The Simple Life: Eleven months

It is Christmas time and just a mere few days before Christmas at that. I'm a little late getting around to writing this month's update but I can honestly say I have some pretty good excuses. I have always loved the holiday season but this year has been really special to me. As a child I have always loved Christmas - the festive lights, a fresh cut Christmas tree with fun and funky ornaments, family traditions, good food, lots of family around and yes, the presents. What's not to love? However as an adult with my own children, I realize that *this* is how everyone should experience Christmas. It is the first year that Ellie (and somewhat Abby) really understands the Christmas traditions and it is so much fun watching everything click for her. It is like experiencing it myself again for the first time. Everything is special, everything is magical and everything is exciting. She loves the lights, she LOVES our Christmas tree, she loves singing Christmas carols, she loves wrapping paper and anything Santa shaped. If it's red and green, it's good. It's really the spirit of the whole season and it's intoxicating. I'm still not sure if she understands the whole Santa concept because I haven't talked much about it with her and I'm not sure I will. It's a conundrum for me. Is Santa a real person that comes down your chimney and leaves you gifts if you've been good (creepy)? Or is he just a jolly icon of Christmas? I'm torn. So we'll see what she has to say Christmas morning when a bunch of presents arrive under the tree and go from there. Abby has also been enjoying the season and I can tell she loves the decorations and the lights. She's been really good about not attacking our Christmas tree. I gave Ellie and Abby one ornament that they could touch and pull off the tree and surprisingly that seems to be working. Mommy win!

I have really been hitting up Pinterest hard this month and we've been doing a ton of Christmas crafts, baking and activities. Christmas has ARRIVED at our house! Thus the being very busy part. It's been so much fun doing these things with the girls and it's also helped to keep us sane during the rainy days when we've been housebound (which we've had many). Both of the girls have grown tremendously and it's hard to keep track. Ellie is such a big helper these days and likes to be independent (can you say toddler?!). She loves to help us cook in the kitchen and sometimes is actually quite helpful. She's also really into arts and crafts and will constantly ask me "another project?!". It is seriously payback for being "Project Queen" myself as a kid. I'm starting to wonder if we should buy stock in Michaels the way we go through craft supplies. She has recently started to enjoy building with her mega blocks. She likes to build castles (but they are basically just tall stacks). She still loves her Spanish class and can recite her numbers, colors and some shapes from memory. The alphabet is still tricky because she flip flops between English to Spanish. I don't blame her, it's hard work. And of course she still loves to be outside as much as possible.

Abby it seems has just grown up before our eyes. She can stand on her own now and pushes herself up into the standing position from the floor. Right before Thanksgiving she took her first steps. She is actually quite sturdy but doesn't have the confidence to do it on her own yet. Once she realizes she is doing it she will sit right down. She is getting very caviler about cruising and holding on to things so its just a matter of time really. She does not want to be left out of anything and wants to do everything and get into everything that her big sister has. She has gotten pretty good about feeding herself (but its still debatable as to how much goes into her mouth and stays there). She can eat with a spoon and the other day I gave her a bowl of food and she really enjoyed scooping out the food. I have noticed that she is actually quite clever and tricky about how she problem solves. For example, I gave her a cup with crackers in it and instead of pulling them out with her hand, she put it up to her mouth as if to drink them and ate them that way. So funny! She especially likes to play games like hide and go seek or peek-a-boo. She will imitate anything we say or do that she thinks is funny. Especially Ellie and most always at dinner time. It's quite the chorus! She has started waving and clapping a lot. She really likes to practice clapping in the middle of the night while she's in bed. She claps her hands and then giggles. It's hard to be mad at her because it's so cute. I realized the other day that she has a lovie. My grandma gave her a pink Jellycat bunny that we keep in her crib and every time she goes to bed she will tuck it under her arm. She loves to gnaw on his ears and stuff it in her mouth. When she is crying, bunny usually makes things better.

As for her physical size it is hard to say. It is getting hard to weigh and measure her now because she is so squirmy. The scale we have at home isn't accurate for ounces and the scale we used to take her to is now too small for her. I can make a pretty good educated guess that she's between 19-20 lbs. I don't think she's gained that much weight this month. We'll just have to wait until her one year doctor appointment to find out for sure. Here is my somewhat educated guess on her stats:

Head circumference: 46 cm
Height: 30 inches
Weight: 19-20 lbs?

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Chico this year with Tom's family. It was nice not to have to worry about the cooking and the girls really enjoyed spending time at Grandpa's house. They both especially loved the crunchy leaves that were abundant everywhere. Ellie ate next to nothing as usual but Abby really enjoyed the sweet potatoes and turkey. They both liked pumpkin pie of course. We are really excited to be hosing my family here for Christmas. We'll spend most of our time at my grandma's house on Ronnie Way which of course also makes it feel more special and festive to me. It will be Lucas's first time to San Jose and his first time on an airplane. I can't wait to see the babies together on Christmas morning. It's going to be epic! Of course with the year coming to and end, it means that Abby is almost ONE. I was just reminiscing with Tom about how last year we were preparing to have a baby at this time and how glad I was that we weren't doing that again this year. Two funny and clever little girls feels like enough. Phew!