Thanksgiving 2015

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. This little miss made ours extra special this year.

This year I’m thankful for my wonderful family, my little girl, the ability to take 12 weeks of maternity leave, white noise apps, and binkies.

That face! I could stare at it all day.

We had a pretty jam packed Thanksgiving this year, starting with our first family-of-three turkey trot in downtown Tampa.

The Goody Goody Turkey Gobble was a first year event. It started as a group of friends who would meet the morning of Thanksgiving every year to run a 5K in downtown Tampa. As the group began to grow and grow, they decided to make an official race out of it complete with closed streets, a finisher medal, and sponsors.

For a first year event, it was pretty well done. There were a few hiccups with picking up packets and general announcements, but otherwise the race started on time, the roads were closed and safe, and the post-race breakfast was probably one of the best I’ve ever had thanks to the sponsorship of a new local restaurant (Goody Goody).

Derek and I had a blast pushing Annalynn in her first race in the BOB (don’t worry, we speed walked it). In fact, we enjoyed it so much, I’m hoping this will be the first of many.

Annalynn loved it, too. She loved it so much, she slept through the entire thing. I was really nervous I was going to have to stop and nurse her at the halfway mark, but she slept like a champ. Way to go, Annalynn!

Like I said, the post-race breakfast was probably the best post-race meal I’ve been served. The eggs, bacon, potatoes, and coffee crumb cake were all really well seasoned and well done. Thank you, Goody Goody for the awesome post-race spread!

After showering, changing, and napping we headed to Derek’s Nana & Dada’s house for our first Thanksgiving meal of the day.

I was nervous how Annalynn would nap on the go, especially with all the over stimulation of being passed from family member to family member. Unfortunately I wasn’t very successful on trying to get her to nap independently, so I put her in the ring sling and she passed out after about 5 minutes of bouncing and singing (the girl loves to hear my off-key voice). Of course, I managed to get her down right when the food was ready. Since I wouldn’t dare to disturb her beauty rest, I did what any new mom would do – I ate Thanksgiving lunch with a baby strapped to my chest.

Worth it.

After lunch with Derek’s family, we headed to Orlando for Thanksgiving part II with my side of the family.

(I remembered to get a family photo right before the sun set – whoop!)

It was fun to have all the babies together for the first time. Christmas is really going to be fun this year.

The really hilarious part was when 6:00pm hit and all the babies started crying. It was actually pretty reassuring to know that a) my kid isn’t the only that gets fussy at that time and b) my kid wasn’t the only one crying last night.

We hit the road back to Tampa and I turned on the magical white noise app (seriously, that thing is MAGIC). The white noise + binkie = Annalynn slept the whole way home. Woo hoo!

If I’m being honest, as much as I loved having my baby girl for her first Thanksgiving, it was a teeny bit stressful making sure she was getting fed when she needed it, getting sleep when she needed it, and she was happy, happy, happy the whole time (aka no fussing). I’m looking forward to next year when she’ll (hopefully) be eating with us at the table (in a high chair, obviously) and able to semi-entertain herself with toys and playing with the other babies (a mom can dream, right?). Otherwise, I’d say this Thanksgiving was a big success.