Sweet Yet Sour

First, Anna is 9 months old today – I have no idea how that happened – it seemed like such a long time away when we made the 9 month check up appointment (which is scheduled for Wednesday).

One of the things that I have decided I don’t like about being a parent of a baby is that I don’t get to buy sweet little outfits for Anna.  Other people cannot resist buying frilly dresses (sometimes these are dry clean only!) and outfits for her, so it’s left to me to buy the outfits that she can actually play in and get messy with rice cereal.  It’s a bit of a bummer.

So far in Anna’s life all major holidays have had at least one, if not many, outfits purchased for her by relatives including the 4th of July, Halloween and Christmas.  Christmas was by far the most outfits – one provided by Mike’s mother, two provided by my Aunt Diane and one, stupidly, purchased by me for $0.99 at Goodwill, when I wasn’t remembering that I needn’t buy such a thing.

All of the outfits purchased for her need to be put on her, pictures taken and then “Thank-you” notes written including the pictures.  Anna is unfortunately not at a point where she really likes it when you take her clothes on and off, so it’s necessary to spread the outfit changes out in order not to have a pissy baby – which does not look good in pictures.

Here is the first of the Christmas outfits purchased by my Aunt Diane (the doll was included with outfits):

Christmas Outfit Number 1

It says “Baby’s First Christmas” on it if you can’t read it and the doll’s outfit says, “Merry Christmas”.  Anna herself said, “I have places to go here mom, get me out of the chair.”

Here is the second Christmas outfit purchased by my Aunt Diane:

Christmas Outfit Number 2

This was a little corduroy dress with white snowflakes on the bottom of it that came complete with white tights with red snowflakes and weirdly, butt ruffles. I tried to put a hat on her too, but Anna was having none of it:

That's a "no" on the hat

And here is the Christmas outfit purchased by Mike’s mother:

Christmas Outfit Number 3

Yep, that’s a sheet draped over our couch – Mike is all about creating a scene when he takes pictures; he gets it from his portrait photographer father.

All of the Christmas outfits are up on Flickr here, so feel free to take a look at my struggles to get a good picture for the “thank-you” notes…

Generally the outfits that are bought for Anna are cute and she can wear them for about 20 minutes before she gets them dirty or starts to suck on the bottom of the dress.

I say that they are “generally” cute, because I have received for Christmas from my grandmother (who ONLY shops from the Cabela’s catalog) a camo baby bunting.  I’m including the link here for the picture of it from the Cabela’s website because I am frankly unwilling to put it on my child at this point.  At some point I will have to put her in it and take a picture because if I don’t write a “thank-you” note for it there will be hell to pay.  My grandmother is a world-class grudge holder who does not stand for me not sending a note.  I am so not looking forward to that photo session…