Christmas morning the girls were up their usual early selves and I took a video of them coming down the stairs to find the tree and presents. It’s dark and out of focus. Sorry about that. Most notable is that Celia and Josie both want to know if they get to eat the cookies that Santa didn’t eat, and then Jordi drops most of them on the floor. Pretty much this video is only for the grandma’s, everyone else can skip it.

The girls went for their stockings first while waiting for everyone else to get up and shower. Josie enjoyed that Santa knows her favorite restaurant.

They both wanted things out of each others stocking.

Later on we opened presents. The kids struggled with how long it took for everyone to get through it all, but they did ok playing with their new toys and old toys and the boxes the new toys came in. Celia went around picking up different presents from different piles trying to open them, but then didn’t want to open something when it was her turn!

All in all it was a relaxing morning at home opening gifts. We got some pretty fabulous stuff and lots of gift certificates to spend! We’ve already booked our winter weekend getaway.

Later that afternoon we went to Javier’s new place and got to see all the hard work he’s put into fixing it up. It looks nice and modern! Josie and Celia enjoyed a clarinet performance and banging on the keyboards (both musical and computer). But I guess I forgot the camera because I have no pictures.

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.

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! 🙂

No we didn’t go with that one.

This fall we went with a new gymnastics class for a few reasons. Her old one was a lot of time spent waiting for a turn and the teacher calling the non-cooperative kids back to class. Josie loved it, but one of the reasons she loved it was because of her friend Jordan who was also in the class. Jordan was 5 and so starting this fall she went to school and couldn’t do a Tuesday morning class anymore. Josie’s teacher also told me that she’s pretty talented and should take ‘real’ gymnastics classes. So off we went to a real gymnastics studio, but no big surprise, ‘real’ gymnastics aren’t that real at age 3, but they sure do cost more money. We did one 10 week session and Josie enjoyed it, Celia tolerated having to play in the background, but we’re done with it for now. We may go back to the other class and do both the baby and the big kid class so both of them can have fun in the new year.

They did a good job of keeping the kids active by moving them in a circuit, but there wasn’t much teaching or learning going on per say, just more ‘ok walk here and jump here’. A little bit of gymnastics skills with walking on the beam or hanging from a bar, but I was surprised at the lack of instruction. Perhaps the kids are just too little, this isn’t Russia or China screening for olympians. But the class was almost 20 minutes drive away (celia hates the car still) and overlapped with Celia’s preferred nap. So bye bye  to that class, but she had fun. We got to take some pictures in the last session, but it was too dark in there to do anything great.

In the last class they had each kid run a circuit independently while the parents sat in and watched. My mom came to help with Celia, ended up sitting with her sleeping in the car the entire time. Josie ran through her circuit without stopping and flipped over at the bar instead of just hanging from it (landed on her feet just fine) and then tackled her teacher. Guess the audience made her a little nervous.

Well ok now Josie is 3 and 7 months old… as I’m behind in the blog. As we head into December expect to see me enjoying reminiscing about last summer.

Josie is a full on talking-walking-bike riding person these days. She talks all day from morning to night and never seems to run out of something to say. She has a lot of complaints as well, we’re working on those manners. She often does say please and thank you though. She has a lot of opinions but also changes her mind frequently. I never can tell what she’ll eat some of these days, something was great one day and suddenly it’s no good the next.

With Celia being a little more work to keep track of and keep safe as she gets into everything, Josie is getting more time independently with her friends like Ethan and Zach or Bronwyn. It’s interesting  to hear what she has to say when she comes back from talking to them as they are clearly having some more indepth conversations other than just running and playing games. For instance she’ll tell us about upcoming birthday parties and what’s planned. She also hosted Ethan without his mom for the first time as a playdate, I feel like she and her friends are old enough that I can handle them easily while also entertaining Celia.

She’s pretty trustworthy but if she gets too excited or tired she tends to loose a little control and play rough. Not unusual for her age. She’s a sensitive girl though and has entered into the rough world of childhood play where not everyone is always nice. I’ll find myself being told to ‘go away’ when I try to play with her because someone else said that to her earlier. I wish these things wouldn’t happen to her, but learning to deal with them is part of being a kid. Not everyone is nice in the world!

She’s started to try riding a regular bicycle, I’ll get the video up sometime. She’s been using the neighbors bike and just has to learn to pedal. With some practice I’m sure she could get it but I’m not eager to get her started quite yet as I’d like to wait until spring at least to get a little more common sense to be included with her good balance and strength.

For activities she’s been doing weekly ballet and gymnastics. Gymnastics has ended but ballet has been something she looks forward to each week. She’s made some nice new friends and does a good job listening to the teacher mostly. She’s developed a case of the sillies a few weeks where she’ll throw herself on the floor like she fell down, both in gymnastics and ballet.

She’s a good big sister and getting better about both telling Celia to stop hitting her with her words, and not pushing her over as much. She also has been experimenting with picking Celia up. As long as they both agree and no one gets hurt, I really try not to get involved in what they choose to play together.

Josie has started to make the foray into the world of jokes and humor too. I try to explain jokes to her and she likes them, but doesn’t always get the timing quite right when she tries to do them to you. Ask her about the interrupting cow, hers is too polite sometimes.

Josie has been getting herself dressed now for a long time. She has her own opinion on what matches, stripes and stripes match right? no matter the color. Pink plus pink plus pink match even if they’re all different shades. So long as she is weather appropriate, I just go with it. She often tries to make me pick stuff though, and then picks the opposite. So I mostly decline the offer to choose unless she goes with what I pick because I don’t need oppositional teenage behavior yet!

In the last few months she’s really gotten into art projects as well. Art was previously a short activity until recently as she’s drawing more and painting and cutting and gluing. We’ve made some great stuff together and I really enjoy getting to work on it with her. I’m not a great artist in the drawing, painting, cutting, gluing world… so I look forward to the day when she surpasses me.

As for her numbers and letters and reading, she’s identifying most letters and small numbers and can write some of them unprompted. She’ll ask a lot of questions about signs and is starting to understand that letters can be written in cursive as well.

• Size/weight: 4, 34lbs, 40.5″ or so on height
• Favorite food: breastmilk, cheese, pasta, yogurt – this is just really consistent even though she eats a variety of foods
• Favorite toy: dolls and pretend and most anything that Celia wants
• Favorite books: Fancy Nancy, LLama Llama
• Favorite activity: Acting out scenarios with herself, puzzles
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up ~6:30am
• New skill: understanding humor and making some jokes
• Teeth: 20. 10 on the top and 10 on bottom. We’re done!
• Vocalizations: whining and lying are used, but mostly pleasant and informative