Charlotte at 7 months

I'm behind in my posts once again but here's a great little video of Charlotte at her 7 month milestone.

And the rest of the year... (Part I)

Between Christmas and New Year's we took a couple other pictures. Mostly of Charlotte doing some funny or cute things. For example, losing her arms, chewing her bib and impersonating a Mongolian baby. Here are a random collection!

Grandma and Grandpa also shared some of their photos with us - from when they spent time with Uncle Devin's kids Isaac and Sadie.

This is one of my favorite recent series of shots of Charlotte. Not sure why I find it so funny but I laugh every time I see it. I think it's because her head is just so flat, front to back, so it resembles the block.... Something like that, plus the look on her face afterwards.

I can't remember who sent us these - Uncle John or Aunty Helen or Uncle Ed, or maybe they were just from the other camera, but here are some more shots of Christmas day at our house.

And that brings us to Christmas

So, that brings us, of course, to Christmas! Grandma and Grandpa came for a few days. We had Christmas dinner at our house with them, Gary's family and my Aunt Rita and cousin Steven. My uncle and his girlfriend also stopped by. All in all, it was a nice day. The kids got ridiculously spoiled of course. Here are some shots of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and possibly others. Thanks to Helen and my Mom for contributing some of these!

A trip downtown

Just before Christmas we had a plethora of doctor's appointments to keep. One of them was my annual eye check up and I booked an appointment for Elijah as well. We made a day of it, as the optometrist was downtown. We parked the car and took the skytrain downtown with the stroller. Gary met us and took Charlotte back to the office to meet his coworkers while Elijah and I went to our appointments. They went well and afterwards we met up with Gary and Charlotte at the office. All his coworkers were excited to meet the kids. Mimi kindly lent Charlotte and I some office space for feeding and changing. She even watched Charlotte for a while when I had other stuff to do. These pictures are pretty cute - Charlotte is eager to start working on the computer already!

Back to the Christmas stuff - Parties!

This year we went to 2 parties with the kids in December. Both of them are annual parties and it's great to catch up with everyone! The first was the old dragonboat crew party at Robbin and Dal's. It's a little different now, since half the people have kids. So, the adults catch up and the kids just play catch. :) Here are some shots of the damage....

We also went to Neil and Lorna's annual Christmas party. Charlotte got all dressed up in the cute dress I got for her and found a friend to hang out with. Couldn't help but take some shots!

Slipping in another daycare post

These are the last photos we have of Elijah's last daycare. Yes, I know I promised we were finished his birthday blog postings, but it seems I forgot about these pictures. Anyway, here they are. The new daycare doesn't send out digital pix, but they're in the process of doing a book of pictures this month. If there are some good ones, I'll scan them in when we get them.

Putting up the Christmas tree

We got our Christmas tree about mid month this year. Turned out to be a really miserable, wet, rainy evening. Gary was taking the skytrain home, so I picked him up after getting Elijah from daycare and we went directly to get the truck from Ed and then the tree from the lot. We get our tree from the same place every year. It's close to the house, has a good selection, and the money goes to charity. Yes, we get a live tree. I'll even admit we pay the big bucks to get a Noble Fir. It's a beautiful type of tree - good scent and loses minimal needles. That's the main reason we get it. Well, that and Gary isn't allergic to it. Anyway, we were in a bit of a rush. Had both kids and did I mention it was pouring rain? So, Elijah was very excited. We steered him over to the Noble Firs and the first tree he said he liked, we got. We paid, loaded it up and got it home. After dinner we decorated it. Elijah was very helpful. He had a great time and chatted away about it the whole time. Gary managed to snap a couple pictures between soothing Charlotte and helping out. After we got it all done Elijah posed for me with his tree. Then he sternly lectured the kitties to "not wreck" it. So cute.

Ps. Yes, after he went to bed, I redistributed the cluster of gold decorations in the bottom left hand corner. It bugged me. :D

Some firsts before Christmas

Yeah, I still have posts to catch up on from the end of last year. There was a lot going on, so lots of pictures to share.

A couple of fun firsts for us in December were meeting little Madeleine and giving Charlotte her first hair cut!

Yes, I like long hair on girls. But, when it's covered in drool and boogers (sorry for the visual) all the time, it's due for a trim. I just cut her bangs. It was quite difficult. Gary had to hold her head and I cut. I did it as fast as I could, safely. Was worried it wouldn't work out very well, but it seems to look ok

Before

After

Jen, Michael and Maddie came to Canada (from Scotland) for Christmas! They stopped by on the day that they got in, to borrow some baby gear. Made more sense to borrow it from us than to cart it overseas! So, we got to meet little Maddie. Well, the kids and I did, anyways. It was a quick visit, but they returned Tuesday (I think) to visit longer. Just Charlotte and I were home to see them, but it was fun seeing the girls together. Maddie was super adorable - see her big blue eyes! She was able to try out Charlotte's Jumperoo thingy for the first time. She seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I think she spent almost 45 min in it! We're hoping to see them again this month, so there will likely be more pictures later!