As I mentioned on Tuesday, there are a lot of things I want to do to help Hudson celebrate his very first Christmas. I’ve already mentioned that we’ll spend Christmas in the mountains in Tennessee and that we decided as a family to go easy on the presents. We agreed to stocking stuffers only and Todd and I will exchange a few gifts. We’re all very excited about spending such a long amount of time together– without being in someone’s home and invading their space for a week.

Just because we’ve chosen not to get gifts for everyone in the whole family doesn’t mean we’ve chosen to leave gifts out of Hudson’s first Christmas celebration. I went back and forth on this and wasn’t sure what we should do. I know he won’t remember a lot of what we do, but we will. (My friend, Whitney from Glamorous Life of a Housewife, wrote a great post about why she’s giving her baby boy gifts for his first Christmas.)

We’ll remember the look on his face when he opened that special thing that we’ll always remember that we gave to him. Someday we’ll show him the pictures from the sweet event. Giving him a gift on Christmas Day doesn’t prove our love for him, but it does show my appreciation for some of the Christmas traditions and wanting to experience that with the newest, most precious, member of our family.

My parents are planning on starting a collection for him (that I’ll share with you later) and I hardly see this gift as silly to give a baby. It’s thoughtful and special and he’ll get one every year from them.

We got him a couple of fun gifts that I’ll share with you all later (but really I want to tell you NOW!), but I’ll go ahead and tell you one of them. On Christmas Eve I plan to give Hudson a pair of Night Before Christmas pajamas and a copy of The Night Before Christmas book. My dad read it to me nearly every night because I loved it so much and I knew the entire poem by heart. I want to read this story to Hudson on Christmas Eve.

I also want to read the Christmas story to him. I could also recite all of Luke Chapter 2 when I was in the 2nd grade and I want that tradition to be with our baby boy, too. (Yes, I was a memorizing machine when I was little.)

As far as his future Christmases go, I want to continue to do these things every year. I don’t know where we’ll celebrate Christmas every year. We could be in Dallas. We could be here. We could be in a wonderful vacation spot. I would love for our boy to wake up at his own house every Christmas morning, but I also know that Santa Claus visits you where ever you are. We spent every Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house until I was in high school and being with so much family and having so many cousins around to see what Santa brought us was always the highlight of my day. I also know how much fun it is to be in your own house and be able to play with all of your toys and all of your friends on Christmas day. But I don’t have a crystal ball and I only know what our plans are for this year.

I’m just excited to share all of these amazing things with Hudson and give him something to look forward to every year. I can’t remember a time when I was more excited for Christmas to come!

Hudson turned 5 months old on Thursday, November 5. What a day! I cannot believe my sweet baby boy has been with us for almost half a year. He is the joy of my heart and the light of his Daddy’s life. We couldn’t be more blessed with a better baby and we thank our Lord every day for bringing him into our lives.

I know I’ve said this before, but I look forward to seeing his smiling little face every morning when I go to get him out of his crib. He’s usually babbling in there and I hate to interrupt his little conversation he has with his mobile. But I can’t wait to hold him and steal all of his sugar!

It is such a pleasure and a privilege to be able to witness all of his special moments. Many moms want to freeze time and stop their babies from growing up and I do feel that way to some extent. But I only feel that way because I can’t believe how quickly 5 months has passed and I know that the next 18 years will go by just as quickly! That being said, however, I enjoy every day even more. He is so much fun now and he’s a funny little boy! We just know that he’ll bring tons more smiles to our faces and make us laugh every day!

Look how my boy grows!

3 months

4 months

5 months

(it’s obviously getting harder to get him to smile on command without being completely distracted!)

• Hudson is wearing all 9 month and 12 month clothes. In Magnolia Baby and Kissy Kissy he is wearing 12-18 months. Yowza! He weighed 19 pounds about 3 weeks ago at his sick baby visit. His Jump ‘n Go only allows up to 25 lb babies, so I hope he slows down a little bit!
• He’s still a rolling machine. We had to get a bigger blanket for the floor because he can make his way clear across the room before I know it!
• He’s a bouncing machine. He can entertain himself for nearly 45 minutes in his Jump ‘n Go. It’s so much fun to watch!
• He has become quite interested in Boudreaux and Fiona. They walk by and he starts babbling at them. If he is close enough to reach them, he’ll stick his little hands out to give them a pat.
• He has started grabbing my face when I hold him and talk to him. Such a sweet little feeling!
• He has found his voice– and it is loud. I’ll post a video sometime of us doing our exercises, but when we do his “sit up” exercises and pull him up, he sounds like a wild animal.
• We’ve heard a few more giggles. I would guess that he has giggled out loud about 10 total times. We think he’s either lazy or scared or of it. But when he laughs we always wish we’d gotten a recording of that precious sound!
• He gobbles up 4 ounces of rice cereal and half a jar of banana baby food every morning. And he has mastered all of his vegetables without allergies so far. We’re back to green beans this week– not his favorite, but he tolerates them. He particularly loves green peas and squash. Mmmmmm boy!
• He can hold himself in a sitting position for a minute or two before losing his balance. He kind of supports by resting his arms on his legs. He’ll get it one day!
• Bath time is still his favorite time of day.
• As I mentioned last week, he goes to bed at 7:15 or 7:30 every night and sleeps until 6:30 a.m. without waking up. We’ll go in and feed him a bottle, put him back in his crib, and he’s back to sleep until 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. Good boy!
• He turns on his tummy immediately after being put in his crib and this definitely has me worried all through the night. I’m constantly checking the monitor to see where he is and if he’s okay. He ends up scooting his way up into the corners of his bumper pads, so we’re about to replace them with some breathable bumper pads. I would just go without anything, but I need to protect his head from those bed rails.
• We purchased our BOB Stroller Strides Revolution today. I loved all of your recommendations! Hudson loves his walks, but the Bumbleride is not so easy to push on my 3 mile treks every day. I’m so excited for our new stroller!
• Hudson loves the church nursery every Sunday and we always feel 100% confident leaving him there with the sweet ladies. He’ll “promote” to the “crawlers” class as soon as he can start sitting up on his own. We have a feeling that will be pretty soon!