merry merry!

I hope you all had a lovely holiday! We had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas... Christmas Eve was took a stroll in San Jose's Christmas in the Park - they decorate hundreds of trees, have Christmas music playing, and other fun moving (kinda creepy) elves and trains and little stations set up that Ruby was mesmerized by! At 9AM, we had the park to ourselves. Afterwards we needed to warm up so pastries and coffee were in order. Ruby was a huge fan. Obvi.

Christmas day was a tradition in the making... it was our first Christmas with our own little family so we needed to start out with a bang. Homemade cinnamon rolls? Of course. They were SO good. And SO bad for you. Good thing Christmas only comes around once a year! Ruby got some pretty sweet gifts from aunties and uncles and Nonna and Papa but I think the favorite of the day is her new baby doll stroller. She pushes that thing everywhere. That, and her Plasma Car (demonstration below...).

Experiencing Christmas through Ruby's eyes is a joy in itself - the lights, the music, the food... everything is exciting again. And I think it'll just get better from here!

happy tuesday!

My parents are leaving for Paris tomorrow... that is worth a picture.

Have a great rest of your week!

HO HO HO

We went to go see Santa today...

It didn't go well.

We even prepped her for a few days. "Ruby! You're going to see SANTA!" "What does Santa say, Ruby? Ho ho ho!" And she'll say "HOOOOO!" when we ask her. But even with all the prep work, she still wanted nothing to do with the man in red.

NINETEEN months!

Ruby is closer to 2 years than 1 year old now... and I'm diggin it. She's so vocal and active and her imagination is so fun to watch develop. We have an ottoman in our living room that has some fleur de lis/flower embroidered stuff on it (trust me - it's not as tacky as it sounds...) and one day I watched her take this closed bottle of lotion and pretend to water the flowers and then she reached down, "picked" one of the flowers, and pretended to eat it... and then continued to do this numerous times and then started to offer me samplings of her garden. It was amazing. She's super into airplanes right now. When she hears one overhead she points to the sky and yells some word that kinda sounds like telephone, but it's the same word every time, so it's definitely her word for airplane. Right now the whole family is under the weather - and she hasn't been the happiest - but oh does she snuggle when she's sick. We love that little Bird!

friday fall foto

Just because. It's fall. It was Friday. It was gorgeous... LOVE fall!

so thankful...

This year was a quiet little Thanksgiving. Just me and my 2 babes. Thankful we were. Walks we took. Eat we did. Skype we conquered. Happy Thanksgiving!

pick up the slack Sunday

Seriously? November 5th? That's the last time I posted?? Well, I guess I'll summarize...

• Ow. "Ow" is the big word of the moment. She drops a book. "Ow!" She tries to lift a heavy book. "Ow!" She can't fit the shape into the puzzle. "Ow!" She did happen to fall this weekend and bumped her lip/nose pretty good and said "Ow!" and my response was "Now THAT'S the right context!"... you know, after being sympathetic and all... :)
  
• She runs. She runs all over all the time. She runs and screams and runs more and screams more. She's so entertaining! We facetimed with Joey and Lindsey the other night and they got to witness it. Pretty awesome.
• Her vocabulary is sky rocketing... I just can't understand any of it. I'm already bad at deciphering accents in general, throw in toddler non-english and I'm just confused. But I have to say, I just love when she talks and talks and talks to me and all her inflections, and hand motions, and adorable little babbles. She's so freaking cute.
• We made it out of daylight savings pretty unscathed. There were 3-4 days of 5/5:30 wake up calls, but now we're back to our good ol 6:45.
  
• She's really good at saying "cheeeeeese!!" when she sees the camera... all on her own.
  
• Our after dinner routine is to strip off her shirt, let her run around screaming. She eventually wants to go up in her crib and then asks both of us to come in. We both probably could fit, but haven't tried... but each of us has sat in that crib with her, the other throws the stuffed animals back into the crib as she throws them out... it's quite a scene.
• Josh and I are obsessed with Parenthood. That has nothing to do with Ruby - we're obsessed with the show Parenthood. Oh man.
  

She's wonderful... but of course you already knew that. I promise I'll try to post more!!

EIGHTEEN months!

"How old is your daughter?" "A year and a half..." Did I just answer "a year and a half??" WHAT?? A year and a half. Crazy.
This girl is AMAZING. So funny. So smart. So cute! Yesterday I said "We need to do laundry, Ruby!" and she grabbed an armful of her dirty clothes, took them to the washer, and got on her tippy tippy toes to try to put them in the machine. She's a doll... AND a helper! She's still really into books. Loves to say "BYYYYE!!" when someone puts on their jacket or starts up a car engine. New words and sounds are coming daily and she adores hide and go seek/chasing games... it's hard to imagine that the 2 year mark is now closer than the 1 year mark... we have an official toddler on our hands! She's our whole world and we adore every slobbery kiss she gives us!

happy cow-loween!

Move over RuBEE, there's a new calf in town...

Ruby went trick or treating for the first time this year! We went with our friend Daphne aka "Dumbo" (and her parents Jon and Camille) from down the way. When I started taking pics of the precious little ones and a friendly black cat, my camera inconveniently told me I needed to charge the battery pack... CURSES!!

Ruby didn't quite get the "trick or treat" but she was great at the "thank you" and "bye bye"... and Josh and I made out with a nice little stash of candy stored safely in our freezer!

Sir Dominic

Uncle Dominic was in town for a visit... unfortunately Sunday we had to say goodbye. He's off on many more adventures but we were lucky enough to have him here for a few weeks and it was so fun watching him interact with Ruby. We love watching our friends play with her... and maybe even more so when they have a British accent and call her "a little princess." I mean - he would know, right??

officially fall!

We made it to the pumpkin patch today! It was GORGEOUS out and since we went at an off time, we had the majority of the patch to ourselves. Hay mazes, pumpkins galore, goats, chickens, bunnies, and a train with their own Old Faithful... pretty great...