Poor Celia has an ear infection. She hates medicine. Hates hates hates it. Anyone have any favorite tricks for getting it in? we tried applesauce, chocolate, kefir, yogurt and dipping her grapes in it. Absolute no go other than a really ugly scene of forcing it in.

Here’s some photos of her in happier times this month.

So as I previously mentioned, we’re all sick in Miami, spreading our germs around more. Sorry about that. We most kept it low key hanging around the house while Josie had a fever upwards of 104 for 48 hours. Wrapped some presents, got some naps. We did some exploring of the decorations too.

By Christmas eve thankfully Josie’s fever had broken so she was feeling considerably better. The party was at my inlaws house so everyone came over to visit and party. We had food, mostly cooked by Vanessa, and what we here would call a Yankee Swap. Jordi and I managed to go home with the present we came with, score! It was great to get to see everyone and even introduce Celia to a few people she hadn’t met yet.

Josie spent most of the night with Sabrina, pictured above in blue. Josie had a great time telling her what to do and where to go and Sabrina played along gallantly. They even worked on a gingerbread train together. Later on Josie hung out with Sonya, in pink above, playing. Later on she told Jordi, about the time when she was with Sonya (who is married to Jordi’s older cousin), “we were all alone without any grownups!”

We had a last minute cookie emergency, in that there were no cookies for Santa Claus. We had made 7 different kinds up here in Boston, but didn’t travel with them to Miami. So I whipped together a batch of shortbread cookies for Santa, which Josie insisted on hiding inside the cage that holds wine ‘So no one else here would eat them.’ We also put out some carrots for the reindeer. Josie insisted that we make a sign that said ‘Cookies for Santa, Carrots for Reindeer.’ She was also a little disturbed when she realized that since the cookies were in the house, that meant that some wierd guy in a red suit was presumably going to be in the house that night. Perhaps she thought he’d just leave the stockings out front like the postman.

This year for Christmas we started off in Orlando to visit with Jordi’s paternal side of the family and his mom, dad and sister drove up to visit too. The night we got there we were invited to Jordi’s uncles house for a yummy traditional Venezuelan Christmas dinner and many presents. In the picture below there was an alligator in the water behind everyone, just a little one, but still. Josie was not in a mood for pictures after the long travel day.

Sadly Celia is not as a good a flyer as Josie has been and was a lot fussier on the plane than usual since she couldn’t move around much in our laps. Josie enjoyed JetBlue’s TVs as we broke our normal TV rules and let her watch some for all our sanity. But she got bored before too long anyway.

We stayed at an easy Orlando hotel with a spray park and pool. Only us northerners thought to bring our bathing suits though, and it was a good thing we did, the pool was heated and awesome the next morning.

I played with the bright bright light and a high shutter speed to freeze the water.

By the end of swimming I think Josie was tired enough that she didn’t notice all the pictures.

After our swim we cleaned up and went to a Thai place for a quick lunch before a family nap. And by family I mean everyone but Josie who somehow managed to be considerate and quiet for two hours in a hotel room with us. Maybe she did sleep a little but she didn’t admit to it.

A couple of days before the trip I started to get sick with a cough and runny nose and chills. The airplane didn’t help, but we continued to muddle through.

After our nap we went to Downtown Disney and met up with more family. We posed with characters and ate ice cream.

Josie was not terribly impressed with the legos, but maybe she will be later when she starts to play with them herself.

Josie and Celia rode on the train. But then of course the train ride ended. And Celia was very sad…

Thankfully she then saw we were headed to the merry go round and then she was excited again.

Of course that ride had to end too eventually and we had more sad faces and crying. But we moved on eventually and did some pictures with characters and I tried some artsy shots as the sun went down and there wasn’t enough light to do anything.

All in all I should have brought my flash for some pictures. But we capped off the night with a nice dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s little restaurant and headed home with the girls while everyone else went out for more fun. The next morning we did a little more family visiting before heading for Miami. Unfortunately we all started to feel considerably more sick that Friday and the ride unfortunately was capped off by an hour of Celia crying and Josie vomiting in the car only three blocks away from the house and spiking a high fever that night.

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates!

Sadly both our kids are pretty sick right now. Josie took two naps today, when she generally won’t even take one even with a long ride in the car. She’s had a fever and Celia is very congested. I even got a picture of her passed out on the couch.

We had a nice sunset today though, and so I grabbed the camera for a few shots before dinner.

Here’s a shot from earlier in the day with Javier and Celia hanging out on the bench with Simba nearby.

Celia has picked up some new tricks lately to get herself into trouble. She has learned how to climb into the learning tower and onto the dining room chairs. Thankfully she doesn’t do much with the chairs yet or else we’d have to figure out how to remove those too. I’ve already gotten rid of a footrest and the kid chairs.

She now likes to point, while shoving her hand front and back, to let you know what she wants. She expects you to follow her and do as she says.

Woe be unto you who does not do what she wants when she wants it. I have to make sure that there isn’t something hard behind her head when I have to give her bad news. She will just lay on the floor and cry. She’s having a very hard time learning that while she can influence the world, she does not in fact control it.

She really hates the car. Have I mentioned that? If I have to put her into it more than two times a day (out and then going home) I feel really bad because of how big a fit she makes. Our days have a lot of screaming lately sadly. She is a diva. If I’m eating something, she has to have some too. If Josie is playing with something, she has to have it. If I go into the bathroom or the tub she has to go too.

Kaya was enjoying the sun yesterday, sitting still while we had lunch, so I grabbed the camera.

As always, photos can be clicked on to see them bigger.

This afternoon Josie and I hosted a playdate for making some mini-gingerbread houses. This is the first time I’ve ever done this from scratch. I made the gingerbread and the royal icing, and I guess not from scratch the box and the candy We did the gingerbread yesterday and made it to fit around a pint sized cream container so it would be steady for preschoolers to work with it instead of frustrating.

All in all I think it went well for the 3 year olds, the biggest challenge was keeping  them from eating the candy. Celia tried a little, but she just wanted to lick the candy. I kept showing her how to put it on, and she’d put it on and then pull it back off. I eventually cobbled something together ‘with her’.

Josie on the other hand made a house after her mother’s own heart and covered it mostly with chocolate. She insisted on unwrapping all the kisses too, rather than let their pretty foil decorate the thing. She loves to unwrap. I had her unwrap all the rest of the candy while I made lunch and dinner and she couldn’t get enough of it.

Celia made a big mess.

It was so great taking a picture of something standing still, look how crystal clear it is! And Josie was not in a mood for pictures today, so this is her yesterday in front of the tree.

This year I wanted to try to impart more of the giving spirit onto Josie as I thought she might be able to understand more. So we gave Josie a set of three charities to pick from, Toys for Tots, Arlington Food Pantry, and Nursing Mothers Council. All worthy choices that might strike a chord with her. As I could have predicted, the toy one (Toys for Tots) won out quickly, she didn’t need to spend much time considering it at all. So I handily plopped her down on my lap to shop at Amazon and instructed her to find a toy that she would like to play with so we can give it to someone else. She picked out a fire chief costume.

She hemmed and hawed over why we would give it away, when we didn’t already have one of them while we waited for it. But it arrived and although she wanted to play with it she seemed to understand when I said we had to keep it ‘new’. We walked over to the donation bin and she dropped it right inside. She only wishes that she could get a note or see the ‘little girl when she opens it’.

I’ve been involving her more in our donations too, talking about how we’re giving away some of our stuff because we have so much and we can’t use it all. So we’re giving away our extra stuff to Goodwill. Nothing to do with the fact that our basement is stuffed to the gills!