I'm Dreaming of a White Two Days After Christmas

This post is about...



It may be a few days late and a few inches short, but it is still the closest I have come to a white Christmas. The light flutter of snow began around 7:00 last night. It continued, off and on, until early this morning. The forecast calls for rain, so we are enjoying it while it lasts. Here is what Talia thinks of her first day in the snow.





Our little angel will demonstrate how to make a snow angel.

First, lie down in the snow.



Second, make wings.



Third, make the angel's robe with your feet.



Finally, enjoy your handiwork and go inside to thaw by the fire.



Talia will now demonstrate how to make ice cream.



We decided to capture a family picture in the snow.



A couple friends came to visit.



Jon captured some of the beauty of the morning.







We're off to play!

Here Wii Are

This post is bound to be a hodge podge of photos and thoughts. Our days have been so filled that posting opportunities have elluded us. A sense of normalcy has returned, and with it comes my attempt to capture the activities of this last week. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the bumpy ride through our Christmas.



Probably the most popular material gift of the year was the Wii. Melody gave this exciting gift to Jim. Here are seven of the eight of us pictured as miis (Eric's mii was created after the photo). We played several games together and had a blast. Half the fun is watching the players really get into the game. I will admit that I take my playing very seriously, paying little regard to how ridiculous I look bouncing up and down and vigorously swinging at air. Talia was a little frightened by seeing her mommy and daddy shooting wildly at ducks, clay pigeons, and aliens. She cried for a minute or two. After that, she was as hooked the rest of us (although we tried to keep her from watching the screen too much). Another activity that we enjoyed was making miis for many of our faithful readers. That includes: Nikki, Daniel, Angie (aka Cheek), Mike, Evelyn, Brian, and Jen. Sorry, I didn't take your picture yet.

My parents came to visit. They had lots of play time with their grandbaby.







Beau was supposed to be in the previous picture, but he decided that posing for this picture was boring (at least you can see the top of him). Talia had a lot of fun being cuddled and loved for several days. She didn't even miss her solitary playtime.

Talia also got a great deal of attention from her other set of grandparents. We spent Christmas Eve and much of Christmas day at Jon's parents house.



Uncle Eric even got in on the fun.



Needless to say, Talia was very spoiled by family. The following are pictures of Talia opening presents. Here she is looking at some of them:



What you can't see in the following picture is Talia holding the edge of the paper while the gift is being turned. Yes, she helped open her own gifts.



You can see that opening gifts takes a lot of concentration when you are four months old.



Here is a picture of some of what she received from family near and far.



Talia doesn't even know how blessed she is. Mommy and Daddy are thinking that we will either need to buy or build a toy chest for Talia.

One of the joys of this Christmas was all the time Talia had with her daddy. Here they are playing:



Talia has been learning to "walk." Here she is walking on Daddy.



Daddy is teaching Talia concepts about print. She is learning tracking skills, directionality of print, and that the print contains the message. Okay, okay, Daddy and Talia are just trying to enjoy a good book. The kindergarten teacher in me jumps for joy (and so does the wife and mommy)!



Never underestimate the importance of cuddle time.



Mommy even got in on the fun (and, yes, that is spit-up).



Just for fun, here are a few more pictures of Talia from this last week.

Talia's hat helped Talia nap on her walk (she generally stays awake on her walks these days).



Imagine that her jungle is an engine and you could say with conviction that Talia is developing her fine motor skills.



As I mentioned in our previous post, Talia enjoys pushing herself backwards. Here is further proof.



Finally, a picture of our little family as we enjoy the celebration of our Savior's birth.

Totally Talia (and Friends)

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the post you have all been waiting for. It is a post, long in coming, about the sweet, talented, and cuddly Talia Rose. Without any further ado, I give you Talia!



Talia's Hobbies

Rolling Over: Talia has been capable of rolling over since around two months. Now she is able to roll over intentionally back to tummy and occasionally tummy to back. If there is something on her side that she wants to get to, she can often turn over onto her side. Sometimes she gets overzealous and ends up on her tummy. On Thursday I had to try several times to change her. She was on the ground and I had managed to take off her old outfit. As I reached down with her new outfit she rolled onto her tummy. I returned her to her back. Again, I reached down with her new clothes and she rolled over. I returned her to her back. By now I was laughing. Third time is the charm, right? Wrong, she rolled over again. I finally decided to hold her down on the approach (which I could have done earlier, but I was enjoying our little game).

Trying to Move: Talia is becoming increasingly interested in moving. As mentioned above, she has learned to roll to her side to face or reach an object on her side. She has also discovered that she can push herself along the slick surface of the changing table to face her singing bears. Talia, on her back, pushes with her legs until her head is touching the bear, or until her head bangs on the wood table and she cries. Her she is trying to see her bears.



Occasionally we take pity on her and let her watch her bears from her tummy.



Tummy Time: Since she was about a month old, Talia has not liked tummy time (unless it was on Mommy or Daddy). She has begun to not mind tummy time for short periods of time. I will admit that I have not been very good about making her have time on her stomach. One major concern was the inevitable spit up, first on the blanket, then all over the face. I am going to make a concerted effort to allow her time to build her arm strength.



Talia's Stats

Her Baby Blues: It appears that Talia's eye color may be changing. The silver center of her eyes seems to be warming to a gold. The majority of her iris is still decidedly blue. Her rims are almost navy. A change would not be a surprise to either of her green eyed parents, but the jury is still out.

Percentiles: Talia went to the doctor on Friday (more on that later). She is in the 97th percentile on length. Her weight puts her at the 92nd percentile. The doctor was also impressed by her strength and sturdiness on her feet.

Skin: Talia has been diagnosed with eczema. Now that we have a diagnosis for her incessant itching, we can be proactive. No more baby body wash for Talia (it is drying). Talia gets the more pricey Aveeno moisturizing body wash with no fragrance. The doctor told me to lather her up. Eucerin is her lotion of choice. For really irritated areas we are to use a topical steroid. During an outbreak her doctor encouraged us to give her Benadryl. Her skin is already looking better.

Clothes: I finally caved. Jon had been encouraging me to do so for a while. We finally broke out her nine month clothes and put away much of her six month clothes. Now she is wearing clothes marked for children more than twice her age. Most of her 12 month outfits are intended for summer. Part of me hopes that she curtails her rapid growth. Here she is in one of her nine month dresses:



Solids: Talia has been given her doctor's permission to begin eating solids. She can try grains from now until 6 months. Her doctor wants her to wait on fruits and vegetables because they could inflame her eczema. We are not in a big hurry to give her solids. We might give it a try after the busy holidays.

Talia's Events

Shots: No more short-lived shriek, Talia was crying for several minutes after her shots. The good news: Her memory is developing. The bad news: There are some things worth forgetting. She was very fussy for the rest of the day. She would not nap for more than 20 minutes and had bouts of crying that were inconsolable. Talia developed a low grade fever so we gave her Tylenol. She settled down enough to go to sleep around 6:15 and did not want to be roused until 7:00 the next morning. On Saturday she seemed fine. We headed to Vacaville to visit friends (more to follow). After a few minutes of being her usually pleasant self, she began to fuss. Her head was warm and moist and the thermometer confirmed that she had developed another fever. Poor girl. She didn't have much fun with her friends after that.

Modeling: Nothing new here. As is the case with most first-time parents, our daughter is frequently memorialized in our memory card (it is not accurate to say "on film" these days). She has three beautiful holiday dresses. One is pictured above. Here is one from Auntie Angie:



Grandma T. made Talia this dress and bonnet:



Visiting Friends: We had the privilege of visiting with some of our college friend; Elizabeth, Ryan and Kristi, and Peter and Sarah. There were three babies (and one on the way). Talia lay around, Anna crawled around, and Tate walked around. Here is Anna, Sarah, and Talia:



Since Talia was feeling ill, she didn't get too much playing time. Here are her friends covering for her:



So, consider yourselves caught up!

Busy, Busy, Busy

I sat down to begin another post on Friday. Before beginning, as is custom, I checked our Other Folks blogs. Nikki wrote a post entitled "Who Moved My Advent?" This post brought Psalm 46:10 to mind. I have been so busy with many activities, including getting ready for Christmas, that I have forgotten to reflect on the reason we celebrate. Last year's appreciation was so much more poignant. We were newly expecting, but frightened about losing the our tiny baby (three weeks of bleeding does not bode well for a first trimester baby). To a very small degree I imagined feeling like Mary; excited, hopeful, and scared. Nothing brings you humbly before the Lord like fear and pain. To God be the glory, this year Talia will be at our side as we celebrate Christmas. With all that I am striving to do this Christmas, I am praying to remember Nehemiah's words "the joy of the Lord is your [my] strength." And our lives are so full of amazing blessings, my joy should be in abundance.

I will attempt to bring you up to date with our recent activities. My next post will be about Talia (complete with more pictures). So here is what we have been doing:

Christmas Preparations

After buying our tree, Jon and I brought in our Christmas boxes. Jon put the lights on the tree (hence the light poll) and I began to decorate. To be honest, much of our decor is shoddy, either hand-me-down or Dollar Tree specials. Each year I get rid of more decorations in an attempt to decorate sparsely and nicely rather than copiously and cheaply. This year our decorations are limited to a wreath, a garland with poinsettias, Christmas linens in the kitchen and bathroom, a green tablecloth, seasonal candles and candle holders, Christmas CDs, and a two stockings (one more on the way, when we brave the holiday shopping).

I am finally home and able to make plates of Christmas goodies for the neighbors. Only one problem, our oven decided to opt out. Jon estimates that repairing the oven will be costly, based upon the price of the parts we would need to order. We have decided to wait until next year to buy a new oven and range. Sarah heard my plight and was kind enough to invite Talia and I over to bake at her house. We were amazed at how long it took to bake and care for two babies. Here is Sarah holding Talia and Anna.



Anna is fascinated by cameras, lucky for me:



We made chocolate cookies and press cookies. It was a deliciously fun day.

Over the next two days I went to Stroller Strides, had company, and made fudge and English toffee (no baking required). After Bible study on Friday, Jon and I attempted to pass out the six plates of goodies to our neighbors. We were able to pass out two. We tried again on Saturday, with similar success. Much to our disappointment, we concluded that two of our neighbors were on vacation and their goodies would be poor quality when they returned. What a shame, we had to eat them ourselves. And we did. They were consumed by Sunday night.

Another Christmas preparation was gifts. Without going into much detail, we worked on creating quite a few gifts. It was a fun project for Jon and I, but it took much longer than expected and we ran into a few snags.

Nevada City

We went to the Nevada City Victorian Christmas with Jon's parents. It is an event that occurs several Wednesday nights in December. The draw is the historic city lit for Christmas, booths with crafts and foods, carolers dressed in turn of the century attire, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, and folks dressed up like Eskimos. It is a popular event, two of our neighbors, friends from church, and one of my past student's mom were all in attendance. Here we are in the restaurant:



Here is Talia and Grandma:



Here we are in front of a famous church:



I say famous because it (and much of Nevada City) is the setting of one of our favorite Christmas movies, The Christmas Card.

Illness

Talia is proof that breastfed babies do get sick. She and I got another cold. This time Daddy was spared. Fortunately this cold seemed to be short-lived and of minor severity.

Teaching

I just couldn't stay away from kindergarten. On Wednesday I was a guest teacher at Truckee Elementary. My friend, with whom I taught last year, invited me to teach a Hanukkah lesson at her new school. I really enjoyed being in Judy's classroom. It was fun to have kids fighting over holding my hands again :). While I had a great time and am happy that I was able to hone my rusty teaching skills, I realized how grateful I am to not have to plan and prep lessons every day. This particular classroom posed an additional challenge: It is a bilingual class. Most of the daily instruction is given in Spanish. I asked Judy if I could give my lesson in English since my Spanish is so sloppy that I would be a poor example to the kids. I tried to increase comprehension with visuals, props, participation, and gestures. Antes de ensenar, tuvia la oportunidad a charlar con los ninos en espanol. After the lesson we danced the Hava Nagila. Just a note, it was 17 degrees in Truckee that morning.

EBay

Another new adventure for us has been selling on EBay. We found several items around the house and granny flat to sell. It was a learning process but we seem to have made a nice profit. It has been a fun venture that we look forward to continuing (it is also a great way to get rid of all the stuff cluttering the granny flat).

Psalm 46:10

"Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

Job 40:4 "Behold I am insignificant; what can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth."

An Update on Talia Rose

What kind of mommy would compose posts without much mention of her sweet baby? Guilty as charged. In an effort to regain some semblance of a responsible and proud mom, I will create a post that is solely about Talia. Besides, she is the primary reason for our loyal readership.

Talia's newest skill is playing with her tongue. She is leaving it out on a regular basis. I think it is both in play and in exploration. Not only does she lick anything available to her, she is now grabbing things and pulling them to herself (including Daddy and Mommy's clothes and Mommy's hair).

Here she is with her tongue out:



And again:



And again:



Grandma and Grandpa T. are giving Talia a jumper seat for Christmas so Talia is trying it out. She seemed to really enjoy her new found freedom. Here she is:



Here she is spinning around:



She is happy to try out her sea legs.



Talia decided that she wants to keep it. She knows that you can't take it back with spit-up so . . .



She discovered that her jumper is very appetizing.



Talia also enjoys flying and being a Talia rocket (Daddy makes some pretty good take-off sound effects). You can see a nice picture of her flying in our Thanksgiving post.

The other morning I put her down in her rain forest. She was very quiet for several minutes so I went over to see what she was doing. Her neck was craned back and to the side in an effort to watch the flames dance in our new stove. She is mesmerized by fire (uh oh).

As you can see, she is our great entertainment.