Behind the Scenes: The Real Lily Denison

Don't be deceived by all of the cute, peaceful pictures--this is Lily's true character.



Though she has been getting better at being a good baby, she still likes to keep us on our toes trying to appease her and keep her happy.

Christmas Morning

Christmas did not start early in the Denison household this year. Lily decided to give Mom and Dad (mostly Mom) a great Christmas present by sleeping for 7 straight hours the night of Christmas Eve, followed by another 3 1/2 hours. Hence we woke up sometime after 9:00 a.m. It was heaven! We tried to help Lily feel involved that morning but I don't think she fully appreciated our efforts. Doesn't she look excited? :)



Since it was just the three of us, Christmas was very subdued, but we had a nice time. We opened presents that morning and lounged about for a while. I spent the day baking and we watched a couple of Christmas movies. We got to talk to our families (that makes it sound like we're missionaries or something), went for a walk, which turned into a drive because Lily was bawling, and enjoyed a nice Christmas dinner.




Note the picture of Adam holding Lily while he eats--she has uncanny timing to wake up and start crying just as we sit down to eat. I thought I would throw in a picture of our "amazing" Christmas tree--we now have a grand total of 5 Christmas ornaments, apart from the cheap, little ball ornaments we bought so it wouldn't look so sparce. One strand of lights burned out a couple of weeks ago, but we didn't bother to take them down.



We hung some candy canes on it to dress it up a little--there were around 20 at first, but they began to disappear from the tree to fulfill the greater purpose of serving as hot chocolate stirring wands, hence there are now about 5 on the tree. My favorite part of all is our homemade tree topper....Behold! Maybe we'll get a real one next year. We hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Ready for bed

After a few harrowing days and nights of little to no sleep, we found that swaddling Lily tightly helps her to sleep better. We read a book on colic, crying and sleeping that instructed us on how to do a very tight swaddle. It even mentioned that one couple would tape the blanket, once their baby was swaddled, to prevent it from coming loose. We tried it and it worked great. Lily's nightly ritual now is to get her diaper changed, swaddle her, tape her in, eat, then go to bed. It was about 3 a.m. when I tried it for the first time--Adam, who had been sleeping, was a little confused when he saw me standing over Lily, with a strip of packing tape in hand.