I absolutely LOVE christmas and everything about it. Of course your first one with your baby will be the best one yet but lets be honest, it will be completely different too. I thought I’d write a list of the annoying things that happen at Christmas when you have a new born:

• Everyone will want to see you on the big day. You will have to referee many an argument on the run up to Christmas about where you will be. Be prepared, if you decide to see people on boxing day instead, they will instantly feel second best. To get around this you will probably spend more time on Christmas driving then you will actually enjoying yourselves.
• You will receive about 20 baby Christmas themed outfits (cute elf, various food items, santa himself) They will all be made of horrendous velour type material and each person will insist on seeing a picture of them in it on the big day. This results in your baby wearing something nice and comfortable on Christmas day and then doing 50 outfit changes in an afternoon after Christmas to get pictures. Poor baby.
• If people don’t buy you a seemingly hilarious outfit, they will probably buy you something emblazoned with ‘baby’s first Christmas’. This is also annoying as of course they buy it in your baby’s size (so it fits them at christmas) but you can’t then use it afterwards. Well not out the house at least.  This is also true with Christmas decorations. I love a good decoration but what is the point of giving me a ‘N’s first Christmas’ bauble on Christmas day? The tree’s coming down in a few days and next year it won’t be relevant. Wrap it up and send it to me in November.
• People will film you opening your babies presents whilst they either snooze, cry or generally not care. You will be forced to entertain the idea by cooing ‘what have we got baby?’, ‘Oh isn’t this nice! Say thank you!’. It’s ridiculous.
• People will try and force you to have a drink (breastfeeding permitting). Once you get that baby out, people seem to think you are desperate for a drink. Yes, you probably are but after 9 months of sobriety 1 drink is enough to send you over the egde. Add this to multiple night feeds and you really just want to avoid the whole idea of alcohol. This goes hand in hand with getting upset when you choose to leave before midnight. They seem to forget you’ve probably had about 4 hours sleep plus your looking at a night of screams as your babies snoozed through the festivities all day.
• The whole dilemma with receiving money for babies. Do you put it in their piggy bank? Do you use it for baby supplies? Do you open a bank account at the age of 7 weeks to put it all into? Me and J are putting it in a piggy bank in N’s room for now. He’s currently more flush then we are and could probably cover our mortgage for a few months but I will not be against using it for baby supplies if we need to. It’s being spent on him, right?

All that aside, it was a lovely day. We settled with lunch at my parents then the evening with J’s. Me and J fell asleep for most of it, as we do whenever someone else is put in charge of N for a while ( you have to take these naps when you can).  J had more time off work then usual, we ate a decent meal for once, we got a break from parenting for a few hours and we got presents, for us, some of which were non baby related. Yay!