Happy 2012!!

Wait... am I late? Oh, it's already the 6th? Sheesh. Well, the Dunlop family is alive and well... although in 2 separate countries. We were just in Canada last week for a belated Christmas and it was great! The weather was "seasonably warm"... which means a balmy 25 degree average. Yeah. Downright swimsuit weather. Needless to say we spent a lot of time inside which was great - because it was like a whole new playground for Ruby with grandparents and a dog even. She was in heaven. Ruby and I came home on Wednesday and Josh is staying up there until Tuesday with his separated shoulder... oh, have we not discussed that?

Josh separated his shoulder about 3 weeks ago playing rugby. He was in a sling for awhile and now doing physical therapy. We're hoping to avoid surgery because the recovery time is about 3 months of immobility - like not even lifting up that daddy's girl of his. He's going in for an MRI next week to make sure nothing more is torn than the main ligament that was annihilated when he separated his shoulder initially... wish him luck!

That daddy's girl is sad her daddy is gone. Every day she's asked me about 14 times "Dada? Daddy?" She's going to be SO EXCITED come Tuesday. Come home soon, Daddy!

Update (hopefully) tomorrow on 20 month old Ruby!

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!