Happy Valentines Day!

So a little love, even late, never hurt - Happy Valentines Day!! We love you bunches!

This was actually Mona's 9th month - she's 9 months! I did a page summarizing the major things that happened this month. Basically, she has been talking, singing, standing (and falling), she has long hair, and eight teeth!

Ramona hasn't wasted any time putting standing to use - she has made her way into the cupboards, is finding a better view, and is reaching the things Eliza can reach.

Eliza loves being independent and one of her new favorite ways to do this is by dressing herself. A little while ago she squeezed into her sister's dress, yes a two-year-old in a 6-12 month dress! The day I took these photos she put her shirt on (sticking out the back) and did the buttons. She zipped her dress up (backward), and put her shoes on (the wrong feet). Then she came to me and said, "Mommy, Eziza did a wonderful, good job!" She did, and we had to get photos of it.

By the way, Eliza loves to wear dresses. She says she wants to get dressed and she means it. To dress, is to put a dress on.

Milk, Wheat, & Nuts!

A couple weeks before Christmas we finally made it into the lab to get blood work done for Mona. We found out that she's allergic to milk, wheat, cashews, almonds, and hazelnuts. The allergy scale is 1-6, and she is a 4 for milk and wheat. She's at a 2 for nuts. We're working toward eliminating these foods from Jen's diet. It's proving difficult, but it's worth a try!

Mona loves food. She would love to be eating more table food, as Eliza was at this age, but Mommy is being cautious. She is allowed one table food: Rice Krispies. Here she is, enjoying them.




Ramona has always been very active, a go-getter! She is eight months old and quite comfortable with crawling.



The past couple of weeks she has been really exploring instead of just going around eating everything she could find. She loves "Sojiki," our iRobot vacuum. We hear Eliza yelling "uh oh" and then Mona squealing as the vacuum backs out of the charging dock. Mona is also very interested in the kitchen and the cupboard in particular. She's pulling chips and hot chocolate out, already!

Mona is also very interested in standing. She's always pulling herself up to the couch, to the toy baskets, and to our chairs at the dining room table. If she's not eating her Rice Krispies when we're at the table, she's down under Eliza, tickling feet.

We are really enjoying all Mona has to say! The past couple of weeks she has been so eager to say "Hiiiiiiii!" and wave to everyone! She used to only say it to Daddy ("Hi da, I love you"). A few days ago Eliza said "Hi, Mona!" and Mona said, "Hi da da!"

She also loves to say "I do," "ssss...ttt... (strawberry)," "guh, guh (good girl)," and "ba, ba." We heard "ma, ma" repeated the other day when she was calling to us from her crib.

We can't believe how grown up she is!!!

Christmas In D.C.

The past two years we've gone to Utah and Arizona for Christmas and haven't made it to the Christmas sights here.

We enjoyed seeing the Christmas lights and Nativities at the D.C. Temple and going to the special displays at the Botanic Gardens.

A couple of the Nativities:

Tom and Eliza at the Botanic Gardens:

The trains!!

Here are some photos of Eliza inside the gardens:

The Botanic Gardens have a mini version of the mall made from mostly plants! I'll show you a few, in case you've yet to see them. Here's the Jefferson Memorial, made from a GOURD! Jefferson has moss hair!

Here are the girls, in front of the Smithsonian Castle... CHOCOLATE, YUM!!

Tom and Eliza in front of the Supreme Court.

I did manage to scrap one of all of us in front of the Capitol!

On the way out, Daddy was holding both girls. This is too cute!

On December 26th, we visited the Air and Space Museum in Dulles. It was very cool, as D.J. said! Here are Tom and Eliza in front of Daddy's cool, sleek, favorite!

Ramona and Mommy, in front of Jen's vintage favorite. It looks like a cartoon plane!

We also saw the Enola Gay and the Concord. After seeing the planes we went to the IMAX theater and saw a fighter pilot show. We thought it was fantastic!

So we had a few memorable adventures around D.C., had fun with ward members who also stayed here, did some reading, organizing, and relaxing!

December Details

While Tom was studying for finals, we did get a bit of snow!! Since he was home studying we bundled up, made Daddy take a break, and enjoyed it together. This was Ramona's first snow!

Here she is, enjoying it with Daddy!

Eliza really enjoyed walking around in it... she loved the crunch beneath her feet.

Ramona hit another milestone in December - crawling! She was army crawling around for most of the month, then on Christmas day she crawled on her hands and knees into the kitchen!

That's it! She's mobile at 7.5 months!! :)

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!!!

Is it still better, when it's this late, than never? I guess I'll take the risk! :) We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! Here's our card this year:

This is Ramona in her Christmas dress:

We took Ramona and Eliza to the mall to meet Santa (thanks Shane, for all your research!). Eliza wouldn't stay near him long enough for Mom to snap a photo. We did get a few with Ramona, which I believe, she'll treasure. I love the "who is this" look on her face, and the photo where they're looking each other in the eyes.

We stayed in Virginia this year! Although we enjoyed being here, we missed being with friends and family (our first time). I made this page for all you that we were away from this year.

Eliza loves the movie, "The Polar Express," (aka the Train Show). We thought she would like to meet Santa, but as I said, kept her distance from him. She did get close enough for him to give her a sheet of stickers. When she talks about Santa, she says, "Eliza no sit on Santa lap. Mona sit on Santa lap." When anyone asks her what Santa gave her for Christmas, she says "Daddy gave Eliza stroller. Santa give Eliza stickers." I still have to do a page explaining all of this. Here are two pages I did before I realized how Eliza actually understood Santa. :)

I Believe

'Twas The Night

Here's Eliza decorating the tree!




I'll post an update on more recent topics now...

A New Look

I decided it was time for a new look. Our other header was summery, and I had planned to change it for fall, for Thanksgiving, and/or for Christmas. I decided to use a scrapbook page and alter it for the blog header, so I finally updated it. :)

Although it's cooling off, we seem to still have fall weather here in Virginia. Tom is working on finals now, and we're getting ready for a Christmas here! We should try to find Santa, and maybe even get a picture. For now, we have our Christmas jammies!

I have a random childhood memory of dancing to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" while we decorated our Christmas tree. Until 2002 we always had a real tree. I love going to get a tree, smelling the pine and being together with family. When I scrapped this page, I thought of this song, and was reminded of these things. So, the girls are here, rockin' around and decorating this little tree.

Ramona is seven months old on Friday! She's very active physically and verbally- she's been growling like a lion all day. We've noticed that she combines her rolling with army crawling to get around, and occasionally she gets up on her knees and rocks forward and back like she's revving up to crawl. She scoots backward on her hands and knees, so we're sure by Christmas, her first Christmas, she'll be crawling!

Eliza's sentences are getting more complex, and she loves to say EVERYTHING we say. She's our shadow, both physically and verbally. :) Eliza loves our little photo shoots. She was thrilled to be in matching jammies with Ramona and loves to see the pictures after we've taken them. This will be Eliza's third Christmas!

Well, that's enough for today. We'll be back soon! :)

So Much To Be Grateful For!

Well, I'm late! We hope you had a great Thanksgiving! We are so grateful for you, our family and friends.

We went to the home of Sam, Raelynn and Kate in our ward. It was fun to be with them and several other families. Everyone worked so hard to make it wonderful. Thanks to all of you!

Skype is amazing; we got to visit with family that way. We had Mona and Eliza playing and crawling around in front of the laptop on the floor. Oh, and it's official - Mona can sit independently now! Once she's up she has no problem staying there.

This photo is a little old, but here the girls are with a little turkey. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!
Love,
Tom, Jen, Eliza and Ramona