The start to the holidays and real food.

I can't believe it's already time for Christmas trees and decorations and that Thanksgiving has already come and gone. We had a really nice Thanksgiving, spent pretty equally between mine and Nick's families, and it was actually pretty relaxing and enjoyable even with driving back and forth between houses. I just wish I hadn't gotten a terrible stomach ache so I could've eaten more - of course the one day of the year when all I want to do is completely stuff myself is the day I get the worst stomach ache ever... Luckily it eventually went away and there weren't any trips to the hospital or anything like that, but I was still ashamed that I was only able to put away ONE full plate of food. I will definitely need to make up for it on Christmas.

Of course, once Thanksgiving is over, it's Christmas. Which means it's time to get Christmas trees. (YAY!) This is one of my favorite days of the year, since Christmas-time is my favorite time of the year, and this kicks everything off. We had a lot of fun toting Nora around with us this time, and also found a really perfect tree which is now also decorated and proudly standing in our living room.

To finish off a weekend of fun, we decided to venture into new territory with Nora's expanding diet: peas. We started giving her rice cereal a couple of weeks ago, and since she seems to be loving that and is still extremely interested in everything else she sees everyone eating and drinking, we decided it was time to try something new. Needless to say, she now loves peas too, based on the feeding frenzy we experienced tonight. However, I'm still convinced that this child will devour anything since she seems equally interested in her fingers and anything else that she can get near her mouth, including my face. But fingers are her favorite. I think she only enjoys peas as long as they're accompanied by a side of fingers.

Halloween... a little late.

It was a double-treat of a Halloween this year, with it falling on a Sunday. Halloween party with friends Saturday night, and fun with family and baby on Sunday. I must say it worked out nicely to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We of course waited until the very last minute to figure out costumes to wear to our party on Saturday night, resulting in somewhat unimaginative costumes which were mostly non-identifiable to most. The upside: Nick and I both dressed as our favorite TV heroes: Liz Lemon and Don Draper (me obviously being the former and Nick being the latter… although wouldn’t it have been more fun if it was the other way around? Noted for next year’s last minute costume ideas).

I have to say that I think we did a fairly decent job, although as I said, only a handful of people could actually come close to guessing who we were actually supposed to be… hard to believe, since Nick so CLEARLY is a dead ringer for Jon Hamm, and I am without a doubt just as, or probably even more so, as much of a dork as Liz Lemon. I felt like I could identify with Liz Lemon even more than usual that night, as I realized that the major plusses of this costume were (1) that I could leave my hair in its naturally frizzy state and didn’t need to make any effort to make it look any better, and (2) that this costume, unlike so many typical ‘sexy’ female Halloween costumes, did not require me to shave my legs. Liz would be so proud.

We had some much anticipated grown-up fun at the party, enjoying adult beverages (me, drinking all of mine out of my signature ‘TGS with Tracy Jordan’ coffee mug, and Nick drinking all of his from his authentic 1960s-era glass tumbler, in fine Sterling-Cooper fashion) and acting generally silly with good friends we hadn’t seen much since the arrival of Nora.

I think Nora enjoyed her first Halloween weekend – she got to spend the evening with her two Omas while we were at our Halloween party, and even got to stay up extra late (which wasn’t a bad thing since it meant she slept in extra late the next morning and let mom also sleep in after her evening of enjoying her yummy Mommy beverages out of her mug). She was the most adorable pumpkin for Halloween, and we of course took way too many pictures of her in costume… as well as a few of Dundie in his vampire cape, which he didn’t seem all too fond of.