Seems that Celia is developing a vocabulary lately that we haven’t done a good job tracking. So here are some of her words in no particular order:

• mama
• da (as in daddy)
• cheese (long eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
• agua (water for the non-spanish speakers)
• ball
• stick
• leaf (we spend a lot of time outside)
• hat – she just finally got the hang of the ‘t’ on the end, it was previously ‘ha’
• dah (dog)
• this
• yah (basically my girls played a game of who can scream ‘yah’ louder with each other yesterday)

So I spent some more time this morning photographing my neighbors for their Christmas card too. Here’s Little Zach getting bigger and bigger. I didn’t make the same mistakes as last time, I’m definitely learning as I go!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. We’ve had some losses this year in the family and some scares, but we’re so happy to have the family and friends we have with us every day.

One of the crafts we made this year, in addition to the normal hand shaped turkeys, was make a Thanksgiving Tree. For this I taped a tree shape on the wall, drew some leaf shapes on paper and had Josie go to town cutting them out and we wrote what we were thankful for on them. Mostly they’re all people, family, friends, neighbors, teachers. Then Josie added in one for each of the seasons. And Cups. Not sure why, but Josie is thankful for cups, and why not. Here’s the girls this morning in front of the good old traditional Thanksgiving Tree.

My grandmother did not like the roast kale at dinner tonight. So she slowly shoved it across the table on the tablecloth until it looked like my dad was the one who didn’t eat it.

Josie just said no thanks.

This article shows I am not alone in my enjoyment of the canned cranberry sauce, still in can shape!

Tonight after dinner, Celia bused her own bowl to the dishwasher. Guess she’s been paying attention.

Today we had a big adventure day for us girls, plus Jordi got to join us a little. First we left right with Jordi in the morning and took the bus and train into the city. Jordi got off the train at Park and we continued to South Station where we got off and walked to the Aquarium. It was cold today but I had them well bundled up. Then around  the aquarium we went until it was lunch time, and only one change of clothes later thanks to the touch tank we headed over to Boylston station to meet up with Jordi for lunch, we took the train this time. Celia fell asleep on my back and Josie got pushed around in the stroller at this point. We enjoyed a nice lunch which Celia slept through most of, we woke her up at the end so she could eat some. Then we brought Jordi back to his office and said hello.

Josie wanted some ice cream so we headed towards Newbury St and got her some at Ben and Jerry’s. Then we walked up to Mass Ave and hopped the buses home. Celia did not like the trains in the morning, I don’t know if it was too loud or dark or what, so I opted for the bus on the way back. I did also give Josie the option of heading home and less walking, but she preferred to walk and have ice cream. I totaled up the distance tonight (South Station to the Aquarium, and Boylston to Hynes) and she walked just shy of 2.5 miles over the day without looking at what she walked inside the aquarium! I’m impressed. Yesterday she walked to ballet class, just about a mile, before doing ballet class too. These long walks do us both good I think, but Celia was pretty miffed at the large amount of time she spent strapped into something. Tomorrow we’ll have to give her more time to mosey around.

Let’s go back only a few weeks shall we, to Halloween. We had a nice little party with the ‘Friday moms’ as I call them as I met them at the Friday morning new moms group. We got together last year and the year before too. This year we got to take photos of the big and little kids, the little kids one didn’t work so well though. So here’s the big kids and our best attempts to get them looking at us, and by us I mean about 8 different cameras in different locations so no one can actually get a picture with everyone looking at them. The group should just hire a professional photographer 🙂

We’ve been having some gorgeous November weather, think 60 degrees and sunny. I’ve been ignoring the housework and taking the kids outside for all the hours that we can still soak up the warm and sunny times before winter sets in. Today it was more rain later in the day, but in the morning we were out again. These photos were from last week during the ‘golden hour’ as I experimented with light techniques.

This one of the two of them was my favorite for the day, must stop chopping off Josie’s feet though but clearly I didn’t have a lot of time to capture the moment.