Can you spot what is missing in this picture?
Here’s a hint:
This is the dress of Julia’s feet pretty much constantly when we are home. We have no idea why but at almost all times shoes and one sock must be removed. Maybe it helps her regulate her body temperature or maybe she’s just a little strange (she would come by that honestly enough)!
We have had a great few days around here. The Christmas Festivities kicked off on Christmas Eve with a visit to Grandpa Rick and Grandma Lesley’s house. We had a fun evening filled with…
…opening presents
…the annual readings of Santa Mouse (by me) and Twas the Night Before Christmas (by Grandpa Rick).
…and playing piano
Christmas morning we woke early, filled with excitement, to find out if Santa had really come to our house. The first hint was a present, a new book, that had been left in Julia’s room… but she didn’t seem entirely convinced until we went downstairs. This was the look on her face as she scoped things out:
Which was then immediately followed by this grin as she tried out her big present – a trampoline!
She was also thrilled with her other presents of a blue house for No-No (her stuffed bunny), a new wooden Thomas Train set, and a couple of different sets of blocks. We spent awhile opening presents and Julia was very sweet. She was obviously eager to open her presents but she made sure that Mommy and Daddy were each taking turns as well; although after a few Mom and Dad presents she did insist on opening a couple for me! One of the highlights of the morning was when she opened a gift from Andrew and I (not Santa), a new ornament for the Christmas tree, and spontaneously gave each of us a big hug and kiss and told us she loved us. It was so sweet and, of course, made me cry!
After some present opening we put together a special breakfast of cinnamon rolls, bagels, fruit, bacon (Julia’s favorite) and Blood Marys (Andrew’s favorite) and played with our new toys until Grandpa Rick, Grandma Lesley, Great Grandma Bid, and Great Grandpa Carl arrived.
When they did arrive they were bearing more presents including a workbench for Julia!
She was really into this and spent awhile figuring out the tools and pieces and hammering away! She did make sure to wear her construction hat most of the time!
Then after a snack and a nap we headed out to the Geary Christmas celebration. It was really nice this year because all of my cousins were there which hasn’t happened for a few years and we had a great afternoon filled with laughs. Julia and Alex were having a great time playing with Alex’s new camera and Julia was using ours but unfortunately, there must have been some sticky fingers because all the pictures on our camera from the afternoon have blurry smudges!
So I’m looking forward to seeing the pictures from Alex’s camera because I think they got quite a few cute ones!
Overall, it was a wonderful holiday. Andrew and I both agreed that it was very nice to be home and not traveling for the first time in several years. We felt like we were able to enjoy the entire season more, from preparing through the celebrations.
There are also a few more festivities planned for this week, with a family dinner at Grandma Laurie and Grandpa Boo’s tomorrow night and Andrew’s brother and sister-in-law arriving at the end of the week for a visit so we’re not done with Christmas yet!
While we have been in full holiday-mode for the last few weeks we have also been busy preparing for the arrival of our newest family member. We have washed clothes, diapers and blankets, dusted off and put together a crib, changing table, co-sleeper, swing, and bookshelf, unearthed the baby toys and stocked the freezer. I have gotten some new baby wipes sewn and knit a hat for him to wear home from the hospital. Through everything Julia has been a great helper. We’ve found she’s especially good with a screwdriver!
So I’m now about 36 weeks pregnant and we’re pretty much expecting that delivery could come any day. Julia was a couple of weeks early and the way I’ve been feeling it’s possible that this little one may be as well. To be on the safe side, I have my things for hospital gathered together, although not officially packed into a bag, and we’ve been starting to prepare Julia for the idea that Mom may be gone for a couple of days. She seems to be pretty excited – although has been rather adamant that the baby not come until after Christmas! Which is okay by us!
We hung the couple of things we have for the walls of the nursery up today and finally took some pictures so we could share.
And here is the latest tummy shot!
Andrew is out of town for a couple of days this week so I thought it would be a good time for Julia and I to have a special day together. She’s actually been asking about seeing Santa so today seemed like a perfect day to do it. We started by getting dressed up in a Christmas-y outfit:
Then we headed to the mall to meet Grandma Laurie and see Santa Claus! J was very excited and kept telling me that she was going to ask him for a blue house and pom-poms. The pom-poms have been a request for awhile (she apparently doesn’t think she has enough of them, even though they are literally all over our house) but I’m not sure where the blue house request came from – it was new this morning. The visit itself went pretty well; she was a little shy but did go up and sit next Santa and took a cute photo:
When he actually asked her what she would like for Christmas she told him “trains.” So we’ll have to wait and see what Santa decides to bring this year! After that, we had a little shopping to do but first, she noticed the carousel in the mall. As you’ll recall a few days ago she was not happy at all to be on a carousel but today she was excitedly requesting to go on it. The difference I believe:
… this carousel had a bunny for her to ride!!!
After that we did our shopping, said goodbye to Grandma and had a special lunch out. We went to Newport Creamery where Julia had a hamburger and ice cream (with M&Ms and whipped cream, of course!).
She ended the lunch by “doing yoga” (her words)!
While it may look it here, her demeanor was definitely not zen-like! It was a really fun morning, filled with smiles and laughs and silliness – overall a great outing!
Chugga chugga choo choo… we journeyed up to Edaville Railroad in Carver, MA last night to ride the train and see the Christmas lights. The light display was very impressive and although there were many of complaints about being cold I think everyone (Julia especially) had a great time.
While the main attraction at Edaville is the train ride, there are also amusement-park type rides to go on and lots of other displays to look at and enjoy. Julia took her first carnival-type ride all by herself with her cousin Alex. She rode in a little plane and went wayyy up in the air and LOVED it!
The next ride they chose was the much tamer carousel which Julia did not enjoy at all! She clung to Andrew the entire time and could not wait to get off. I can’t figure that out because she loves horses and getting dizzy so I’m not sure what the problem is with the carousel. But she hung in there for the whole ride and then was able to go on another up-in-the-air ride, a little rocketship that went up and around, with her Dad and everything was good.
After that it was sufficiently dark to see the lights and the crowds were growing so we decided it was time to ride the train! That was a lot of fun and Julia loved watching for lights and making the windows on the train fog up as she pressed against the glass!
After the train ride, tummies were grumbling and hands and noses were freezing so the train adventure came to end but I think we’ll probably be making the trip back again next year!
We are all a little sad to see this weekend come to an end. It was a wonderful holiday and so nice to spend four days together as a family doing lots of fun things. We started with Thanksgiving. Julia helped me get ready by putting together cheese and vegetable trays. She made turkeys out of apples to decorate them. You can kind of see one in the upper right corner of this tray.
Of the Thanksgiving dinner Julia ate turkey and a little bit of a roll. She was also a fan of the cupcake we had for her! Thanksgiving night ended with a new pair of pjs – getting us ready for the next big holiday!
Friday was a quieter day, spent hanging around the house, taking out some Christmas decorations, getting lights put up on the house (Andrew decided it was in his best interest to take advantage of the 60 degree weather for that task!), and taking care of chores. Then Saturday we jumped right into Christmas season with a trip to the tree farm to pick out a Christmas tree for ourselves, Grandpa Rick and Grandpa Lesley, and Aunt Katie. We tried a new tree farm in CT and were very pleased with it. It helped that it was close to 60 degrees again but of course, we still found our tree on the furthest plot of the 100 acre farm! Here are a few pictures that Julia took documenting her day.
From the tree farm we headed back to Grandma Lesley and Grandpa Rick’s house to help them decorate their tree and to celebrate birthdays (mine, Merrill and Grandpa Rick’s)! Julia and Alex were really excited to decorate the tree and did a great job putting up the ornaments.
Then this morning it was our turn to decorate. Again Julia was excited to get the ornaments out and help decorate. We also put a little tree in her playroom so she had fun picking some ornaments for her tree and decorating it how she wanted. I’m sure this will be a recurring project in the coming weeks.
Here’s a before and after of the “big” tree! (Really not that big because we have surprisingly low ceilings in our house.)
As we were decorating, Julia loved hearing us tell her the stories of our different ornaments, when we got them and where they came from. It was fun to see her really take an interest in it and ask questions about different things. This is definitely going to a fun holiday season.
Part of our settling into our new home over the past few weeks has been finding a new “school” for Julia. Originally we were going to hold off on enrolling her, thinking that it would be nice to get her settled and let her have time with us before she started at a new place. But within a week of us moving to RI Julia was asking where her new school was and when she was going. We were a little surprised and I guess hadn’t fully realized how much she enjoyed going to the Frog Pond in VA even if it was only one day a week. So we began a search for a new place and found a wonderful nursery school called The Little Red Hen only about 5 minutes from our house. I knew as soon as I walked up to it when I went to check it out that it would be a good place for Julia and all of our interactions so far have confirmed that. As their youngest class is three year olds Julia could not start until she was 2 years and 9 months. Luckily for us that was yesterday and today Julia went to school!
She has been talking about it since we took her to visit there a couple of weeks ago and was very excited last night and this morning. We weren’t exactly sure how it was going to go as her drop-offs at the Frog Pond had occasionally involved tears but she settled in as soon as we got to the Little Red Hen this morning. She followed her teacher, Mrs. Drolet, to the coat rack, and hung up her things and then quickly claimed a seat at a table to draw with markers with the other kids. Andrew and I squared away some paperwork and then went over to say goodbye. Julia barely gave us a glance as she held her hand up and waved goodbye! She was still happy when we picked her up and told me quite a bit about her morning when she woke up from her nap this afternoon. Hopefully, our new Tuesday and Thursday morning routine will continue to be as successful as today for our new little chick!
This weekend Julia and I set off on a big adventure to visit Ahma Susu and Ahmpa Herb in Florida. Unfortunately, Alyssa’s doctors told her that she couldn’t go with us and while we missed her a lot Julia and I had a great time.
We started the trip before sunrise - here we are at the airport waiting for the plan to Florida watching the sunrise.
After that we just had to find the plane. It took a couple of guesses but we finally figured out it was this one.
With a start like that we had to go big the next day, so Julia, Ahma Susu and I headed off to the zoo. We got to see lots of great animals but the best part was the giraffes. Here was the Dad of the family. He wanted to say hi and have a little snack.
The rest of the tip was spent doing all the fun stuff. Playing doctor with and making sure Nono felt good.
Eating ice cream for lunch, spending a lot of time in the pool (Julia and I even went for an after dinner swim) and little time at the beach.
All in all Julia and I had a great trip but we were excited to get back home to see Alyssa. We missed her a LOT!!!!
