadn't even turned around.

After nearly an hour, when the fasten seat belt sign still hadn't been turned off, I finally asked the flight attendant if I could go ahead and move about the cabin because I really needed to change Mary Ellen's diaper. That might be the understatement of the century, since our whole row, and likely countless other rows, at this point smelled pretty much like a latrine. She said that while she wouldn't say "yes" she also wouldn't stop me if I did. At this point, I'm lucky that our plane was forced to make an emergency landing when I replied, "Good. Cause I've got a ticking time bomb here." Note: Do not say "bomb" on an airplane. The flight attendant, no doubt noting my frustration and absentmindedness, made a little face, but didn't push it any further. She scuttled off to get away from the smell.

OK - so diaper gets changed, baby is happy, back to the seat I go. No sooner did I plant my tush in the seat, then Pfffft! My little pooper did it again. I didn't waste any time this round and took care of the problem immediately. No sweat, right?

Back to our seat I go, and by this point, we've been on the plane for an hour and a half and Mary Ellen decides that she's had enough. She started off with a little squirming. Then within the minute it was crying. Within 5 minutes, it was full-blown screaming. I rocked. I swayed. I bounced. I patted. I did everything I could within the confines of an airplane seat to find a comfortable position for both of us. I fed her. I sang (no doubt to the further furstration of my fellow passengers). I tried the pacifier countless times. I got redder and redder and more anxious and she only got louder and louder. Please stop, I thought. Please.

Then I realized that I was never going to see a single one of these people again and I relaxed. And whether Mary Ellen sensed my relaxation or not, I'll never know, but she started to relax, too. She fell into a deep, deep sleep which lasted the rest of the plane ride and throughout the car ride home. At this point, I was exhausted but so glad that she'd found peace.

Traveling will be a large part of Mary Ellen's life because too many of the people that we love live far away. And since we have many more plane trips in our future, I'm sure some will be peaceful and others not. Either way, I hope I learned from this experience to (1) relax in the beginning of the trip, (2) make as many allies as possible on the plane, and (3) pray that any trip we take in the future won't be as bad as the first one.

Polka Party

Mary Ellen took Grandma and Grandpa to the Willow Tree on Saturday night. If you've not had the pleasure, it's a German restaurant in Sanford that had awesome food and an Oom-pa band in the evenings. We've been several times, but this was only my second trip since Mary Ellen was born, which meant that I could partake in the excellent German brews. Hooray!

We were a little nervous about how she'd react to the music and crowd, but she was a champ. I think she really liked the music and bouncing along to it.

Of note: Mom knows the words to all of the polka songs, so Mary Ellen will have someone to teach them to her one of these days.

4 months old!

Our little girl has reached another milestone - she's 4 months old!

Her official stats:
24.5 inches long
14 lbs, 3.5 oz

And she's one happy girl!



Disclaimer: Please ignore the last few seconds of the clip. It was a little tricky turning off the camera while holding Mary Ellen.

Almost there...

Making the Cut

I love it! I had worn my hair this way years ago, and I can't even remember when I stopped keeping it short, but welcome back short hair! Of course Mary Ellen is a big reason for getting it cut short, since her hands were always in my hair if it wasn't pulled back in a ponytail.

I can't help but make the connection to my mom with this experience. She had long hair (really long hair, down to the middle of her back or longer) before she had me. Of course I don't remember her with long hair, but I used to love to look at pictures of her with her beautiful long hair because she looked so different than the mom I knew. I wonder if Mary Ellen will have the same experience.

My ponytail measured 8.5 inches, so I can donate it to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths project, which accepts hair longer than 8 inches to make wigs for cancer patients. (Thanks to Amanda at J Lauren Salon in Oveido for doing a fabulous job!)

Good Morning!

Mary Ellen is much more effective than a rooster for those morning wake-up calls. See for yourself!