Busy Day

Charity had a very busy day today!  It began with her first solid food feeding and ended with a trip to see Santa Claus!  We decided to post some pictures of the big day!

First of all, her feeding.  Charity enjoyed some céréale de riz.  (That’s rice cereal in French.  It’s her first meal, so it should seem fancy!) 

This is Charity before her meal.  It was also the first time in her high chair.  No wonder she looks a little confused!

 

This is Charity during her meal.  She is still trying to figure things out.  In this picture, high chair out, Bumbo in.  We decided one new thing was enough.

This is Charity towards the end of her meal.  She decided that she wanted to try the spoon her self.  Can you spot the other change in this picture?  That’s right, Charity moved on to her second bib!

 

Seeing Santa was a good experience for Charity and an interesting one for us.  (We’ll leave it at that for now!)

If you noticed, these look may look kind of far away.  Charlie had to take covert pictures to avoid paying the exorbitant fees.  Once again, good experience for Charity, interesting for us.

Why we do it…

We decided to write about some of the choices we have made so far with Charity.  To start things off, we might as well look at a decision we made during the pregnancy – not finding out if we were going to have a Charity or a … (Sorry, we’re not giving up our boy’s name.  It took us too long to come up with it!)

Before we even got pregnant, we discussed not finding out.  Right away, we both decided that we didn’t want to know.  We knew several people who found out and we knew a few that didn’t, but it just wasn’t us. 

We wanted to have a surprise the day our baby was born.  (Little did we know that the day was going to be full of surprises.)  It was also fun to make a neutral nursery. 

Another reason is money.  I know that it doesn’t sound like a plausible reason, but it was definitely a major contributor to our decision.  Knowing that babies grow out of things so quickly, we wanted to get as many neutral items as possible.  So, yes, if we have a son next time, we very well may bring him home in the same outfit as we did with Charity.  Right now, we have a great stockpile of birth-3 month neutral clothes to choose from.

We are still really happy that we made this decision.  It seemed to make the whole experience just that much more magical for us.  It also lead to some great discussions and dreams when we were pregnant.  When we envisioned our child wearing different outfits or playing with different toys or playing in the backyard later on, it was so much fun to think of a boy one day and a girl the next. 

I am sure that this decision also helped us with the first few weeks after Charity was born.  We wanted to see what gender our baby was going to be and God taught us the patience we needed to get through the tough time with her in the hospital. 

Hopefully that same patience will be with us the rest of her life!