Today is Celia’s three month birthday! She continues to be a very happy and cheerful baby. She’s generally quite easy going and loves to see all the action going on around her. She lights up at playgroups and sing-a-longs, while still enjoying time at home with Josie and I. She still mostly hates the car, but at least falls asleep faster in the convertible seat.

Physically she’s getting stronger and more coordinated, as of a little over a week ago she’s bringing things to her mouth, or at least trying to. She can stand on her legs (with us balancing her) for several minutes and insists on it often. She’s grabbing the hanging toys and pulling a bit.

She’s decided naps are for the weak and lately I’m only getting one good nap out of her each day of about 2-3 hours. Otherwise she’s doing cat-naps unless I’m wearing her, but she’s going to bed decently early (9pm) and not getting up for the day until 8am-ish. (yes Josie has trained us not to expect much in the sleep department).

I don’t have stats as there isn’t a three month appointment but she’s probably around 12.5-13 lbs and 25 inches long. If she follows along Josie’s growth she’ll slow down in that department a lot now compared to the first few months.

Celia loves to talk, her best time is when I read her my book during Josie’s nap/quiet time. I get to read what I want, and she gets someone talking to her. A few minutes in she just starts talking and never stops, just like me. Perhaps I should try to work on those conversation skills, but mama’s gotta get some reading time in for her own sanity.

Here’s a reminder of what Josie looked like.

Oh no what did you do?

Ok now I’m happy!

Christmas day itself was more quiet as we opened gifts in the morning and ate a yummy mid-day meal. The next day we got to visit family and friends, the Bailets and Mr and Mrs. Walker. The girls sported their matching pjs, who knows how much longer Josie will let me get away with it so I better do it while I can! Later in the day we went back to Sue’s house for yet more eating and playing with Zeke.

Somehow Jordi dodged a lot of photos. Seems he must have been behind the camera some.

On Sunday we sat down and us kids decorated a gingerbread house with Josie. She enjoyed it, but the whole thing is so messy and imprecise you sure can’t tell who decorated which side, the teenagers or the two year old.

And finally we did our traditional good-bye picture a day early, and inside, because it was cold, and everyone was there for once. Although we actually ended up staying an extra day though because of a snow-storm in Boston, we didn’t bother driving back in it since we all were lucky enough not to have to be back immediately.

This year we had Christmas day at my aunt’s house in Harrisburg, PA where my dad grew up. We rented a minivan to get all six of us to fit, put the x-cargo on top too and made the trip in one day, but arrived at about 10:30 at night after Josie had a major meltdown in the car to fall asleep. She had refused to nap too, my kids are not good car sleepers. Celia at least had figured it out for the trip home and slept most of that which helped make it all more pleasant. I had thankfully pre-mapped out some places to eat (i.e. Panera) so that Josie could move around some and we could all find food that suited us. It was still a long trip.

Christmas eve took us to my cousin Sue’s house for presents which were quickly distributed and opened, Josie is very much into helping with all aspects now. Then we went to church, where Ally sang in the service and Josie did a good job of not asking too many loud questions during the quiet parts. Celia slept through the whole thing too. Then back to Sue’s house for the annual eating of the yummy Christmas appetizers.

Since we spent most of the night chasing Josie around we didn’t get many pictures. She liked Zeke but was a little afraid of him (not unreasonable with a 100+lb dog).

Lorraine also brought some cute reindeer cupcakes she had made and everyone got a kick out of seeing Josie eating one.

It was near impossible to get Josie to wind down that night finally, she just couldn’t turn herself off. Definitely a skill we’ll have to work on with her.

Since we went to Pennsylvania this year for Christmas we opened all our gifts between us and my parents here in Boston rather than lug them back and forth, because it’s just too much these days. We started early on a Sunday, following the video I posted about a week ago having some more cinnamon rolls that I had made (see Thanksgiving food post). Here’s what it looked like before Josie woke up and my parents brought their gifts too.

We had a fun morning opening gifts. It was nice to have everything be so leisurely and let Josie just open a gift and play with it if she wanted to right then and there, as compared with birthdays when it’s often a big string of presents to just keep opening in a row. Josie also offered to help everyone else open their gifts quite nicely and also accepted help opening up her own. Here she opens up Celia’s gift of silverware (hey how much does a second kid of the same gender who can’t even manipulate toys yet need?).

Here Celia looked like she was more ready to get in on the action when Josie opened up her wall decoration stickers.

Lest you think Celia got all the gifts, Josie got a few too. Including an easel for her learning tower which is great for her to use while I cook, the cardboard kitchen I made, a big towel since her baby towels were leaving her uncovered and cold, and a doctors dress up kit.

Then we took it easy on ourselves and ordered Chinese takeout. I had enough to do already without planning and executing another feast!

Another fun activity we did this year with Jordi’s side of the family while visiting was make some ornaments for our Christmas tree. We picked up some air drying clay from the art store and rolled it out and cut it out with cookie cutters into fun shapes. Pipita is an accomplished artist in this area so she helped us and Josie learn how to work with the clay and showed off her exemplary skills. Josie was hard to convince to put the string hole at the top of, not directly in the middle of all the ornaments.

The next day when they were dry, we painted them. We traded in and out for places at the table and Celia got some good holding time with various people.

All together we had a nice visit and spent a lot of time eating!

Seeing as I also like to talk about what I cook on this blog, seems I can’t let it go without mentioning our Thanksgiving food. We started the day off with a high calorie bang as I made some cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting. I had made them the previous week and frozen them. I think they came out well that morning, and promptly ate too many of them. I did manage to give at least one pan away to our neighbors Christina, Zach, Ethan and Chanh, but that was all I could bear to separate from. We had another two pans for Christmas but they didn’t come out as well, don’t know if I gave them enough time to rise that time.

We spent the morning cooking a few more things and then Pipita made us arepas for lunch. She let Josie help which was very gracious of her considering Josie just tries to eat the raw dough (ick).

Then we went home and got Josie and the rest of us a nap before coming back to eat the feast!

We had green beans with almonds, rolls, sweet potato casserole, carrot souffle, stuffing (meat and not), salad, turkey and veggie and turkey gravy. Plus I had made spinach dip for snacking on before dinner, not that we needed it. Yes that cranberry sauce is directly out of the can, I think it’s hilarious that it is can-shaped and insist that we leave it that way on the plate, sue me. I tried making my own one year and it was just terrible and there was TONS of it, so I haven’t bothered again. The new recipes this year were the sweet potato casserole and spinach dip. The spinach dip was pretty basic ho-hum recipe, cheese, artichokes, cream spinach and more cheese. The sweet potato we left the rather gratuitous cup of sugar in the potatoes out, leaving only the one on top plus the marshmallows and it was fantastic. This will be a definite addition to our table moving forward.

We ended the night with pumpkin and pecan pie with whipped cream, but didn’t make much progress on either, see above list of food for the entire day to explain why. With me nursing the girls I generally find I can’t ever eat enough to get stuffed, that was not true on this day with the whole day of rich options! There was wine and pina-coladas (?) for those who wanted to imbibe and it was a mighty feast indeed.

Just to back pedal a bit, this Thanksgiving we were lucky enough to be visited by Jordi’s mom, dad, sister and paternal grandmother since well we uh just had a baby and weren’t up for making the trip to Florida just yet. We did a big thanksgiving dinner and had fun Fall outdoor playtime (froze the southerners in the process).

Josie made special Thanksgiving place setting decorations. We saved a bunch of paper towel and toilet paper rolls and she painted each one. Then we glued ‘feathers’ onto them to make it look like native american headdresses. I don’t think Josie caught what they were supposed to be, but she enjoyed the process. Jordi enjoyed collecting the paper recyclables as it always seems like we should be able to do something crafty with them.

Happy (very) belated Thanksgiving!