The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The Christmas season is here, and we are immensely enjoying the season with Logan. She is so curious about everything Christmas, and seeing it all through her eyes is so incredibly gratifying. In fact, I have always loved this holiday, but experiencing it with our ever-changing, sweet, sweet baby girl couldn't get any better.

We started the weekend after Thanksgiving with selecting the tree (at Lowe's, although we will likely enact a "Havana Christmas Tree Farm" tradition in future years). Blaine lit the tree and hung all the outdoor decorations promptly, and we spent the remainder of the week trimming the tree and putting out all the decor. We hung the more resilient ornaments at the bottom of the tree, though she was fairly indifferent to the tree itself for several days.

However, in the week that has followed, she has become more and more curious, grabbing certain ornaments and carrying them around with her. A few of her favorites are a wooden "choo choo" that came from Blaine's childhood ornament box, a pair of ballet shoes, which she attempts to slip on her own feet and a Mickey ornament. One side note, she started actually identifying Mickey by his name this week. She has called him "hot dog" for several months (for those of you that have children, you know this is due to the "hot dog, hot dog" song on Mickey Mouse Playhouse). I have attempted, fruitlessly I must say, to keep the pine needles at bay. However, mere moments after vaccumming them up yesterday, the tree skirt and floor surrounding were sprinkled with the lovely things. This is because Logan doesn't exactly know how to remove her ornament of choice....the easiest way is to rip it off the branch.

Here she is in the first few days of the tree's arrival, when she was still listening to me say "one finger." She is happily using all five fingers now to select ornaments!

Last weekend we enjoyed The Tallahassee Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. Logan was absolutely enamored for the entire performance. In fact, towards the end of the 2nd act she started waving at the dancers as they bowed and left stage. Nothing in the world could have made me happier than watching the ballet with my precious daughter in my lap. Just to see her facial expressions was incredible. Actually, the one thing that could have made me happier....if we were in Boston, watching her Aunt Kathy on stage. Maybe when the snow lets up in the spring....

Logan's ballet dress is beautiful....thank you seamstress Nana!

After The Nutcracker, we trekked over to Jacksonville for my mom's family Christmas Party. It was so fun to see all the 2nd and 3rd cousins together. Here are the kids singing Christmas carols for us. Logan is absolutely obsessed with Zachary....she follows him around and tries to be a big as he is.

We told Zachary to turn Logan around....she wasn't very happy about it!After the party, we went back to my Aunt Libby's to exchange gifts. The kids are playing with the "choo choo" (have I mentioned Logan is really, really into trains these days?).

Will and Zachary.

Doing a great job just looking and not touching.