Mira's First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is definitely an awesome holiday. I love spending time with my family and taking the time to visit and relax, and of course eat. I love food - I just don't understand how anorexics do it. Which is why I'm not an anorexic. But I really enjoy Thanksgiving because it's a nondenominational holiday with the purpose of taking time to reflect on your life and how much we have to be thankful for. Our society is a lot about finding what you don't have and then trying to go out and get the newest and coolest - but when you slow down and really take a look at your life, it's amazing how much you actually do have. At the very least, I am SO thankful that my whole family and I are healthy (courtesy of the PICU).

I took Mira to my mom's for dinner with my family on Thanksgiving. Mira loved the food - this was a really good age for her to have a first Thanksgiving because she's old enough to sample most of the food. Sadly she didn't get to try out the turkey this year as I felt she needs more than 2 bottom teeth to attempt chewing meat. But she got to try some homemade bread, squash, roasted potatoes, stuffing, cooked apples, cranberry sauce, and of course pumpkin pie. She wasn't a huge fan of the squash, even when we put salt and butter in it, but she enjoyed everything else and just LOVED the cranberry sauce - and it was the homemade kind so it was pretty tart too. I was surprised by that. And she ate about half a slice of pumpkin pie just by herself. She was having a grand old time, grabbing handfuls of food with both hands and cramming everything in her mouth as fast as she could. I'm learning I need to space out the food I give her because she's made herself gag a few times by putting too much in her mouth if she's eating something she really loves.

Here are a couple of videos from Thanksgiving. The first one is my dad having some fun with Mira, and the second one is how she reacted when trying out cranberry sauce.

I wasn't able to capture this on camera, but when we got started with dinner I put a burp cloth on Mira's lap to try to protect her dress, and she grabbed it and started playing Peek-A-Boo with it! She held it up over her face and waited for me to say, "Where's Mira??" She lowered the cloth and laughed and laughed. And she did it over and over again and got so excited she sped it up so eventually she didn't wait long enough for us to say, "Where's Mira?" but she had the right concept. She's quiet when her face is behind the cloth and after she lowers it she laughs. She started doing it a few days ago - add that to the list of cute things she does that I need to attempt to catch on camera.

And of course we have some more picture overload. I've decided she's a very photogenic baby and she just can't take a bad picture, therefore it's impossible to narrow down the number of pictures I post on here because they're all just so adorable!

With Grandpa

Playing with Auntie Sara's necklace. I love this picture.

With Mommy

That food didn't stand a chance...

Apples are yummy!

I love this expression. I think she's really taking the time to savor the flavor.

It was a great holiday, especially since my little sister Penny was able to be with us! Penny is going to school in L.A. and originally we were thinking she wouldn't be able to come down for the holiday but at the last minute my dad was able to get plane tickets for her. So that was very nice.

Here are some more random pictures of Mira - again in her high chair, I don't know why some of her best moments are when she's eating but there you go.

Attempting to feed herself some yogurt. She wants to try to spoon-feed herself but it doesn't usually end well for the high chair. But she does have this cute habit of holding stuff just with her mouth.

Her chipmunk cheeks after stuffing her mouth full of watermelon.

Interestingly, she does chew with her mouth closed... for now.

I should mention that watermelon is one of her new very favorite foods. This is definitely one of those foods that I have to space out or else she'd cram her mouth so full she'd gag herself. So far there are only a few foods that she doesn't like, so I consider myself lucky! It probably won't last (I understand little children tend to be picky eaters) but it sure is nice to know I can just toss some cut up food on her tray and she'll love it.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I suppose now I need to stop being in denial and just accept the fact that Christmas is the next holiday...