New Years 2010...Almost caught up

Luthien,

New Years was anticipated [almost] as equally as Christmas, because we were expecting a visit from Nana and Grandad. Being so far from them has been the hardest part of this move for you, since we used to live so close and see so much of them. Just today you said about 4 times, "I need my Nana" and about 2 times "I miss my Grandad" (sorry Grandad!)...

Your Uncle Kade and Aunt Carlie also surprised us with a visit at this same time! We had fun walking along the beach, making snow angels and snowmen, exploring downtown New Bedford, and traveling to New York to bring in the new year with your cousins and other aunts and uncles.

Here, another picture with Daddy:

Aunt "Car Car":

Keeping warm and therefore, happy!

More of the family:

Relaxing on New Years in Brooklyn:

Shifting gears a bit, as I've mentioned before you have been showing signs of having quite the artistic eye. We found these alphabet stickers somewhere, and here is what you decided to do with them. I have never been the creative/think outside-the-box type of person so I think this is fabulous:

Recovering from the holidays and family visiting was a VERY difficult month for us (yes, a month, and the reason it took me so long to write to you!) You missed everyone and all the attention terribly, you stopped sleeping, and you were acting totally different. I realize now that most of your behaviors/acting out was due to the lack of sleep, but at the time it was hard to figure out just how little sleep you were getting (because we were so exhausted)! We finally had to do another round of sleep "training" with you, and although there were quite a few VERY difficult nights, we are now enjoying our usual happy girl, as well as you falling to sleep on your own, napping, and sleeping through the night again!

Dad caught a picture of you and I during this time, passed out (literally) on the couch together. This never happens because you have too much energy! I love that you are doing this sucking thing with your mouth that you have done since you were a baby- you never took a pacifier so you basically suck without one. I hear you doing this from our room in the early mornings- it usually means you will wake up within the next hour :)

Sweet dreams my little girl,

Mama

Christmas 2010

Dear Luthien,

At last...Christmas. We had the opportunity to cat-sit for our friends who live on the beach in Dartmouth! We stayed there every day except the actual day of Christmas for two weeks.

Here you are, getting geared up for one of our many walks along the frigid beach...




With Daddy...

Walking to the pier...

Enjoying an apple (your favorite fruit) in one of the many quaint corners of Sebastian's house

We made sugar cookies on Christmas Eve, a tradition as of last year. At times it seemed Bastian was more into making the cookies than you! I made them whole wheat style, so Dad convinced me to let us use actual powdered sugar for the frosting...

Then he convinced me to let us use food coloring- you did really enjoy decorating with all the colors, so it was worth it, and since you're not that big into sweets and only ate about half a cookie, I wasn't too worried about the colors poisoning your little body :) Here are the cookies you decorated:

And here are Dad's (he gets really into it):

We don't have too many pictures from Christmas morning, but it was definitely exciting to watch you open all of your presents. You got so many wonderful things from family members across the country. You loved this little riding toy that you can ride down our looong hallways, although you are a bit too big for it and will need a little tricycle by the time your birthday comes around! You mainly like this one because of the baby giraffe that rides with the mommy. If I haven't told you before, you are very into "teeny tiny baby" things, as you call them. Some other favorite things you got were ocean puzzles, books, and warm sweaters (you hate being cold)! Santa surprised you with the Christmas action figures you had asked him for (it just so happened I bought these for your Dad as a joke gift about 4 years ago, and we had saved them for an occasion like this)! You went nuts when you opened it.

Christmas morning:

Love you!

Mama

More Pre-Christmas Pics

I'm really behind, and want to update you on the most recent happenings, so enjoy these pics with little commentary!

A new favorite activity with Dad: making/playing in a fort! You have only recently become more accepting of Bastian playing in the fort with you :)

You have always loved to play with little figurines, so this miniature Nativity was a real hit leading up to Christmas. As usual, you liked to line up each of the people/animals over and over all over the house, but on one occasion you were particularly artistic about the whole thing...

You put each figure on a different row of wood, forming a curve, and then placed a sticker in front of each. We have kept the stickers on the floor, just to remember.

And here you are playing "doctor" while sporting Bastian's diaper (one of your old diapers!) just for fun....

Coming soon: "Daddy leaves too much, but I love him," new haircut brings a new attitude, and more. And Happy Birthday Daddy/Rome today! We had a fun couple of days and will post about that soon too!...

Love,

Mama

Dear Santa

Dear Luthien,

Sorry for having neglected writing you for so long! Christmas, and the month leading up to the big day were very fun around our house because of you. You were very excited about the snow (although the novelty has definitely worn off by now!), and putting up our tree, but mostly fascinated by the idea of Santa and Rudolph.

Here you are outside of our apartment building during the first snow we had... you liked it for a couple minutes and then said, "Mommy, I'm too cold, hold me, hold me!" We hear this a lot now :)

You much prefer looking out the window at the snow, especially when Daddy is in the courtyard below walking Roofus...these aren't the greatest pictures but I love your expressions!

And finally, a few weeks before Christmas we sat down and wrote a letter to Santa. I was pretty impressed with how little prompting I had to give you to come up with this (I basically wrote down what you said, verbatim):

If you don't remember by the time you can read this, this Christmas you fell in love with the old animated/claymation movie "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." It is very creepy in Mom's opinion, the only reason we own it is because Dad likes it too! You requested to watch it over and over again and by Christmas time could sing all the songs! (Of course, it's a short film and we only let you watch it once per day)...This explains your request to Santa for "a dentist" and the "snowman monster," although it wouldn't surprise me if you had come up with them on your own with how imaginative you have been these days!

More soon!

Mommy

Thanksgiving

Hi Luthien,
Well first I will start by telling you I cannot believe all the new things you are doing/saying on a daily basis. It would be far too much to record, so I will just list a few new developments.

1. You say the funniest, and we think most clever things. I really need to start writing things down right after you say them so I can record a few of the classics here. Something you have started saying often is, "Say it louder Mom!" when I say something you like- as if that seals the deal...? I can't really figure out where you got that, other than I think I say that to Dad sometimes because my hearing is not the best. You also have started thanking everyone, and you always say "Oh" as if whatever polite gesture someone has done for you is a surprise. So if you ask me for milk and I give it to you, you say "Oh! Thank you Mommy!"

2. You are really delving into the world of imaginary play these days. You love to play 'going to the grocery store or the farm' and finally you love to help me cook! I've been waiting for this day! Of course sometimes it's a bit of a hindrance when I'm trying to prepare something quickly, but most of the time I really enjoy cooking with you- you mimic what I'm doing in great detail with some of your own tools and I get to teach you the ropes. You've even started helping me set the table and load the dishwasher.

3. You can now retell stories, daily events, etc. with pretty good accuracy. I love asking you what happened in a particular book or when you went to the store with Dad and hearing what you have to say. Every time you go somewhere with Dad you say that you got candy, which Dad then denies, so I'm not sure about the accuracy there :)

4. You still are pretty into letters and words and what sounds make up words. I actually started a little informal "assessment" the other day on a whim. I presented you with 3 letters and then asked you to point to a particular letter or sound, and you could point to the correct one almost every time. Dad tried this but he quickly found that he was giving you too many letters at a time. A visual field of 3-4 is the max for now (I'll explain this to you later I guess). Also, you point out print in the environment when we go places, which is exciting!

5. You are getting really good at singing and right now of course Christmas songs are your favorite- you love anything to do with Santa, reindeer, or snowmen.

Okay, that's enough for now! Here are a few pictures from the past couple weeks as well as some from our Thanksgiving trip to Brooklyn...

I think I told you you are loving to paint right now. Sometimes I find paint in interesting places, but I love that you love to create.

We've still been hanging out with your friend, Dorothy and you LOVE her gecko. You always want to hold him and for the most part you are very gentle. I'm just impressed that you don't flinch when he crawls all over you!

Here you are with your cousin Georges the night before Thanksgiving, in your favorite of places. You can sort of see that you have extreme dryness right now in various places on your body (where your skin is thin?)- under your eyes, behind your knees, etc. The eyes worry me- whenever you cry, you then start screaming because the tears sting! Poor girl. I'm working on a remedy for this.

Along with pretend play, you love to dress up. Shoes are your favorite and hats are a close second. A big thing right now is that you can put on most of your clothes by yourself so you love to practice. Here you are getting dressed up in Georges' shoes/hat:

Thanksgiving with the East Coast cousins...you all loved playing in front of the mirror and Bastian started really scooting fast that weekend:

You were very excited to eat. Your appetite has really increased these days! You can also see that Aunt Maria made everyone a personalized placemat with fitting artwork...

Jumping on Dad's full belly after a fabulous dinner:

We drove home from Brooklyn the day after Thanksgiving and although it was late, we stopped and got a tree!

And lastly, a bit of nostalgia- you showing off your Grand Canyon shirt (it's one of your very favorites and you love to tell people about it).

I forgot to mention that you weighed in at an impressive 23 lbs when we went to the doctor. Only 4 lbs more than your big/little brother :)

Goodnight my little peanut,

Mommy

Brooklyn

Dear Luthien,

Last week I decided to hop on a bus to Brooklyn with you and Bastian; we went for 2 nights and 3 days to visit your Uncle Beau and Aunt Trisha/families, and to see Aunt Shannon with cousins Jack and Ryan who were visiting from AZ. You had such a great relationship with Jack and Ryan that I couldn't stand the thought of not seeing them when they were less than 4 hours driving distance from us. We didn't have the gas money and Dad didn't have the time to take away from his studies, so we took the bus! It was actually great! Of course there were moments on the bus that were difficult, seeing as I was the only one with kids, let alone a toddler and a baby, but I would definitely do it again. It was good for Dad to be able to study while we were gone. The trip was really wonderful- good food, good conversation, and nice playing (for the most part) between you and your cousins. I couldn't have asked for more!

Bus ride from Providence to Manhattan- I managed to get you and Bastian to sleep at the same time!

Playing with Georges in his room:

Playing (and not really wanting to share) with cousin Olivia at Aunt Trisha's house:

Playing at the park with all the cousins. You were delighted to find the big turtles, frog, and whale!

It was a beautiful weekend- a bit warmer than New England so the leaves haven't fallen off the trees yet. Here are the adults hanging out:
Saying goodbyes:
You were very happy to see Dad when the bus pulled into Providence. We love the city and can't wait to explore it more since it's so close to us! Here you are near the river where the gondolas float- very picturesque in the daytime...
You are growing up so fast! Lately you have been singing more and talking in even more complete sentences. Sometimes you mix up your pronouns but we have been working on that. You are learning your phonemes, letters, and visual letter recognition slowly. When you want to get your point across you call us by our first names, and your new favorite thing to do is painting and coloring on the walls :) Every time I reprimand you, you say, "No Mommy, I'm just drawing a big whale!!" As if that makes it all okay. But I am glad that you seem to have an artistic eye- unlike me, much like your father.

Love you,

Mama

Staying In

Dear Luthien,

Last week we stayed home on a Monday, which is rare for us. You see, I would love to stay home in the morning and actually get things accomplished around the house, but I have this fear that we will stay and you will get so bored and cranky that I won't be able to accomplish anything anyway, so I always end up taking you somewhere. I admit that I am not very good at multi-tasking. I have a hard time even folding laundry while playing with you and watching Bastian. This is mostly because once I begin a project I want to do the whole thing; interruptions tend to bother me so much that I would just rather save a particular task for later (which is why I either don't get things accomplished or don't sleep). But I am happy to say that last Monday we stayed home and accomplished lots! And it felt great! And we had lots of fun finding new ways to play with your toys. So, I have decided that from here on out we will be staying home at least twice a week so we can do chores together and you can learn to be more creative with the things we have.

Here are a few pictures from our day together. I should say that it definitely wasn't perfect. Toward the end I could tell you were getting bored so I had to get more and more creative, but it all worked out and we really did have fun together. I loved coloring with you and playing on the bed together, among other things. You also tried on your new boots given to you by a friend...

By the way, I don't think I have mentioned that you have been sleeping in your own "big girl" bed! You can see your bed with the railing a bit in the picture, but I will have to include more soon. You have fallen out once because you move soooo much when you sleep, but so far so good otherwise.

Love,

Mama