Our Southern Christmas

12Jan08

So finally I’m getting around to posting about our two-week trip home for Christmas. It was a lot of fun and a welcome break from the ridiculously cold New England weather. We left surrounded by snowbanks higher than us and landed in New Orleans where we didn’t even need a coat. It was glorious. Nola was the belle of the ball; everywhere we went all eyes were on her and she showed everyone what a perfect little angel she is. She was baptized on the Sunday before Christmas in a beautiful ceremony. She was surrounded by family and friends and wore the gorgeous handmade dress that my brothers and I were baptized in. Here’s some pics from Godfather Chris: http://gallery.mac.com/cswhite#100023. We spent time in Meridian, Louisville, Columbia, Oxford, and Brookhaven. Nola met her great-grandmothers, cousins, first cousins once removed, great aunts, uncles, and on and on. Everyone was at her beck and call, which is not any different than normal. We routinely give her whatever she wants at any given moment.

Towards the end of our trip she had a growth spurt and cut three teeth; her sleeping patterns were already messed up because of the strange places we stayed, and the teething really didn’t help any. Just in the past few days we seem to be getting back into a little bit of a normal pattern. She’s not crawling yet, but she does scoot around a lot, reach for things and pull up (or try to pull up). She’s also a bottomless pit! The girl can eat. But you know this already if you’ve watched her eating video.

One of her favorite foods is zwieback toast; she loves to have a two-course meal with toast and a fruit or vegetable.
One day in Brookhaven while visiting with Linda’s friend Louise, she was eating toast with pears; the meal was so relaxing that she decided to fall asleep right there with the toast in her hand. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. At one point she woke up just long enough to try to eat the toast and then fell right back asleep. Here’s one of the gazillion pictures we took:

The rest of the pictures are on my flickr page. The other thing that Nola loved was the antique baby piano that Linda had. She loved it so much that when we got back Dru bought her a piano of her very own. Hers is red lacquer; it’s in the very last picture of the flickr set.

Dru and I both took video of her playing piano. I’m sure his is better, but I’m posting mine because it’s easier.

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