Our First Easter with our Daughter

My hope is to celebrate every holiday and make it something fun year round for our family. As I've shared before, our daycare does a great job of having events for families to participate in, which we did to kick off the weekend. Here is a snapshot of our Easter weekend!

Friday

Every year I attend a Good Friday breakfast event that my work hosts. Last year, since the event was in March, I was VERY pregnant at it. It was so nice to attend as a family, even if it began at 7:30am. Since my daughter wears a helmet, she doesn't mind wear hats or in this case, bunny ears. The helmet is to even out the shape of her head - she had a favorite side to sit and lay towards on her back. There was a live band and she LOVED the instrumental music, so I guess we will be finding some outdoor concerts this Summer for her to dance along!

Her daycare had an Easter Egg Hunt scheduled for all the classrooms, for the infants it was at 10am in their room. Nick and I both attended, and it was fun to see our daughter interact with her friends in her classroom. I am so happy with the the experience we've had so far, and wrote a blog about some things that helped us narrow down where to send her. The funniest thing was how she opened the eggs, she is really into throwing things at the ground, so the little eggs would basically explode open to reveal yogurt melts. She was a happy camper.

She had her 12 month appointment that afternoon, so I took her to that and ended the day with a nice walk outside before her dinner and bedtime.

Saturday

Nick had to travel out of town for the day to visit family, so I was solo with our little one. We made the most of the day by going out to run some errands and grab some clothing for the upcoming warmer months. I try not to over buy when it comes to clothes since 1) we do laundry so frequent we will never "run out" even with just 8 outfits or so 2) frozen blueberries stain everything 3) her growth spurts are sporadic and random, and the worst feeling is having something she never wore. I picked up some outfits in 18month and 24 month from Target and two outfits from JCrew (they were having a MAJOR sale, 70% off already reduced). We also managed to go to Trader Joes to restock on our frozen foods. She loves being out and about to people watch. She napped HARD once we got home. We had playtime in the sunroom before dinner and bath time.

The best advice I read about "baby proofing" your home was to establish a few safe rooms. Meaning, going all out in those rooms so that babies can explore while you are watching them but without you constantly having to grab them or say "no". For those rooms, we have the drawer attachments and minimal stuff other than her toys around. We did this with our sunroom and her bedroom.

Aside from that, we do the other basics throughout the house - baby gates at both ends of our stairs, all toxic products stowed away in wall mounted cabinets, lock clips in the kitchen on heavy appliances or possibly risky cabinets, outlet covers, and everything heavy anchored to the walls.

Sunday

We started the morning with breakfast and early church at 8am (the 10:30am is the service we typically attend, but on a holiday it is super packed). Typically our daughter wakes up around 7am, so we gave her breakfast first and packed a bottle of milk with us to have while in church. She is now in the phase of wanting to crawl and explore, so Nick had a bit of a workout keeping her moving while holding her. She is about to the age where we will let her play in the nursery and make new friends during service, ha.

Once we got home, we decided to go for a family walk outside which doubled as her nap. I love our walking/running stroller, and wrote a post about it. We knocked out about 3 miles while it was still cool outside. Once we got back, we had an easy lunch - my go to is a chicken nugget salad.

After lunch, we opened Easter baskets with our daughter. My mom found this sloth basket when I was pregnant and instantly thought to get it for our daughter. Nick and I have always had the tradition of giving each other a basket, so we exchanged ours and let Sylvie play with hers! I purchased wooden egg toys, two bathing suits, and a new bottle with a straw for her.

We spent most of the afternoon playing in the sunroom and enjoying our time together. I always grew up celebrating holidays in a big way, so it was fun to create some new traditions!

After our daughter went to bed, Nick grilled up ham steaks, which we served with sweet potato casserole and green beans. It was a sucessful holiday weekend!

Poll time! What is your favorite Easter tradition?!