Thursday, December 31, 2009

Happy New Year!

I am anxious to see the ball drop tonight as the New Year is rung in!

I wanted to share this picture... it is a great example of how our year ended...!  Ha!  Adam and I joked tonight that we'll think back on Raven's first three months as our really good baby, but since then, not-so-much.  She has taken to being quite cranky lately unless Mommy is holding her... or, quite cranky if Mommy is in the vicinity and Mommy isn't holding her... I have reports that when I am not around, she's not so bad.  :)  Julia wanted desperately to hold her a variety times today, but at no time was Raven happy when Julia was holding her... I finally snapped a picture of what we were experiencing and left it at that. 

Julia, on the other hand, has been in a great mood lately and while we had a rough few weeks that I would attribute to adjusting to being a Big Sister, she has been a peach the last couple of weeks and really a dear to be around.  Her vocabulary is expanding by leaps and bounds and this week she has really taken to adding consonants to the ends of her words (up until this week, I had no idea if it was a "bug", "ball", "book", or what have you unless it was directly being pointed at, etc.).  She especially loves words that end in the "k" sound and "book", "stuck", "icky", "yuck", and others have heavy emphasis.  She is very proud of the fact that she can ask specifically for one of us to read her a book and we actually know what she means.  Finally.  Without a big production of trying to figure it out.

Also, Julia has finally learned her Peas and Thikoos and it is sweeter than sweet to hear her ask for "more, peas" and "thikoo" when you give her what she desires.  And, after months and months of Daddy's hard work, Julia is finally saying "Bup!" ("Up!")  What's really been fun is having full conversations with her that I still don't understand, but the facial expressions and obvious deliberateness with which she talks is astounding and fascinating and comical all at the same time.

This last week Adam finished the bunk beds and Julia is super excited about her new bed and we will be using some Christmas money to purchase mattresses for them this weekend.  Each night she tries to get us to let her sleep on the hard plywood slap that that is on the base of her bed... but, soon enough we will be tackling tucking her in at night and hoping she actually stays there.  I hope the transition goes smoothly; we are hoping in a few weeks to move Raven to the crib, as she is sleeping 9 - 10 hours straight at night now.

Today was fun to watch Julia's amazement as we took down the Christmas tree... she seemed quite surprised that the tree could be taken apart in pieces and put into a box... she wanted very badly to help Mommy with this project so she was in charge of keeping the box flaps open when I put the limbs away.  Julia was also enthralled with the number of boxes we have in which we pack the ornaments, and left and right she was picking up and saying "bock", "bock", "bock" over and over again.  Thankfully she hears and obeys when Mommy says, "hand the box to mom!"

At any rate, I am excited to see what this next year brings in the way of watching our girls grow and learn.  It is so hard to believe that two years ago Julia was a tiny baby and now she is a Big Girl and she has a quickly-growing baby sister (almost into 6 mo one-piece outfits!).

erin

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