Janette Crawford

This year, Jon, Viv and I are having Christmas on our own. So at the beginning of December, knowing we had a low-key holiday season ahead of us, I decided to make the most of it — by organizing a Secret Santa gift exchange with some of our closest friends and a handmade necklace exchange with my Fashion Loves People readers! 

For the gift exchange, a group of us got together for brunch one day to draw names, and then to exchange our gifts, we all had dinner on Tuesday at our house. The gifts were all incredibly thoughtful — such a good time with such special friends! 

For the necklace exchange, 90 people signed up through my blog to both give and receive a handmade necklace, to and from a randomly assigned stranger, by Christmas. I’ve had everyone send me pictures of the necklaces they made, and they’re fantastic! I’ll post them all soon. 

And it’s not even Christmas Day yet… for a few more hours, anyway. 

Vivi’s becoming a real human! I can’t wait to see which traits she has now will stick with her for the rest of her life.

She sweats! She’s “hot blooded.” At first I had her sleeping swaddled and with a hat on, but every time I checked on the back of her neck to feel out her body temp, she was balmy. So I cut the hat and now swaddle only in muslin, though she’s still balmy. I asked our pediatrician about this, who said, “I guess that’s who she is.” (I liked that.)

She loves pacifiers! I was slow to introduce one, because my approach to parenting so far has been very minimalistic on giving her “tools” and “solutions” until we decide they’re necessary. But she’s been really fussy over the past week or so, and a pacifier really helps. Again, the pediatrician: “Some babies just need to suck.”

She’s a spitter-upper. (I’m hoping this one doesn’t hold into adulthood.) She’s had some huge ones that had me calling the advice nurse line, but I can avoid those so far by not letting her eat more than 20 minutes at a time. Now we just get enough to need lots of burp cloth laundering.

She’s an amazing eater & grower. When she was born, she was a champ throughout that looong labor, and I just think she’s super “hearty.” She didn’t lose much weight right after she was born, and she’s already 10+ pounds. Can’t bring her down.

She’s been holding up her head like crazy when she’s laying against my shoulder — super strong. She arches her back a lot in any position.

And we *think* she’s consciously smiling! Who knows, maybe we’re being optimistic. But she’s happy when she’s getting kisses. I mean, who wouldn’t be?

That was a thought I had multiple times in the first few weeks of Viv’s life. At one of our pediatrician appointments I asked, “It seems so easy, is there a catch?” — thinking to myself, “My baby and I are so good at this, suckas!”

But then days like yesterday happen, when Viv is practicing turning her lungs up to 11. Translated into adult language, her cries say, “What have you done to me?!” They feel so disproportionate to the situation!

But then I remind myself that she’s a newborn, of course — and we keep bouncing and pacing around the room.