Cricket's First Christmas

What a wonderful first Christmas for the little Cricket!  It's not very often that someone in Texas gets their very first Christmas to be a WHITE one.  Yes, you read that right - we woke up on Christmas morning with 3-4 inches of snow on the ground.  The last time that DFW had a White Christmas was 1926 - 83 years ago!

Luckily, we took precautions early Christmas Eve and changed our plans to get up to Liz's Sister earlier than we originally planned.  It turned out to be a great decision.  We got up there and missed all of the icy road conditions that ended up shutting down several roads around the area.  We had a nice dinner in McKinney with the family and headed back to Liz's sisters house to get Cricket to bed so that Santa could come visit her for the 1st time. 

We opened presents early that morning and then headed to Duke's house for Christmas with my family.  We got a really nice video camera from Grammy and Grampy (Thank you guys very much!), so needless to say, we have over 3 hours of Christmas footage.  Hopefully Cricket will enjoy watching these later on in her life. 

She is really growing up.  She's alert and looking around all of the time.  Daddy loves her little toes (piggies) and her big Payne ears and Mommy loves her giggle when she sleeps and her kissable cheeks.  The Christmas Holiday's really give you a chance to reflect on how blessed we are to have each other, our families and friends, and such a beautiful little baby in our lives!

Below are some of Cricket's 1st Christmas pictures.  We encourage you to leave comments below -  we love hearing from you!

"Who needs Santa when I have Grandma"

Our first Family Christmas photo

WHITE CHRISTMAS

The Fullen Kids

With Aunt Sarah

Waiting to open presents

Family Photo 2

How she spent most of her Christmas - Sleeping on Mom's Chest

"Mommy and Daddy's Favorite Gift is ME"

Hanging out with Aunt Lindsey

Uncle Lucas

Cricket's first time to see Cousin Lucy

The girls in pink pajamas

Cricket's Visitors

Make a Smilebox photobook

2 1/2 Weeks Old

Can you believe that I went one week without a new blog post?  I've since gone back to work (mostly half days) while Mom has stayed home with Cricket.  Mom's been doing really good and is doing a great job with the feedings. 

Cricket had her 2 week checkup yesterday and everything is great.  She hated the end of the appointment where the nurse had to prick her heal to take a blood sample.  She was so mad.  It was the first time for both Mom and I that we felt so absolutely horrible that our little girl was in pain and there was nothing we could do about it.  It was really sad!  My mother once told me that feeling is one of the worst feelings in the world - now I know exactly what she is talking about. 

Below are some pictures of us around the house and at the Dr.'s office.  At the very bottom is a cute video of Cricket hanging out with her dad.  Hope you enjoy!

Callie gets feeding advice for her baby dolls (being serious...lol)

Mom and Marty came by to visit

Check out the cute outfit

Her cute Converse All Star booties that Mee-ma got her

Taking a nap with Mommy

A picture holder that Mom started and I finished this weekend

Cricket with Grampy watching the Steelers game

Growing so fast!

Baby Cricket is growing up so fast.  She's really become a pro at sleeping, eating, and using as many diapers as possible.  When she's awake, she's really alert and loves trying to hold her head up and look around to see what's going on (her neck is surprisingly really strong already). 

We have found that her favorite place to sleep is on Mommy or Daddy's chest.  She prefers to be on our chest rather than in her comfy napper.  It's actually been fun coming home the past two days from work and having her sleep for a few hours on my chest as Mommy gets a little bit of sleep in.  I really look forward to it.  She makes some really funny faces when she sleeps so it's a lot of fun to watch. 

Can you tell any differences in how much she's grown?  Enjoy the pictures...

Tired Mommy

I caught this video the other day and thought it was hilarious.  You can tell that Liz is really tired - but she's a trooper.  I haven't heard her complain one time about not getting much sleep.  She loves being a Mommy - and she's really good at it.

Merry Christmas from The Payne's

Hope you enjoy our Christmas video!  Little Cricket has some moves!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Smilebox

My mom got Liz and I a great gift - a subscription to this web site called Smilebox.com.  You can create videos with pictures and put them to music.  Here is my first creation.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

1st Steeler Outfit

Wow, what a disappointing game for Cricket to wear her 1st Steeler outfit.  Who saw that coming?  What is most important though is that she looked adorable in the outfit (Thanks Great Aunt Donna and Uncle Jack).  Here are some pictures and at the bottom is a video of her in another Steeler outfit.  You can tell that she really misses her Cowboys blue!