Baby's First Christmas

Anya had a great first Christmas. She was able to open presents, eat the paper, and play with her toys. She had fun with all her Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins. She is 5 months now and she can almost sit up on her own (she continues to do her pilates sit-ups so her tummy muscles are strong). She is getting really good at passing a toy from one hand to the other. And has slept through the night 3 of the 4 past nights! Whoo hoo!

like father like daughter

well, if you ever had a question....just look at the picture. Anya couldn't look more like her father. They were both wearing brown the other day and we just had to take a picture. Anya continues to love to bounce around and is always on the go. She is starting to roll over from her back to her belly with some regularity now. She can also get her nuk into her mouth. It's really fun to see her actually playing with toys now. She loves grabbing onto things, putting them into her mouth, and shaking them around. It's really cute. She is growing so fast! The other day I took Anya and Aebo for a walk. I strapped Anya into the Baby Bjorn and with Aebo on the leash, we set out on a wintery wonderland walk. The last is Aebo having fun in the snow. That's it for now!

Other news

Two things:
1) our upstairs toilet had been working intermittently and then recently the cold water tap in the bathroom wasn't working either. So we've had people out and they determined that a piece of insulation had fallen down, cold air was getting in and freezing our pipes! Uh hello! That's pretty major seeing as though our house was just completed under 2 months ago! Its a good thing we moved in during the winter to check for all of this stuff right away! As of now the cold water is back to working, but the toilet should be working by later today. Hopefully.

2) I had my surgery to remove the pollup on my vocal chord. I will have to scan in a picture of the before and after. Huge bump there and gone. So now I'm not supposed to talk for 5 days and then very moderate for the next week. I go back in on the 24th just to check how it is healing. Hopefully by the end of Christmas break I should be back to normal. Man it's hard not talking. I did record a few messages to Any and Dan before I went in and they have definitely helped. Yesterday Anya was playing and I played the recording of me saying hi to her and singing songs and she cranked her head around as soon as I hit play. Super cute. Then last night she was fussing and crying when we put her down to bed.. so I went in and played my recording of me sayign "sshhhh..close your eyes and go to sleep. sweet dreams. I love you" and she did! it was so amazing. I love it. I'm feeling pretty good except today I'm really soar all over. it feels like they had me on dummy strings and were contorting me when I was out. I feel like I've been hit by a truck.

Other than that...Things are going good. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy new year!!

Anya and Keegan

My friends Jess and Adam from college have a 1 year old boy named Keegan. We always joke that he and Anya are betrothed. they met at the Christmas party and hit it off. They talked baby babble and even gave a kiss! Keegan got her a rattle (maracca sp?) and another noise maker, socks, and book. She loves the rattle and doesn't mind if she bangs it into her head on the way to her mouth! Aren't they cute!

Christmas is coming!

So here are some pictures of our Christmas tree. It's a skinny 9 footer! We wanted a tall tree because we have the high ceilings now, but we also didn't want it taking up the whole room either. Anya is wearing her beautiful red Christmas dress. Last Saturday we went to the Gamble family Christmas concert which was great and Anya did an amazing job. She was awake and happy most of the time and then slept a little too. Then we headed over to our friend Molly and Ryan's house for a Christmas feast that they and Trisha organized. We had a wonderful turkey dinner and I brought some traditional english Christmas Crakers. Which are a party favor that you crack open and out comes a paper crown, jokes, trivia, and a little toy. I got a yo-yo, other people got whistles, noise makers, clickers, a train....Dan got a mini note pad. let's just say he was a little dissapointed.