Updates from Massachusetts

Hello from Quincy, Massachusetts! It's hard to believe we have already been here for a month and a half and yesterday Julia turned 2 and a quarter! How the time flies.

It took us almost a week to drive out here the end of August. It was exhausting, but we survived, largely thanks to Marmee (Joy's mom). It was wonderful to get to spend so much time with and have so much good conversation with her. The scenery was beautiful, and we enjoyed a particularly amazing seafood dinner at Legal Sea Food in Providence, RI, our last night on the road. Tropical Storm Irene was here to meet us shortly after we arrived, but thankfully we were able to move in pretty uneventfully and we never lost power or had any damage.

Jonathan started his new job a couple days after we moved in, and he hasn't stopped since. He is incredibly busy but loving every minute! We are so glad that he has found such a good fit after all his hard work in grad school. Julia was my super duper unpacking helper. Every time we opened a new box, her eyes got really big and she would ask "What is it?" in a very awed voice. Thanks to her motivation, we were able to get unpacked and settled in pretty quickly. It was fun to unpack all our belongings again after not seeing them since early June. There are still a couple random boxes that need to be dealt with, several more pictures to hang, and our TV is still on the floor, but other than that we are pretty much settled.

Julia's favorite part of her new home (besides her new room, which is huge, so she can actually have all her toys in there) is the balcony. Our balcony looks out on a small bay (Town River Bay) and a marina. Julia loves to sit out on the balcony and look at the water and the boats, read a book, or take her dollies for walks in their stroller and tell them about the scenery.

We've been able to start exploring all that the Boston area has to offer. So far, we've visited the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the New England Aquarium, nearby Wollaston Beach, the Quincy library, and an apple orchard. We've taken quite a few rides on the "T" subway system, which Julia has particularly enjoyed. Julia and I are attending an LCMS church that we are very happy with so far. The music is wonderful, and there are quite a few other families with small children.

Some other Julia updates (by no means exhaustive, since it's been hard to remember and write things down with everything that has been going on):

• Julia still loves to sing. (There's a shocker!) Besides continuing her own sweet tuneless creations, some of her current favorite songs she likes to sing are "Shoo fly," "I am Jesus' Little Lamb," "If you're happy and you know it," and "Julia was baptized" (from Sunday School).
• Reading is still a most favorite activity (the library was a big hit... "lots of new books!"). She loves reading all of her many, many books, but new favorites are the "Alfie" books by Shirley Hughes, Beatrix Potter, and "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle. And our current bedtime story routine is reading a chapter from the "Winnie the Pooh" books by A. A. Milne. I don't know how many other two-year-olds are willing to sit and listen to chapter books, but Julia loves it!
• Jumping! Julia's been able to jump for several months now, but it doesn't look like I've mentioned it before, so I wanted to make sure I got it in.
• One of Julia's quirky games she likes to play with me is to come up to me, and say "You ok?" I say yes, and she runs off. Then she'll come back and ask again. If Daddy's home, she'll tell him "I check on Mommy see if she's ok."
• Julia finally has enough hair for us to do more creative things with it besides a barrette. Besides a ponytail, one of her favorites is "Lizzy hair" (pigtails). Marmee got her a new doll (who she loves as much as Baby!). New dolly's name is Lizzy and she has pigtails too.
• If one of Julia's body parts gets hurt or bumped, she calls it a "bonk," and wails "I bonked my [blank]! Kiss it!"
• One of Julia's "big girl" accomplishments this past month has been giving up her pacifier (finally!). About a month ago, without realizing what she was saying I'm sure, she was sitting on her bed playing and she told me she was done with "posser." So I took it away! The first several days were a little rough with some tears and a lot of extra rocking and cuddling before nap and bed time, but she really did very well! So relieved we got through that as unscathed as possible. Now if we could just get potty-trained (which has been attempted, but pretty unsuccessfully; we are waiting another month or two).
• And finally, Julia is thrilled to be a big sister! (Assuming this is probably not news to anyone reading this, but we are due April 7!) She wants the baby to come out now, but we keep telling her that she needs to wait until Daddy's birthday time while the baby gets bigger and bigger. She knows the Baby is in Mommy's tummy, and she loves to talk to the Baby and give him/her hugs and kisses. She can't wait to play with the Baby and read him/her stories. Julia initially was going to ask Jesus for a baby sister, but now she has decided she will just ask Him for a baby. (Whew! Sounds like a good plan! :-) ) 

I think that's all the updates for now!

What's New?

Wow! A lot has happened in our family since our last post. The day before we left Rochester, Jonathan accepted a position as Assistant Organist at St. Paul's Church and Choir School in Cambridge, MA. While we are disappointed to be heading even further east, the job was otherwise perfect, and we couldn't pass it up. Jonathan will be playing the organ for services, directing the parish adult choir, accompanying the boys' choir, and teaching theory/handbells in the school. Joy will be staying home with Julia (finally! hooray!) and is contemplating a per diem RN job and/or taking the training to become a Kindermusik instructor. Last week, we flew to Boston and after much trial and error finally located a lovely condo to rent in the Quincy area.

Jonathan begins his new job the beginning of September, so we won't be moving from Peoria until the end of August. We have spent most of the summer thus far in Peoria, where we have been able to take care of his mom and his parents' house while she recovers from her shoulder surgery and his dad is away at LSM. We also spent a wonderful week out in Iowa with Joy's family. Next month we look forward to traveling to Jonathan's grandparents' cabin in northern Wisconsin for a week of outdoor relaxation and fun with Jonathan's parents as well as his brother and sister-in-law and Ginger Puppy, followed by a visit to Joy's brother's family's new home in eastern Iowa.

Julia has truly been quite the little trooper amidst all the drastic changes and transitions taking place in her life. She has enjoyed all the time she's been able to spend with both sides of the family, and we are so grateful to have this opportunity visit with our family and friends this summer before moving so far away.

As far as Julia updates, here are all the random things I can think of:

• Colors. She now consistently gets her colors right about 90% of the time. Also has started taking a real interest in coloring. Going along with that, she will now consistently count from 1 to 5 correctly.
• Reading. Still LOVES books, and now she will "read" many of her favorites aloud.
• Singing. She loves to sing songs of her own composition :-) as well as many of her Kindermusik songs. When she sang "Love Somebody" all the way through with me for the first time, it was so sweet I cried.
• Being outside. Sadly the steamy weather has kept her indoors more lately, but she loves being outside whenever we give her the chance. In Iowa, she loved running in the yard with Peter and Sallie Dog, playing in Marmee's fountain, running through the sprinkler, and blowing bubbles with Marmee. In Peoria, Julia likes driving her car, going down the slide, and going for walks. Today we took her on her first bike ride and she absolutely loved it!
• Church. It has been so good to be in church all together. Julia does better sitting still each week and likes to talk about the Pastor, Jesus, and the cross.
• Favorite games are peek-a-boo, "sneaky" (where she sneaks up on people... she has a silly walk and whispers "sneaky" as she goes), and "squishy ball" (Julia sits at the top of the stairs while someone tosses the squishy ball up to her, she catches it, and tosses it back down [this is actually harder for the adult than you would think, given the nature of the ball]).
• Tea parties. In addition to enjoying tea parties with real tea, Julia has also discovered the wonders of pretend tea parties with her stuffed animals and any big people who can join her.
• Big girl bed. As of our last update, Julia had just switched to a toddler bed. After a couple so-so weeks at the beginning, she is now doing very well and is very proud of herself for having a big girl bed.

That's all I can think of for now! :-)

Julia's Two!

Our sweet girl turned 2 on June 10! We had a wonderful birthday celebration with Jonathan's family in Peoria while we were in town for the annual Peoria Bach Festival. We are now home and completely swamped with moving preparations, so I'm afraid I must forego the usual monthly Julia update. Suffice it to say that she continues to amaze us everyday with her sweet ways (today she charmed us by randomly breaking into song and dancing and singing). She continues to talk up a storm and take Baby for lots of walks. She has a new interest in coloring and is fascinated by stopping at the gas station. She is completely wonderful and we still marvel everyday that we have been blessed with such a darling daughter. :-) We will be moving to Peoria on June 26-27. We'll be helping Jonathan's mom with her recovery from major shoulder surgery and looking forward to spending time with both our families. Jonathan has two job interviews scheduled in the next two weeks and we hope more will follow. We hope to see many of you again soon and appreciate your prayers!

24 Months and Second Birthday

24 Months:

Second Birthday:

New Pictures :-)

23 Months:


Springtime:

Miss Chatterbox

Happy (finally!) Spring! Here in Rochester, we finally have green grass, leafing trees, and beautiful flowering trees. :-)

Julia is SO happy that we have had warmer weather. She loves being outside as much as we'll let her. We try to take at least one walk every day, and she likes to go "look at water" (the pond on our apartment complex's property). She's learning go up the steps on the walkways by herself, and she likes to run (laughing) through the grass. She can tell, though, when we're coming home, and she will start crying when she sees our house (and if she's running, she will laugh and cry at the same time). Hopefully we will soon have a yard with a fence, and Julia can be outside to her heart's content. We're also enjoying seeing a greater variety of birds again at our bird feeder, and Julia likes to hear them sing (especially the chipping sparrow).

While the weather was still cold, Julia devised some indoors methods to burn up some of her (and our) energy. Those of you who have visited us know that you can go the entire length of our apartment (which is a decent distance) in a pretty straight shot (from Julia's room to Mommy and Daddy's room). So, Julia thinks it's a lot of fun to "run run run!!!" from one end of the apartment to the other. It's even more fun if Mommy and Daddy to do it, too, and it's the most fun if they skip or gallop (at her direction, of course). She's pretty good at attempting to gallop as well, but obviously has awhile before she figures out how to skip. Julia continues to love taking Baby for a walk around the house, and she's finally really mastered how to make her ride-on horse go. Julia also likes to be my "puppy." She will crawl around the house saying "here's puppy" and cuddle up to me and say "hug puppy, hug puppy!" Tea parties are still lots of fun, and she's getting much better at getting the majority of the tea into her mouth instead of down her front.

A very exciting change for Julia that just happened in the past couple days was transitioning out of her crib into a toddler bed. We were going to convert her crib, but it turned out it would have taken up to 16 weeks to get the rail. So, we opted to buy a toddler bed instead, and Julia picked out a pink one. :-) She slept in it Monday night for the first time. She likes that she can get in/out of it herself, that it's pink, that she now has a pillow, and that we found places for everything that was in her crib in her new bed. She's still somewhat apprehensive whenever it's time to actually sleep, but once she goes to sleep, she's fine, and we've had no midnight or mid-nap visits (yet! fingers crossed).

And finally, the biggest Julia development over the past month has been the continued expansion and sophistication of her vocabulary. I would say the majority of what she says is comprehensible, and she puts together multi-word phrases. She continues to amaze me in this regard, especially since at her 18-month appointment in December we were hard pressed to come up with 5 words that she used consistently. Here are some examples of phrases we hear frequently:

• "Careful, don't fall!"
• "Mmmm, yum, yum" (in a surprised tone of voice when she's trying something new that she's not sure she likes)
• "Thank you sweetie" :-)
• "Hi sweetie"
• "Do it! Julia do it!" (she's an independent little thing!)
• "Bye! See you!"
• "More too"
• "Where's Julia? Peek-ee-boo!"
• "What's next?" (in between tracks on her Kindermusik CDs)
• "Here she comes!" (when running to Mommy or Daddy)
• "Bless you!" (just started saying this when we sneeze)
• "Cough cough" (after she coughs... usually it's a fake cough)

Sometimes talking about certain topics will start a predictable Julia monologue:

• "And...[] too!" (e.g. "Family... and Marmee... and Pops too! etc. etc.)
• "Organ... Daddy... Julia" (Daddy plays the organ, and so does Julia)
• "Music class... friends... bells... sticks... bars... dance... scarves... run... hold hands... etc."
• "Trash truck...by [goes by]" (she's fascinated by the trash truck and she will talk about it several times everyday. The trash truck comes on Tuesdays and Fridays, which I've been telling her for awhile, but now she's starting to tell me the days of the week the trash truck comes too)
• Usually talking about the trash truck leads to talking about the vacuum. Julia is pretty scared of the vacuum, and she needs Mommy or Daddy to hold her when we vacuum or when the neighbors vacuum upstairs. She will say, "vacuum, Jesus (because Jesus keeps her safe from the vacuum), ergh-ergh (apparently that's the sound the vacuum makes!)"

It is so fun to hear everything that she has to say. She, her vocabulary, and her cute little voice are so adorable. We couldn't be more blessed. :-)

One month until her second birthday... woo hoo!

The latest on Julia

I must confess that I was unfortunately remiss in keeping my list of Julia updates to include in this blog post. So, I may not have much to post here... we'll see how it goes! In fact, I'm not sure where all the time has gone since my last post, although our family did spent a lot of March being sick. :-( Julia had her worst cough thus far (finally necessitating the purchase of a vaporizer) but was the only one not on antibiotics. We are all feeling much better and were actually able to bring out the short sleeves the past couple days (although we are back in the low 50's again today). The grass is starting to turn green, and on our walk yesterday, Julia and I found some opening leaf buds on some of the trees. Maybe spring will actually be here soon!

Besides being sick, the three other major events of this past month (that you'll see in the pictures I posted the other day) were:

1. A trip to Oberlin. Jonathan was invited to be one of the performers on a recital dedicating a new organ in honor of David Boe (his organ professor). Julia and I enjoyed dinner with "Aunt" Carissa before the recital, and Julia spent most of the recital rummaging through my purse and listening to the music. Her ability to sit still during recitals has dramatically improved over the past several months (but when she's done, she's done!)

2. Daddy's birthday. Julia was very excited to help me make banana fudge sundaes (including homemade banana ice cream) in lieu of cake and to help Daddy open his cards and presents. She is going to have fun on her birthday this year. :-)

3. Gramma and Grampa came to visit! We'd been talking about their upcoming visit for weeks, and it took Julia about 20 minutes to remember how much fun they are to play with. Gramma and Grampa were pretty much at Julia's mercy for the week, and they all thoroughly enjoyed themselves. :-) Besides play time with Julia, we all enjoyed some yummy meals (at home and out), did some shopping for Julia, took Gramma to Kindermusik, visited the Strong Museum of Play (see pictures), and had lots of good conversation. There's nothing better than family. :-)

Other highlights of the past month:

At Kindermusik, one of our books this semester includes a pig-playing violin. For the past two classes, Julia's teacher has brought in a 1/16 violin (so cute!) and helped each child hold the violin and pluck the strings. The first week, Julia was very reluctant to try it and had to hold my hand. Last week, when I asked her if she wanted to play the violin again, she went right up to her teacher ALL BY HERSELF! I think that's probably the first time Julia's taken initiative to do something by herself our entire time at Kindermusik! She thought the violin was so cool! She thinks she's going to play the organ like Daddy, but maybe she'll end up being a violinist. :-) Also in regards to Kindermusik, she calls it "class"; and when we talk about class, she says, "class, friends, bells, sticks, dance, etc. etc." :-)

Another favorite activity is having tea parties (of the real and imagined varieties) with her tea set she got from Marmee and Pops for Christmas. She's decided that drinking the tea from a spoon is a better way to go than directly from the cup (which is probably good because most of the tea goes down her front when she drinks from the cup!). And the whole time she says, "Tea... Party!"

I think the running list of words has also come to an end. There are just too many to keep track of! We have definitely moved on to two and three word phrases. Not surprisingly, her first phrase was "Mommy, come!" One of our favorites is "More, too!" She's learning to say please and thank-you at the appropriate times (and the please doesn't always have to be prompted).

Julia's also somehow learned most of her alphabet! I don't know if it's from playing with the refrigerator magnets (that fit into a magnetic dog house which recognizes and says the letter)? I was wearing my Peoria Bach Fest shirt awhile ago and she pointed out to me the C and the A. So I would say she can pick out for me about 2/3 of the letters now. She likes me to put the magnets in order and sing the alphabet song while pointing at the letters. And we're starting to work on putting the letters of her name together. Fun times. :-)

That's all I can think of for now. Hopefully when I post our next monthly update we will know where we will be moving! Keep us in your prayers. :-)

22 Month Pictures

The Ministry of Silly Walks

Here's one that Uncle Dan will enjoy. Julia has been working on an application for membership in the Ministry of Silly Walks. Here's her entry:



She honestly came up with this all by herself; we have no idea from whence the inspiration for such a silly method of ambulation came.

Dancing

Here is a video of Julia and Mommy dancing to one of Julia's favorite songs on her Kindermusik CD. The speakers were too far away for the camera to pick up the music, so you'll have to watch her dance in relative silence. We like how she spins around.

Pictures

21 Month Pictures



Snow Pictures

21 Months

Hello all!

Here's the latest Julia updates:

• Julia's vocabulary continues to expand on a daily basis. It's amazing how much she understands and the number of words she says. We continue to update the list at the right, but I am sure there are quite a few words missing. It's hard to keep up! One of the most exciting expansions of her vocabulary has been the addition of the names of her family members. She can identify pictures of and name Marmee, Pops, Gramma, Grampa, Uncle Sean, Aunt Becca, James, Baby Sophia, Uncle Peter, and Aunt Molly. We are still working on Aunt Laura, Aunt Jocie, and Uncle Dan (actually, Julia pretty frequently calls Aunt Molly AND Uncle Dan "Aunt Molly"!).
• Julia's level of comprehension of the world around here is pretty awesome, too. For example, I have worked quite a few night shifts lately. According to Jonathan, Julia spends a lot of the time I am sleeping during the day saying, "Mommy... sleep! sssshhhhhh!"
• Julia likes to video chat with her family. :-) A week or two ago, when we came home from Kindermusik, she walked over to the computer, climbed up in the chair and said, "Becca, Baby, James!" And today she's still talking about the nice conversation she had with Grampa and Elmo yesterday.
• Something new Julia has learned to do is "sneaking." I'm not sure how it started, but especially at bedtime, Julia likes to sneak up on Daddy to say good night. As soon as she's done with her bedtime nursing, she says "sneak! sneak" We hold hands and creep along as she whispers "sneak." Then when she gets close to Daddy, she yells "aaaahhhhh!!!" and runs up to him. Then we have to sneak up on Baby. :-) Julia's also learned that Mommy kisses make any owie all better. :-) And she's started to show an interest in learning the alphabet, so we are working on that a little. She has magnet letters on the refrigerator that she likes to play with while I'm working in the kitchen. For some reason, the "O" has been her favorite letter to carry around, so that's the first letter she learned to say/recognize.
• Julia continues to be rather shy at Kindermusik class, but it's neat to see how much she's absorbing in class by what she demonstrates here at home. She loves to listen to her CDs here at home, she's starting to sing along with some of the songs, and there are certain songs that we always have to dance to together. She got some great animal puppets from Grandmom and Grandad at Christmas that work really well with some of the Kindermusik songs, so we have a great time having the animals dance and singing the songs together. Some of Julia's other favorite toys/activities are books (of course), playing ball, building block towers, and walking Baby in her stroller.
• Julia is the only one in this house that might be a bit disappointed when spring finally arrives! We have had her out in the snow a couple times this winter (it's been hard to find a day with safe temps/wind chills to be outside for any length of time), and she has absolutely loved it every time. She thinks the snow is AWESOME. She walks in it, sits in it, makes snow angels in it, and picks it up. And she screams bloody murder when it's time to come inside. Hopefully she'll be reconciled to the loss of the snow when she realizes the warmer weather will allow her to be outside much more often.

I will post some more pictures next, including pictures of Julia playing in the snow that I'm not sure made it on here. I think there are also a couple new videos for Jonathan to post. Love and miss you all!

Julia video (relative) extravaganza

The promised videos have arrived in blog form! Enjoy!

This video shows Julia saying hi to Grampa:


Here we have Julia saying hi to Odebolt and answering affirmatively to the question: "Are you ready for lunch?":


And finally, Julia enjoys talking to herself in the mirror in a very animated fashion:

New videos coming soon!

Hey! Just wanted to let you know that some new videos (some specifically for the grandparents) will be coming soon. Unfortunately, our resident Video Editor and Uploader has been very busy, and when he did have a chance to work on the videos last night, YouTube was doing site maintenance and wouldn't upload the videos. So stay tuned, and hopefully they'll be up here soon!

Thought of one more thing...

When Julia's reading a magazine or a book, she likes to say "who's that?" ("whoooszhat?) or "what's that?" ("whaszhat?") I think she's so used to us asking her, that now she figures it's only fair if she asks us. :-)

Time for another update...

Happy Valentine's Day, family and friends! Can't believe it's (past) time for another monthly update, or how much has happened in the past month. Jonathan started his classes again, played his lecture recital, and we took a six-day trip to Fort Wayne and Peoria. On the trip, Jonathan played a couple of recitals, and Julia and I got to visit with friends and family, including Julia's first real playdate with her cousins, James and Sophia.

Julia is such a fun little toddler! Hard to realize she's only 4 months away from her second birthday! She continues to be a bundle of either very positive or very negative energy and continually delights and amazes us:

• Julia has always been a chatterbox, but she's definitely been experiencing her "'real' word explosion" over the past month. I've been trying to keep up the list on the right side of the blog, but I'm sure I'm missing quite a few words. And some "words" only make sense in context. It's so neat, though, to start communicating verbally back and forth with Julia. It's something you have previously taken for granted but learned how to do without and adapt to with this little person for the past year and a half. I can now know exactly what Julia wants and/or is talking about! SO COOL!!!
• Julia has known for a long time how to say "no" to a question (not the actual word yet, but a nevertheless unmistakable shaking of her head with a whiny sound), but over the past couple weeks she has started answering "yes"! I am impressed because I answer with "yeah" instead of "yes" far too much of the time. Again, so cool to be able to communicate so much more clearly!
• Closing doors is still a fun game. But now she says "bye! bye! bye!" as she closes the door and screams "HIIII!!!!" when she opens it.
• When we were in Peoria, Julia was privileged to inherit Unk's (Jonathan's Uncle Rob) rocking chair that he sat in as a toddler. She loves having a chair that is just her size. She sits in front of the fire and reads or she rocks her stuffed animals in it. She also likes me to take it into the kitchen, so she can sit and read while I cook.
• After we finally took our Christmas tree down sometime mid-January, we were able to make a special little play corner for Julia. We got her a toy organizer (like Uncle Peter's), and she stays cozy sitting on her Marmee quilt. She loves to sit in her little area and play with her toys. She's been getting more and more into "pretend play." We have tea parties with her tea set from Marmee and Pops and she loves to talk on my old cellphone (usually she's talking to Daddy). She also likes building towers with her blocks (or handing her blocks to Jonathan or me so we can build towers), and she loves the stackable boxes from Aunt Molly and Uncle Dan and rings from Gramma and Grampa. And she's still a stuffed animal lover. Her heart belongs to Baby, but she also likes her Puppy and the Oberlin bear (both stuffed animals that were given to me by Jonathan... hmmm). With her stuffed animals, she cuddles them, she dances with them, she plays hide-and-seek with them, and she reads to them. She is the sweetest, most affectionate little person! :-)
• Julia also takes good care of her electronic "friends." We've explained to her that rechargeable items (e.g. cell phones and iPods) are "hungry" when they need to be recharged. So she will frequently ask us to plug said items in, even when they don't need it.
• And last week, Julia and I restarted Kindermusik. We moved up to the next age level, so the class is structured a little differently. This semester is focused on animals (animal sounds, songs about animals, etc.), so Julia should love it. She was still pretty shy at class, which surprised me because she has been much more relaxed in social settings lately. But she has loved listening to her CD and doing some of the dances and activities with me here at home, so she seems to be enjoying it, even if it doesn't necessarily seem like it while we were at class.

Those are all the updates I can think of for now. We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring and hopefully knowing soon where our new home will be. We love and miss you all!

20 Month Photos

January Ft Wayne/Peoria trip

In which we travel 1500 miles, Jonathan plays 2 recitals, and we see family and friends, all in 6 days! (wish I had pictures from the performing spaces... St. Mary's in Peoria was beautiful!)

Some videos from the past month

Here is Julia reading her book of poems. She reads very loudly and enthusiastically. I like how her toes stick out from under the book.



And here is Julia dancing to Mannheim Steamroller. Unfortunately, this is not the best example of her dancing, but it is the best we were able to capture on video. Usually there is much twisting and clapping of hands as well.

Finally another update!

Happy New Year friends and family!

Our apologies for not updating recently, other than pictures. We were very busy at the beginning of the holiday season, which allowed us to relax and enjoy the end of the holiday season as a family. It was absolutely wonderful to have such quality family time, especially after a very busy semester for Jonathan. This means, however, that we have not written an update since the beginning of November. Thank goodness I keep a text file on my desktop with a running tally of Julia updates:

• Physical development: We've definitely entered the climbing phase. She climbs on/off chairs and the end of our bed. She attempts to climb into her booster seat and her crib. And she has attempted the coffee table (which has been greatly discouraged). She hasn't tried to climb out of her crib yet, which we hope she won't because we really don't want to move her out of her crib until after we move. We're also in the imitation phase. Julia likes to do whatever Mommy and Daddy are doing. For example, when I brush my hair or put my makeup on, Julia rubs her face and takes my brush and brushes her hair, too! And now she always helps me put her lotion on after her bath. Julia has also recently learned to open doors. She first did this the day after Christmas. Jonathan and I were in the kitchen and she shut herself in our bedroom. We went to let her out, but she closed the door again so we left her alone. Then suddenly we saw the door handle move and the door opened! It was pretty funny! Julia recently started figuring out how to "ride" her horse, although she has not figured out how to actually sit on it while she rides it! Wearing our shoes, moving objects around the house, stacking objects, and sharing objects with Mommy, Daddy, or some other lucky victim continue to be favorite activities.
• Social/Emotional Development: Julia has always been on the shy side, but she's definitely becoming more of a social creature. Given some time to warm up to visitors (at home) or a foreign environment (when we're out), and as long as Mommy is close by, Julia has really started enjoying interacting with people other than Mommy and Daddy. She can be quite a ham when she wants! She did really well with Jonathan's parents at Thanksgiving and even better after Christmas. The temper tantrums continue, and we've been trialling time-outs with more positive results lately. She tends to throw things or hit things during her tantrums, but she's gotten much better about picking up what she's thrown or giving things "gentles" when we ask her to. She's very affectionate in general. She gives the best hugs and pats. She's also recently started coming up to me and rubbing my back. She's such a cuddly bunny. Oh, I'm not sure I've posted this on here before, but for awhile now when she's hollering at us for something, we ask her to "be patient" and she calms down and starts babbling in a very quiet high-pitched voice.
• Vocabulary: We're still waiting for that "word explosion," but Julia's vocabulary is certainly expanding. Her comprehension is VERY extensive, but it's been lots of fun to start hearing her use words back. We're keeping a list on the sidebar of the blog of all of Julia's words, so check it out! And Julia continues to like "reading" out loud. We have an updated video of that which I will ask Jonathan to post.
• Mealtimes: In a previous post, I believe I mentioned that Julia was starting to try to use silverware. This is a skill she has really gotten better at over the past couple months. She can feed herself most of her meals, thanks to some chunky silverware and plates with suction! She's also pretty much transitioned to sitting at the table in her booster seat with its tray.
• Music: Julia loves playing the piano. She especially likes it when Daddy plays with her because he improvises all sorts of wonderful accompaniments. She actually made me get off the bench once, and went and found Jonathan because she wasn't satisfied with my meager performance! She's gotten much more careful about how she touches the keys and deliberately presses certain ones down, instead of just banging like she used to. She also has been known to sing along to her playing (was her own idea), which is really cute. One of Julia's favorite parts of the Christmas season was listening to Christmas music. She was especially in love with our Mannheim Steamroller CD, to which she dances most enthusiastically (we have a video somewhere that I will try to remember to ask Jonathan to post as well). She enjoys listening to music in general, and will often start clapping and/or dancing if so inspired.
• Christmas: Julia loved the whole Christmas season! We talked a lot about Baby Jesus being born, and her favorite Christmas books were "Who is coming to our house?" and "The friendly beasts." We also got her a Little People Nativity set, which we let her have at the beginning of Advent. She quickly learned who the Baby Jesus and his Mommy Mary were, and whenever we would talk about Baby Jesus she would go find and bring us her Baby Jesus. Julia also liked watching us light the Advent wreath. And she had a blast "opening" the digital Advent Calendar from Gramma Wessler each day. Getting the Christmas tree was a marvelous adventure. She loved riding in the hay wagon and walking through the snow. She helped us decorate the tree, and she never tried to take any of the "pretties" off the tree. Whenever we talk about the tree, she points at it and often says "vroom vroom" because we rode behind the tractor to get the tree. Another aspect of Christmas of which Julia approved was the eating of cookies and the drinking of eggnog. Julia also helped me cut out gingerbread people, which she loved. Last year, Julia was only interested in tearing the wrapping paper off her presents, this year she only wanted to play with the first present she unwrapped!
• Misc: SNOW! During our first snowfall, it was warm enough to take Julia out to play in it. She absolutely loved walking around in the snow and picking it up in her hands. Unfortunately, it hasn't been warm enough since then to play in the snow, but hopefully we will get a few more chances before the winter is over. POOH BEAR! Julia has never really been interested in watching TV (probably a good thing), except for the occasional football game, but she's lately become enamored with one particular Pooh movie ("Blustery Day"). She's not interested in any of our other Pooh movies, but she sure loves this one. Watching it is a big, rare treat (usually reserved for when Mommy needs to be uninterrupted for half an hour). She can now identify pictures of the main characters and bounces whenever we talk about Tigger. DETAILS! For awhile now, Julia has had a pretty regular habit of picking up tiny specks of nondescript things off the floor and giving them to us. She's now also become obsessed with "pills"... whether they're on her clothes, Baby's face, etc. I will frequently go into her room in the morning and find her picking at the pill on the knees of her jammies. Yes, a little OCD... not that she could have gotten that tendency from either one of her parents!

Well, if you've made it to the end of this post, congratulations! Just remember that it was two months of updates! :-) Many of the things I've mentioned are in photo form in the recent albums I've posted. Love you all!

19 Month Photos

Christmas Pictures