Hi everyone! We had a wonderful Christmas and New Years at home (with Daniel's birthday in between!). We are so lucky that, being in the aircraft industry, Daniel gets over a week off from work at this time of year. Also, yet another perk of living on the west coast...the kids got to watch the ball drop in Times Square at 9pm and then call it a night! Granted, that it pretty late for them anyway, and a bit underwhelming in the end, but you get the point.
Some Christmas morning pictures!
While Daddy and Hollie get down to business...
...Blake says, "I will not be in the mood for this until I get some food in my belly."
I love this picture:
Very first little boy clothes (thanks Mom!)
Daniel on Skype with his parents
H&B still digging that cash register out of the package
Merry Belated Christmas!
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Some other random happenings
The other day Hollie came across the Pull-Ups that we used when she first started not wearing diapers at night. We used to call them "night-time underwear", and it's been a long time since she's used them but we still had the remnants of the last box in a closet.
The first thing she said was, "This is my cowboy underwear!"
"Hmmm...okay!"
Then she pulled it onto her head and said, "Nope, it's my doctor hat."
" ..... "
I had an awful dream a few nights ago. I was in the hospital, and delivering the baby. After he was born, I immediately went home to shower and change clothes, which in itself is odd. When I returned to the hospital, no one could tell me where my baby was, because we hadn't given him a name yet (Daniel was never present through all of this),
and that I couldn't even go in past the front desk because, though the clock on the wall said 3:15, the guy at the counter said "visiting hours are over at 3:30". It was vivid and had me awake in a panic, but there was one interesting detail...that was a little McBurney boy! Unlike the mini-Daniel we've been anticipating, the baby in the dream was pale with light brown hair. We will just have to wait and see!
One afternoon, Hollie had me sit on the couch (except it was actually a car), so that she could drive me to a "snow mountain" where we could go sledding. After turning the toy keys in the invisible ignition, she stopped and pulled a stuffed bear out from under a pillow next to her, and said, "The motor wasn't working. There was a polar bear in it." We never made it to the snow mountain...got side-tracked to bear cuddling.
She is a wonderful story-teller. Just today she had us all sit around her to hear about some baboons that live in a house, and some bunnies that grew up to be tigers. Then she made up a song which had us all tapping toes, then drumming on the floor, then waving our arms, and I don't remember the rest. Her imagination is truly limitless.
Blake is beginning her vocabulary!
For a while now she has been saying...
"Hiiiiii!"
"Byyyyye!"
"MaMAAAAAA!"
"Yessssss"
"Nooooooooo!" or "Nonononono!"
and has recently added...
"Dada"
"Hah-lah" or "Hah-ligh" for Hollie (it still blows my mind that "Hollie" wasn't her first word. She is sooo attached to her big sister)
"Ba" for bath
and, most recently,
"Ni-ni" for night-night
"Eeeee" for cheese
When asked, she can also identify some parts of her body asked: eyes, hair, nose, teeth, ears (sometimes), and her favorite:
belly! She doesn't say any of them yet, except when she calls all of them "eyes".
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At the moment we are enjoying a visit from Daniel's parents.
Hope to post more soon!
