Thursday, December 22, 2011

esther walks!!!

the minute she was born, esther has decided to do things her own way. she started "scooting" on her bum at around 8 or 9 months, learned to crawl at 13 months (and still preferred to scoot), and now it looks like she has decided to walk (but still might prefer to scoot, who knows!)! she has been playing with the idea over the last couple of weeks taking 5 + steps here and there but we are thinking this might be the real deal.

happy hanukkah!

out of nowhere, dottie started making a menorah with her duplos yesterday. though she didn't know it, her timing was perfect!

Happy hanukkah!

what's wrong with this picture?

we got a very small tree this year because we will be in tahoe for christmas (we leave tomorrow!!!). after decorating it, we realized it was all in vain. as you can see, esther has been interested in the bottom 2 feet of tree. 4 ornaments broke and we are now thinking that it was crazy to keep on trying. we are now loving our weird looking tree...

what's wrong with this picture?

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

advent calendar

Dottie has been more than excited about the advent calendar my mom and dad sent this year. As a child my brother and I received this same advent calendar (an old Coca Cola crate filled with presents for each of the 24 days before Christmas) from my great Aunt Jackie and we looked so forward to it every night before Christmas. My mom took some of the old toys and trinkets that we used to open and added some new ones and it is just wonderful. We will of course continue the tradition for years to come. I will take a picture of it when all of the presents are open. Tonight Dottie opened two little mini pirates and a parrot! She has been letting Esther open up about 1 of 5 presents at this point. She will need to be a little more giving next year I think...

5 days to go!!!!!

advent calendar

Sunday, December 11, 2011

free standing

esther made big strides yesterday with balance and was standing for about a minute at a time without any assistance at a birthday party we went to. notice her perfect timing with the music at the end of the video!

sweet reid henry

the girls had such fun stopping over to hang with reid henry last week. he has grown like crazy (he's 4 months old!) and was very interested in what the girls were doing. esther kept on scooting over trying to give him hugs and kisses!

Reid Henry

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

the christmas list

I asked Dottie to circle "a few things" in a toy catalog that she wanted to put on her list for Santa. Yikes!

Dottie telling us what she wants for Christmas

Santa!!!!

Dottie and Esther couldn't have had more different reactions to Santa this year if they tried. Dottie was SO excited and Esther was horrified. I had to take her out of viewing range because every time she got a look at him, she started screaming! Dottie was so star struck that she couldn't even get the words out to Santa of what she wanted for Christmas. Great outing with Kim, Frannie, and Jane. Santa, lunch, and ice cream cones afterwards while watching ice skating at Union Square.

(Santa looks like he has had a long day in the picture of Dottie with Santa. Poor guy)

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Thursday, December 1, 2011

esther at 14 months

We realized recently that we hadn't really mentioned much about Esther's recent milestones and rapidly developing personality. We have decided that turning 14 months old is as good a reason as ever to update you!

PERSONALITY
Esther has absolutely blossomed in the last 1 to 2 months or so. She has really gone from being a baby to a little being who understands directions, can communicate with the words she has ("no" and "more" being favorites ), points and says "there" when asked to point things out, says yes and no about things she likes and dislikes, gives hugs and blows kisses, gets excited when her daddy gets home from work and excitedly goes to him to say hello, the list goes on. It's clear though that she'll be a force to be reckoned with in months and years to come...

FAVORITE THINGS
She loves milk, lions and making roaring sounds (she sleeps with a lion and we can often times hear her in her crib roaring away undoubtedly hugging her furry little friend), sucking on her 2 fingers, the scooter aunt stephanie got her, bath time, biting people (and then smiling like she has done something naughtily), climbing on anything precarious and death defying, our neighbors (sometimes more than us we think), and of course, her big sister Dottie!!

COMMUNICATION
She is still quite the chatterbox. She wakes up chatting to herself and then chats to others all day long. Her list of words is getting longer by the day. Here are a handful of her favorites: mama, no, dada, no, hi, bye bye, no no no, roar, baby, there, no, bottle, dot, no, ball, dog, balloon (butchered of course), and even managed to squeak out a full sentence ( Hi Dada ) recently. She shakes her head like crazy when she knows she doesn't want something and nods her head in favor when she does. Our neighbor has even taught her a bit of sign language which she picked up right away.

PHYSICAL
Esther is still scooting on her bum all over the place and just added the crawl about a month ago at 13 months. She prefers standing to get places but will also turn almost any somewhat mobile object into an impromptu walker ( stools, doll houses, etc) She can now stand for about 6 seconds without assistance which just happened this past week. We will see on walking..it will be a bit yet. We have been told by many people who's children chose to scoot that walking was delayed until about 15 or 16 months.

SIZE
We haven't been to the doctor with her since her 1 year appointment so we don't really know how much she weighs but she is definitely still a bit of a pip-squeak. She is still very comfortable in her 6-12 month clothes and can't be more than 19 pounds or so. She is just taking her sweet time to get into all of those cute 12-18 month hand me down's from Dottie!

FOOD
Esther still isn't that into many foods (but loves milk!). She does like broccoli. Go figure. (Learning from her buddy Malcolm that if you are picky about what you eat, at least make it healthy!)

SLEEP
Bedtime is around7:30 every night...assuming her parents are on top of things, and will generally sleep until 7:30 the next morning. She typically sleeps through the night with the occasional wake up here and there because of teeth, etc. In the past 2 weeks or so, she has actually sleeping in until more like 8:00 or 8:30 but we are sure it won't last. She switched to 1 nap a day right around 13 months and it is usually anywhere from 1 1/2 to 3 hours.

NICKNAMES
Dottie has started calling Esther, "Estie" for some reason. We had always planned on using Essie as a nickname if there ever was one but we will see... I am is still calling her "pants" with some other descriptive word before it like "fancy pants" or "fussy pants" or "crazy pants".

TEETH
2 on the bottom, 1 on the top (she has been waiting for at least a month and a half for the other one..it's just starting to poke through) We're certain the dentist will be a challenge, as she was far more horrified with her sisters trip to the dentist than Dottie was.

IN SUMMARY:

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