Two days ago our little Celia turned 18 months old! A whole year and a half. She is one big bundle of energy! She runs and jumps and shouts her way around the house and outside. And if you aren’t doing what she wants, be prepared to hear about it with lots of ‘no’s’, kicking, screaming, flailing and blobbing.

So with all that running and jumping we do get a lot of falls too. She bleeds easily I’ve found but she bounces back really quickly, especially once her accident has been recognized by the adults nearby. When she falls down I say “aww Celia went boom” and so now she gets up and runs to me saying “boom boom boooooooom”. She does like us to kiss her boo-boos.

She’s getting to be a master of the single words! For yes, she says ‘da!’ For pasta she says ‘ba’. All cats are called ‘Kaya’ including the cougar and jaguar at the zoo the other day. She learns new words everyday. For instance, at the zoo she learned goat, as she pet the goat.

She understands most of what we say, although she doesn’t yet get the concept of ‘first… then…’ which will be much appreciated when it gets here.

She loves to take pictures, if I try to take pictures of her she’ll often jump into my lap and pull the camera strap over her head too and start pushing buttons. No more just pushing the shutter for her! She wants full control. She doesn’t ham it up for the camera so much, I get more serious pictures.

We are now decently out of the ‘stick everything in her mouth’ phase currently which is really nice not to keep having to remove play dough and such. She loves to help cook, stirring and measuring. Baths are still a favorite activity, but not washing the hair.

She loves to be out and about doing new things. She’s a terror at the library though just ripping books off the shelves, so we can’t stay there long at this point.

She has just finished up two sessions of gymnastics at Gibbs gym which she loved. She participated in both her class and Josie’s, sitting and following directions as well as some of the 3 year olds. She’s very strong hanging from the bars and will find any bar, or table or other thing she can grab her hands onto and hang from it, pulling in those tummy muscles. She can do a forward roll on the mat, but is too scared to do it with the teacher Tanya, only when it’s just me and her.

She’s a bundle of love and enthusiasm, just don’t let her get hungry or try to put her in the car seat.

• Size/weight: 24 month clothes, we’ll have to wait for the doc visit a week from Monday to get the rest
• Favorite foods: breastmilk, avocado, cheese, pasta
• Favorite toy: stacking blocks, balls
• Favorite book: Mr Brown Goes Moo
• Favorite activity: Playing in the sand
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; one nap 1:15; gets up between 6 and 7 (on the good days, 5am on the bad)
• New skill: lots of words
• Teeth: at least 16 and more coming
• Vocalizations: Lots of words, shrieks while covering her own ears

Both girls have a focus on the word ‘no’ lately. Josie is fascinated with reading the “No Turn On Red” signs and explaining how it has a ‘no’ and an ‘on’, the reverse. Celia is alternatively just working on the meaning of the word in general and learning to use it, as in ‘no, dont pour that water over my head in the bath’, or ‘no, I don’t want what you’re offering me, oh wait I do.’ Generally at least she is expressing herself correctly, and I feel really bad about the bath thing but she won’t lay down or anything else to rinse her hair. Some of her other favorite words now are ‘art’, as in I want to paint, draw, or otherwise make a mess, and a new wonderful word is ‘help’. She hasn’t learned how to tell us in words that she wants to go outside, she just brings me my shoes. She will also lay down on the ground and pat her diaper sometimes to tell us to change her.

Got a few fun ones by setting up the shot and having my dad take the pictures. I should really bring a tripod I guess 🙂 But he did a good job. This is over at Horn Pond in Woburn on a cold windy gray day!

I have edited this photo 8 different ways, never quite satisfied, probably because this was before I got my camera fixed and they’re not in great focus. Here was a runner up.

Going way back again… as part of our Christmas celebrations I did a number of projects over the month of December while inviting friends over to join us. I wanted to make sure the holiday season was about more than just a big pile of presents but about sharing and making memories with friends. We did cinnamon ornaments (note to self: use glue), string balls (note to self fill water balloons with water), gingerbread houses (note to self: awesome job using milk cartons!), and a mommy gift of hand scrub.

The cinnamon ornaments burned Josie’s hands and rather fell apart. So I think next year we need to use rolling pins and add glue to the mixture of applesauce and cinnamon, or maybe just skip them all together. They sure made the house smell good.

The string balls proved to be a little difficult for the kids. (Basically you dip thin string in glue watered down and wrap it around a balloon and pop the balloon after it dries. Viola, string ball) But Josie enjoyed making them and we had a good party. Next year not only will I get water balloons, but I will fill them with water, not air, so they are actually round. They were more pears shaped. They are pretty though and Josie liked hanging them up and pointing them out. Maybe next year she’ll be able to do it more herself.

And our final project was the classic gingerbread houses. I wasn’t going to buy a bunch of kits at $20 a pop so I made my own gingerbread and royal icing and bought the candies to go on top. This was a project the kids really jumped into. We used small milk or cream containers to be the basic structure so it would stand up to preschooler-applied-candy-pressure, this was KEY. Then they squeezed and decorated to their hearts content. Celia loved it too, although I had to keep pulling candy out of her mouth. She’d put it on the house and then take it off and lick it. Josie had a particular favorite candy as I’m sure you can see from her house. Chrissie and Charlotte joined us for construction. I had to guilt Chrissie into coming over after all the work making the gingerbread, because it turns out she was in the early weeks of pregnancy and super sick, so I feel bad now, but I think they had some fun.

This last fall we did a number of messy projects, here was one of my favorite sensory activities. It is a simple just cornstarch and water but the result is a crazy substance that flows like water when you hold your hand open, but feels hard and solid when you squeeze it. Celia, ever the experimenter, got really into it.

Wasn’t too bad to clean up either, just lots of water.

This weekend was a busy one. Jordi went to PAX east to learn about new video games and me and the girls went to my parents to combine two holidays into one.

We dyed eggs first. Although Celia took it more to be a science experiment than egg dying. She had no interested in how it was supposed to be done. Instead she started by first throwing the egg into the dye and splattering everywhere. While I cleaned that up, she picked up the egg again, examined it and again threw it. By this time it had started to crack. She proceeded to peel the egg and then try dying the inside (which was very effective actually). Then she ripped the egg apart and also dyed the inside little pieces. She also tried scooping the dye into the egg (drying) carton and mixing the colors by the end.

Josie was surprisingly sedate and made many brightly colored eggs. We encouraged her to do some multi-color ones and try combining things and by the end she was into mixing colors as well. Once they’re all together they made a pretty dark green blue color.

Later we did two quick egg hunts, Celia again focused more on destroying the eggs she found instead of collecting them, but Josie had a blast finding them and hiding them.

After the eggs we focused on the passover story and ate a semi-traditional sedar dinner!

Our little family doesn’t have too many traditions or rituals, we eat dinner together, and we go to Quebrada Baking Company most every weekend for breakfast one of the days. We’ve been told they have some of the best croissants in Boston and we really love them ourselves.  Mostly we get the spinach and cheese for breakfast, but the freshly made ones are fantastic, especially the chocolate. Since we won’t live here forever, I wanted to document our morning trips. I took some photos last fall but my set from last weekend was definitely better, yay for improvement!

We walk, carry or stroll our way over. We’re trying to get Josie to walk mostly now as she’s gotten a bit big for carrying, but carrying Celia is usually the best since we can share between me and Jordi. Last weekend the flowers on the trees in front of the church were in beautiful white bloom.

And on to the eating… When Celia was a baby she had to wait until 1 year to get her first butter/milk aka croissant but now she can gobble a whole one down herself. It’s the girls best serving of green vegetable all week I think as it’s loaded with spinach.

Sometimes Celia sits on the counter, Josie did when she was a baby, but now mostly she’s in our laps. There aren’t a ton of places to sit so we try not to take too many places. Josie likes to sit where she is in the above photo, which is the corner, lots of counter room to stretch out on.

When new people come in and see the sign you’ll often hear them laughing.

Once the eating is done, we usually chat up the baker and see what she’s making and how she does it. I like to ask her questions about how to improve my own skills and learn from what she’s doing. Josie likes to share her latest activities or what we’ll be doing that day. The morning before giving birth to Celia we actually were down at Quebrada talking to her about our soon to arrive kid!

Then it’s time for the long walk home. We usually let Celia walk and so it takes longer as they both get distracted by almost anything. Sometimes I’ll skip ahead home and get some chores done while they dawdle and explore. We come home full and ready to attack the day which is sadly already 1/3rd of the way done because we sure take our time at breakfast 🙂

Monday morning excitement: