FINALLY...A post about Christmas

My apologies for the delay in documenting the Little Guy's First Christmas. (You should all know by now how much I hate the uploading ordeal. Plus, I've been just a little bummed that aside from all the pictures Joe included in his post from November, we lost the rest of them and there were more pictures I wanted to include on the blog.) But now that I'm over that, here's Christmas.

Let me say that on the 23rd, our little man decided that he wanted our food. It all started with his bottle feeding right before we got in the car and headed down to Grandma Jensen's house for 4 days. Joe was enjoying his sucker from Arkansas, which was part of our Christmas counters for Christmas. Mr. BJ saw the sucker and blatantly refused the bottle, even tho he was more than just hungry. It took awhile for Joe to figure out what BJ wanted - our questions to why to all the fussing were answered when Joe absentmindedly removed the sucker from his mouth and BJ immediately opened his mouth for a taste. At first we weren't going to give him any, but then we realized he wouldn't stop fussing until he had some. One of the pictures we lost was him going to town on the sucker. Once the sucker was all gone, he still refused the bottle until Joe pretended to take a drink. Then BJ decided the bottle must be alright if dad was having some too.

His interest in our food has continued and multiplied. For our Christmas Eve feast we let him try his first orange.First he just took a lick.
And then he began devouring. He even started taking out chunks.

We had a lot of fun with Joe's mom and Jensen family. We got to help make stockings and went to the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. We took a walk downtown and enjoyed lots of time together.

Here's BJ opening his first Christmas present. He actually did really well with the wrapping paper. We'd lift a piece of it up so he could grab it, and then he'd rip.

The final result were his first pair of Christmas pajamas.

I have to say having Christmas pj's was one of my all-time favorite Christmas traditions. I've been lucky in convincing Joe that it's a worthy tradition to maintain. :)

Here we all are in our Christmas pj's. You can tell this little guy is ready for bed.

Luckily we were able to get a 2nd photo where he looks a little more pleasant.

Christmas morning:

Enjoying some cuddle time with Grandma.

Yes, we stayed in our pjs all day. You can admit that you did too.

Santa Grandma brought the little guy spoons, bibs, and bowls for Christmas breakfast.

Opening his stocking
Hide your children, because I'll be the first to admit that everything BJ got for Christmas (minus the pj's), are re-gifted items. So if you see something in the photos that you gave us, I hope that just means you'll be happy to know that we thought they were awesome enough to be used as Christmas presents.

These finger puppets are a perfect example of re-gifters

This was the highlight of Christmas. My cousin lent us this saucer since her little girl is no longer using it. So this is the big gift that Santa brought. He spends most of his time in this during the day. He just loves being able to stand up and play.

The little guy never made it through more than 1 gift at a time (and he only had 3 to open) before he needed another nap. So here he is finally opening his 3rd gift just before we put him to bed for the night. I never took a picture of the actual gift, but it's a jumper that goes in the door. He's still a little too short for it, but he's growing like crazy so he'll be jumping around in no time at all.

A couple days after Christmas we went shopping with gift cards. We used the gift card from Grandma Great to get a booster seat. It's Cars. We thought it was totally awesome, and he's just so cute in this picture!

So, there you have it. Baby's First Christmas. Grandma Jensen spoiled us all (since Joe and I were keeping it small and simple, and BJ's gifts were really just to provide photo opportunities that we could send along to our birthmom.) But it was wonderful and peaceful and fun. I know sometimes it's really hard to keep Christmas all about what's most important and to focus on the Savior. I love being able to spend the time with family. That's what is most important. I, of course, still missed being with my family, but I love my Jensen family too. I'm grateful that we have a special season to reflect on life's greatest blessings and to surround ourselves with those we love.

Disclaimer - Joe wrote this post as if it were me!

Here's the latest batch of Jensen family photographic amazingness. Thanks to my old roommate (well, really I should say "former" roommate. She's hardly old) Katrina, we've got some really cute pictures of both the little guy and the full family. He steadfastly refused to smile for any of them, but he's still just too dang adorable for his own good.

He seemed a bit surprised to be set down in the middle of the strawberries at first, but they did make a great background. My wonderful husband, Joe, suggested this picture. I think it was very creative and wise of him to do so. He is great!

In deep thought.

He always gets excited when he gets to stand up. His balance is really quite good for his age, and since he shows absolutely no interest in rolling over, it's entirely possible that he may try walking before he crawls...
Red White and Blue so he can prove his true American bona fides when he runs for kindergarten class president.
The whole family, with a very cute expression from our junior-most member.

For the record, he was NOT a fan of the leaf pile, but it was simply too good to pass up. The autumn colors were perfect, and the flannel shirt just seems right in this pic.
This is quite similar to a purely reflexive hand gesture that he used to make all the time as a newborn. It looks somewhat revolutionary.
By this time he may not have been loving the leaf pile, but he'd given up on being rescued from it any time soon.

Cute. That's all.

Here you can finally see the setting that served as backdrop to our photo session. That's the BYU MOA in the distance- we were by the waterfall most of the time. Many thanks Katrina!!
A rare smile caught on camera. I love that he smiles with his whole face.
Tai chi is excellent exercise for ALL age groups.
Over Thanksgiving, Grandma and Grandpa Biggs came to visit, along with brother Mark and two of his girls. It was great having a chance for our little guy to hang out with some of his California cousins. We went to see Tangled in 3-D (the glasses forming the basis for his rather spot-on Ray Charles impersonation, above). (Ray Charles is a blind jazz pianist, for those who don't know. Amy didn't.) The movie was a lot of fun for all of us, and he watched the whole thing in rapt attention.
Getting ready to give his daddy a BIG HUG! He sure does love his daddy! Yup!
His most recent doctors appointment (end of November) went great. He didn't exactly love the shots, but we certainly don't blame him for that. The best news was that he got to start rice cereal! He seems to love it, but is a little uncertain as to whether it should go ON his face or IN his face. Prepositions are hard when you're a kid.
He's learning to play with his toys more and more every day. The lion is one favorite.
He really loves this mirror too. Yea for the dollar store.
Somehow this outfit manages to look both ghetto, and effeminate. As long as the hat and the track suit aren't paired up they both work fine.
We call this toy the "thing". We got that from one of our new TV shows that we follow- "Running Wilde". The tween girl in the show grew up in the Amazon with only one possession which she refers to as her "thing", and we thought that was pretty funny. At first, our little guy had a hard time keeping hold of it, but we discovered that if we slipped his wrists through some of the loops, then it stayed in place. In this picture both of his wrists are trapped- pretty effective handcuffs.

Aw, shucks!

Hanging with mommy, one of his favorite pasttimes.
The fingers have now definitely displaced his binky as a chew toy. We call them his "fishhooks".
Meeting Santa at the ward Christmas party. He didn't seem at all upset, but he also didn't seem at all impressed. We ate his candy.
Playing with the ornaments on cousin Brittany's tree. We all had a great time at our first "monthly" cousin get together in over half a year. He had tons of fun playing with the other kids, and we had a very delicious dinner.

This is as close to rolling over as he's gotten. For some reason he is a lot more likely to be mobile when we put him on his back rather than on his tummy. Tummy time often turns into nap time.
This morning he was super fussy (by his standards, at least). We're pretty sure he's in some sort of pre-teething phase. We put him in his bear costume to cheer him up, and he spent several hours chewing on mommy's finger, and pretty much anything else he could get his hands on.

More pictures from the past month

Our photo journey starts on Halloween. I got this shirt at Target when I was out visiting my sister. It was in the $1 bin. I couldn't pass it up.

Cuddling with daddy

Holding his bottle all on his own.

Enjoying his bouncer

He likes watching the lights.

He has become quite the pro at finding that finger. Sometimes he'll put 2 in his mouth, or his thumb, but usually it's just this one. He still has yet to learn to use it for soothing. For now, it's just drool and slobber and sweet baby stuff.

The finger again. Hanging out with daddy after the adoption walk.

Sweet, happy boy

We figured if he liked looking up then we would put things "up" to look at. We started with the binkie, then moved on to rattles and a mirror.

Helping mommy with laundry. When I first put it over him he was super giggly and happy.

Our 16 week tuba growth chart

Getting ready to go outside.

He's doing great! We're in week 3 of sleeping through the night. It's A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! He usually sleeps anywhere from 8 to 10 hours at night. There's usually 1 night a week where he gets up for a single feeding, but we'll take it in comparison to the 2 or 3 times he was up before. He generally wakes up happy and I find him in his bed all smiles and talking. It's a good way to start the day. We've got him eating a little bit more at fewer intervals too. He's definitely getting chatty and coos. It's especially fun when he does it during church. It's hard to shush him because it's so adorable, but sometimes he's louder than the teacher. He's drooling tons, but doesn't seem to be teething yet. He's still our happy, sweet boy. We have experienced his growing stubbornness tho, so we know he's going to keep us on our toes as he gets older. He still makes us work for smiles when we pull out the camera, but as you can see, we've gotten a little bit better.

We sure do love our boy!