Smile!

I think she might be a ham. 

Oh, the places they'll go!

Here are the backpackers with their packs, all ready for the road! Not that we have any plans.  This was just after dinner.  Perhaps traveling upstairs, then.

Also, you can call me crazy, but doesn't Naomi look like the girl gelfling from the Dark Crystal?? Her ears were even pointy for a bit when she was tiny.

Fashionista

Naomi's been making a lot of her own fashion decisions recently.  As you can see, many of these decisions involve rain boots.  Sometimes they include little plastic high heels that she is surprisingly nimble  in. She is definately Granny's great granddaughter.   She is often insistent that her sleeves be pulled up to her elbows.  When she wears her raincoat, like today, each and every snap must be snapped or else the world will cease to turn on its axis.  She happily identifies the color of each thing that she adorns and is pretty particular about socks.



Showing off her gams


Thankfully we are having far fewer of the episodes that we were having around Christmas--thanks to these little 'moments', I now know what it would be like to put pants on a feral racoon.  If we offer her some choices about what she gets to put on, things go much more smoothly.  However it turns out that she might not be as wicked as a rabid woodland animal.  Instead, she's had at least one infected ear since before Thanksgiving.  We visited the ENT today and have an appointment scheduled to have tubes put in in February. So, perhaps our little creature has just been in some level of pain for 10 weeks.  Ugh.  Parents of the year.



Not totally understanding how the Mr. Potato Head works.







How long does it take you to see that there's something odd about this picture?







 

Just for random fun?  Here's a (partial) list of things that Lillian has greeted with kisses and hugs today:

Her shoes

My hair

Her milk

All of the characters in the Ladybug book

The mail

The tray for her highchair

Her knees

My coffee cup

Nana's scarf

My phone

Her diaper (thankfully the clean one)



Hi. How are you?

I know it's two babies mostly waggling their tushies at you, but I still like it. The transcript goes something like this:

N: Hi!
L: Hi.
N: Windowwww!
L: I see Moooon!
N: mumble mumble.
L: "Finkle, Finkle little star....."

We're getting a lot of love here recently.  Lillian will spontaneously jumpstart any lag in conversation with, "Hi.  Howoo?"  She also kisses almost anything to show her approval and appreciation.  Including her toes, her socks and, this morning, the knitted ball on my sweater.
Naomi has been giving this amazing latch-on hug, frequently aimed at our knees.  Or she names us and then sweetly lays her head on whatever body part is closest: knees, shoulders, or elbows being the favorite.

They've both made great bounds in saying their own and each other's names.  Naomi now has three syllables in her name, but I think it starts with an M. 

They also ask for books by name now and Naomi often takes Cawl (Good Dog, Carl) to bed with her.

When they aren't fighting over books (like is brewing at this moment...) they are really quite adorable.

Off to negotiate yet another Ladybug Treaty...

Leftovers?

Here are a few delights that Nat took this past week on his phone.  Just a mid-day treat to warm you before the snow hits hard.

Happy New Year!

 It's 2012. 

That means it's the fourth year that the girls have seen.  Doesn't that blow your mind? Where has this time gone?  I know it's going even faster because we've been so pleansatly busy.  After Christmas, we celebrated Grandma Rand's birthday.  While dining out has recently been a bit more of a challenge, that evening was made much easier by having a small party room virtually to ourselves.  The next night, we tested the theory again by dining in the special kitchen table at Buca di Beppo with Nana, Papa, Granny and Pop-pop.  We arrived after they'd ordered appetizers so there most of a plate of calamari at the table.  I handed Naomi one of the whole, breaded baby octopi, mostly as a joke, but she popped the whole thing in her mouth!  The rest of the meal was punctuated by many walkabouts through the restaurant.  It's a busy and distracting place.  During one of our tours, I noticed that Naomi was making a bit of a weird face.  I held my hand up in front of her mouth and received a whole, now-naked, baby octopi.  Disturbing.  She did not, however, hold back on the dessert  you see pictured here.  Yes, the giant one that virtually eclipses Nana.

We made a trip down to Cincinnati to see the whole crew there.  Here is William with all of his decendants, minus Vanessa. The girls had a grand time with their neices and nephew and fell in love with Honda the cat. Honda was wonderfully tolerant in return.  We all trekked out and enjoyed the first part of the Newport Aquarium the next day.  I'm sure they would have enjoyed the whole thing if naptime hadn't interfered.  There's supposed to be an aquarium opening in Cleveland in January so we'll have to check it out.    

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And, here is  Matthew, starring as Baby Near Year at our first annual New Toddler's Eve Party.  We had eight adults and eight kids under 5 here to ring in the new year at Greenwich Mean Time. It was a hoot.  We had a dance party, tooted on noisemakers and dropped the disco ball at 7:00.  All the guests were gone by 8, the dishes were done and our movie started by 9.  Perfect.  Here are the girls, playing with a strangulation hazard.  Or, one of those plastic leis that, when unraveled, is big enough to contain fully half of our party guests.