Lily is 3 today!

More to say later, today we are celebrating!

10 Months

(The sign wasn't all wrinkly when we started the photo shoot.)

Abby's personality is really starting to come out now, which has been fun. We feel like she's really coming into her roll as a second born. She always wants to make sure that she's heard and that we're paying attention to her. If we're talking, she starts "talking" loudly so we start paying attention to her and so she can be apart of the conversation too. If we all laugh at a joke or something funny, she laughs along too.

Abby is still a great eater. Although we did find something she wouldn't eat this month--crepes. We're not sure why she doesn't like them since she likes similar things like pancakes, but she definitely didn't. She's started practicing eating with a spoon by herself. She thinks she's pretty special when she has one, kind of like she's doing something she's not supposed to. She's actually not bad at it, I think she'll pick it up pretty fast. She really eats quickly for not having any teeth yet. I'm not sure how much she chews versus how much she just swallows whole. She enjoys eating a lot though. She does still put everything in her mouth too. She can find the tiniest piece of paper on the ground and try to eat it.

Her sister and the cat are still her favorite things. She loves being near them and playing with them. Whenever the cat is nearby she wants to touch her. Abby and Lily play together really well. Lily finds Abby so much more fun now since she can do so much more. Abby just started crawling this month (March 23rd). I'm sure she'll have even more fun with Lily once she gets faster and can try and catch her.

She loves babies so much. Not actual babies, baby dolls. Lily has a doll that Abby became obsessed with. It's Lily's favorite toy right now too and Abby would get extremely angry if she could not have it. Lily often let her hold it just so she wouldn't get angry and scream. But we had to get Abby her own baby. And she loves it. She likes to carry it around with her and bring it wherever she goes.

The crazy amounts of snow finally left this month (but we still had a few more smaller snow storms). But we were able to start getting outside more and even had a few trips to the park. We now live walking distance from our favorite park so we're excited to start taking advantage of that.

Still cold, but we're at the park anyway! And having fun!

Abby getting her new baby at Target, and really upset that she can't get it out of the box.

Playing at our Friday playgroup, but with a tight grip on that baby.

Helping her sister cook up some dinner at Mystic Seaport.

Catching some fish in her net at Mystic. We spent a couple hours in this small part of this huge living museum. Their children's section was really well-done though.

St. Patty's Day at the park. It's hard to keep an eye on your kid when ALL the kids are in green.

Another day at the park, can you tell we've been cooped up all winter?

9 months

Another month into the history books. Abby's doing well. She's still scooting around but not crawling yet. She's spending more time up on her hands and knees and she always gets down on her stomach from a seated position. She really wants to crawl, she just hasn't quite figured it out yet. Some times this is very frustrating for her when she can't get what she wants. She's always getting into things, pulling on cords, finding tiny pieces of paper to put in her mouth, etc so I think we'll be in trouble when she really starts moving around. She can always find the one thing in a room that you don't want her to get into. This is especially difficult with Lily around. Lily always seems to have stickers or rips paper and leaves it on the ground and Abby is always there to pick it up and try and eat it.

Speaking of eating, Abby still doesn't have any teeth yet either. That doesn't mean she doesn't like to eat though. She loves to feed herself. She's not so fond of eating baby food but she loves to eat on her own. I think she has a problem with the texture because she always makes very strange faces when she's eating pureed foods. She does tolerate some things, like applesauce though. She mainly just wants to eat whatever everyone else has though. She doesn't like being the little baby that has to eat something different. She really likes cereal, like Cheerios and Kix. And when she's full she likes to smash everything she doesn't want to eat (especially peas and beans).

She likes to mimic other people. If I blow, she tries to blow back. If Lily makes a high-pitched screech, she makes one back. She'll keep this up for a while. And she's very proud when you tell her what a good job she did.

It's funny how different babies are and how things happen at different times. Abby was able to sit on her own earlier than Lily but Lily was crawling all over the place by Abby's age. Babies are different.

At the Peabody Museum

An out-take.

An interview with Lily

Mommy: What is your favorite show?
Lily: Nice shows. Dora. And I like Beauty and the Beast.

M: What is your favorite color?
L: Pink!

M: What is your favorite food?
L: I love all your food you make for dinner and breakfast and lunch.

M: What is your favorite animal?
L: Elephants, tigers. I think I love dogs, it runs to me so I can be happy. (mommy note: She told me this story several times that day, about a dog runny to her and how it made her happy.)

M: What are you really good at?
L: Playing with toys.

M: What are you not so good at?
L: I can't make animals.

M: Who is your best friend?
L: Avery, Skylar and the new Avery. (mommy note: Lily has recently met a second Avery.)

M: What is your favorite thing to do?
L: I like to play with Abigail.

M: What is the best thing about having a sister?
L: I just want to jump with Abigail. The End. There I told you a story. (mommy note: I think she was getting tired of my questions by this point.)

M: What do you want to do when you grow up?
L: I want to stay in my own house.

M: Tell me something that is really funny.
L: Want me to tell you a joke? A joke about America? yabababyaba yayayayaya

M: What is your favorite thing to wear?
L: I love dresses.

M: What makes you cry?
L: No nothing.

M: What is your favorite toy?
L: I love Rex and Woody. Rex really scares you. (mommy note: Two characters from Toy Story.)

8 months!

Eeyore has been missing since our move. Piggy is standing in.

Abby is 8 months old. That means we're 2/3rds of the way to a year. It's hard to believe. It feels like she's always been apart of our family and then it feels like she was just born at the same time. Abby is such a sweet baby. Her favorite things are: milk, Lily, the cat, tummy tickles, Gerber puffs (kind of like breakfast cereal), and 'talking' to other babies. She loves being around other kids and watching them play. She seems to get frustrated sometimes when she can't get up and run around with them.

Abby definitely recognizes her favorite people. She gets really excited when her sister comes into the room, especially when Lily comes downstairs after nap time when she hasn't seen her for a while. She's very excited to see her Daddy come home at the end of the day and wants him to pick her up. When she sees him she often starts bouncing up and down to get his attention. Another favorite is her buddy Ripley. Ripley is the little sister of Lily's friend Skylar and is 3 months younger than Abby. They like to sit next to each other and "talk". They actually have long conversations going back and forth with each other. But if Ripley leaves Abby gets very upset and starts to cry. She loves Ripley. She also likes to try and hold her hand (she likes to grab things that are moving in general and Ripley likes to flap her arms up and down when she talks). And of course the new cat. Abby loves the cat. She loves her so much she almost can't stand it. She squeals when the cat walks near her. She tries to reach out to touch her. She likes to grab her feet or her tail when they move. Fortunately Cookie mostly puts up with this.

Abby also learned her first sign this month. We're very proud of her. Her first sign is for "milk" of course, her favorite thing in the whole world. She also always says "mmmm, mmmm, mmmm" while she's doing the sign. She does kind of use the sign interchangeably with "Mommy" but usually when she wants mommy she wants milk too.

Favorite toys: Lily's baby doll, books
Favorite foods: puffs, anything she can pick up
Least favorite food: pureed baby food, cottage cheese
Favorite activities: tummy tickles, watching Lily play, yelling

Sitting in the bow of Papa's boat.

Abby sitting on Aunt Cat's lap in Papa's boat.

Practicing her standing at the library.

Abby's 8th month had a lot of snow.

And we moved into a new house! (Currently hiding behind a lot of snow).

Lily's dreams

Lily woke up from a nightmare last night. She woke up crying and was quite scared about it. She rarely wakes up at night and if she does she almost always goes right back to sleep on her own. She dreamt there were mice in her bed. She didn't want to sleep in her bed alone any more so she came and slept with me and daddy took her bed. In the morning she was still concerned about the mice so Daddy told her they were gone, she kept asking for more details and he told her he threw them out the window. The rest of the day they she kept bring the mice up saying that daddy took care of the mice and threw them out in the snow. She said they should go to someone else's house. She told me they were just playing in her bed but she didn't want them in there.

How do you explain a dream to an almost 3 year old? I told her it was like she was watching a movie that she was in but it wasn't real and the mice weren't really in her room. She just looked concerned and confused. She wasn't scared to sleep in her bed again though. We have no idea why she was thinking about mice.

7 months

Abby's 7th month was a busy one! Almost as soon as Thanksgiving ended, Chanukah began. We enjoyed our 8 nights of gifts. Abigail didn't know what was going on but she did like the presents and watching the candles burn down.

But most of the month was spent traveling, traveling, traveling. All the girls left for California on December 11th for almost a month in California. It had been over a year since we've visited (since we moved!) and Abby had never been there before. The grandparents and other friends and family were especially excited to meet her.

Traveling alone with 2 kids wasn't terrible. There were other families on all of our flights with much worse kids so that always makes my girls look especially sweet. Daddy did drive us to the airport and get all of our luggage checked in at Sky Cap so we only had to deal with our carry-ons in the airport. Unfortunately there isn't any way to take a direct flight from Connecticut to California, so we flew to Denver first, changed planes, then on to Sacramento and then ended with a 2-hour drive to Redding. What a long day. The flights were 3 1/2 hours and 2 1/2 hours. Abigail did great on her first flights (I think Lily had flown 8 or so times by Abigail's age). We were very glad to get to California. Apparently, California didn't want us to stay too long because we had nasty weather the whole time we were there. We saw the sun a few times and it was a good 20 degrees warmer but it was rainy and gray most of the time we were there.

The happy travelers.

In the middle of our trip (when we drove down to pick up Daddy) we stopped in Davis to visit Scott's old boss from the very first lab he worked in and to reminisce and wonder if we might live in Davis again someday. Then we headed to San Francisco for the night to meet up with old college buddies and a couple of Scott's UCLA lab mates. We spent a few hours at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Lily thoroughly enjoyed running around enjoying science and Abby mainly enjoyed yelling at another baby (she loves babies).

Abigail thoroughly enjoyed her first Christmas. She figured out the opening presents deal pretty quickly and loved ripping the paper. She also didn't mind the constant attention which meant being held a lot of the time. She definitely likes being the center of someone's attention at all times (middle child syndrome?). Grandma even got to babysit and mommy and daddy got to go see a movie (only the 2nd one in 7 months). We came back to Abby sleeping on Grandma and not in her bed. Big surprise, her favorite place to sleep is on someone else.

Just a couple days after Christmas we headed South to visit the other set of grandparents. Our flight from Sacramento to San Diego was very delayed; 4 hours for a 1 1/2 hour flight. We could have driven at that rate. Oh well, we stopped in Davis for lunch then went to the airport.

Southern California was also busy. We visited Disneyland, Legoland, Los Angeles and went sailing in our week there. Abby was mainly just along for the ride but she did enjoy seeing a few more babies: Addie in LA who's only a month older than her and another Addie who was visiting San Diego who's about Lily's age and Jake who's somewhere in between Lily & Abby.

Abby reading a book in the library.

Bundled up the the New Haven Christmas tree lighting.

They are all looking the right way, but no one is smiling.

Decorating the tree.

Big sister Lily, cousin Bella, and cousin Jacob.

Abby & her cousin Claire (almost a year old, but nearly the same size).


Abby opening her presents Christmas morning.


The craziness of Christmas morning.

Opening Chanukah presents at our belated party in San Diego.


Opening presents again.

Meeting Chip.

Looking for Nemo in a submarine.


Waiting for the parade to start at Disneyland.

Building with Legos at Legoland.