Christmas is a wonderful time of year to have a young baby in your home. Despite the sleep deprivation, the cluster feeding and the relentless diaper changes, there is something really magical about watching your baby react to the sensory delights that occur during the festive period. From carol singers to twinkly lights, Christmas trees to presents, whilst your baby won’t necessarily remember the occasion, there are photo opportunities and new experiences around every corner. Whilst every baby milestone is important, from their first smile, first roll and first steps, there is also something really special about recording your Baby’s First Christmas.
Here are some fun ways to capture your Baby’s First Christmas milestone:
- Capture those tiny hands and feet
When our first daughter was born, we decided to send home-made Christmas cards to all our family and friends, using our daughter’s footprint to create a fun reindeer design. To do this, you simply dip your baby’s foot into child safe paint and press onto the card before adding googly eyes and a sharpie marker face to bring your little reindeer character to life. Our friends and family absolutely loved receiving these, and it’s a lovely way to immortalise the size of their tiny little toes!
You can also make handprint baubles or salt dough ornaments to display around your home, all of which have a similar level of cuteness and become a keepsake that you will most certainly cherish.
- Baby’s First Christmas Bauble
I am a traditionalist at heart, and I love the process of dressing our Christmas Tree with the girls each year at the start of December. When our daughters were born we purchased a ‘Baby’s First Christmas Bauble’ with their name on and the year, and this is now something that has been on our tree every year since. As the girls have grown older they can now pop it on to the tree themselves. This is something that I hope will continue for many years to come, staying on their trees when they have families of their own!
- Christmas Family Portrait
Each year we try and get a shot of the entire family together wearing a festive outfit and use to create photo cards or update messages for our family. We have family spread all over the world so a little annual update with a message and photo goes down really well with those who don’t get to see the girls as often as they would like. For Baby’s First Christmas this family shot is even more special, and the outtakes can be pretty hilarious to keep too.
If you are feeling a little more adventurous or don’t mind the additional expense, paying for a professional family photoshoot (the outdoors ones work really well) can be the ideal way to capture those precious moments.
- Baby’s First Christmas Album
If like me, you are a bit snap happy on special occasions, it can be lovely to actually print out some photographs you’ve taken over the Christmas period and display them in a special First Christmas album, making it far easier to view and enjoy the images rather than simply storing them digitally.
If you aren’t able to visit family during December itself, you can take the album along when you do finally get to meet, helping them experience vicariously the moments they may have missed!
- Meeting Santa
Taking your baby to meet Santa for the first time is definitely a moment to capture – even if it may have mixed results. Depending on their age and whether their separation anxiety is strong, your babies reaction to Santa may range from confusion to tears, smiles and claps to a inevitable cheeky beard pull! We have some absolutely priceless facial expressions on some of our girl’s first meting with Santa, and I know they will love looking back at these when they are all grown up.
- Start your Family Tradition
We have many festive family traditions and ultimately you can find something that works for you. My daughter was just 6 months old at her first Christmas, but despite this we still put a plate out for Santa with a carrot for Rudolf, and have done so every single year since. Having a picture in the same location every year with her beaming smile next to that plate is so lovely to look back on, especially when she was joined by her little sister!
How did you celebrate your Baby’s First Christmas?
