Little Crawler

 A few days after hitting eight months, Mary started crawling. Now she is a girl on the go.

This, of course, led to a flurry of baby proofing. We left some carefully chosen items on the lower shelves for Mary to discover. The box of water bottles is one of her favorites.

 With crawling comes a new sense of independence. Mary enjoys choosing what she's interested in at the moment and spending more time on her own, although she still wants to be close enough to see one of us.

 She's so adorable crawling around the house.

Eight Months

Mary is eight months now!

 She is getting ever closer to crawling and spends time on her hands and knees, but is more interested in sitting than crawling.  

 She gets around surprisingly well by sitting up, then leaning forward in the direction she wants to go and laying down to stretch for things.  

She is working on her third tooth, which is taking its sweet time coming in.

Mary loves splashing in the bath and playing games with Daddy.  

She likes interacting with people in a sort of conversation of sounds that goes back and forth.  

 She continues to be fascinated by her hands.

 She added "dadada" to "mamama" and "bababa."

  

 She is starting to pull up to her knees.

  

Our little girl is sweet, silly, and delightfully fun.

Kicking Off the New Year

After the excitement of Christmas, we settled in for some good visiting during the rest of the week with my family.

On Friday we had our traditional adventure with the nieces and nephews to get hot chocolate. 

We spent that afternoon with the Nickells and enjoyed a walk to the grocery store among other things before meeting up with Tyler and Christina in Tulare.

There were a number of other times for relaxing and hanging out together before we finished with a bang at our New Year's Eve party.

Heather set up a photo booth, which was thoroughly enjoyed.

We also had plenty of snacks, puzzles, games, and video games to keep us going until midnight and the new year.

The next morning we enjoyed cinnamon rolls for breakfast, plus more games, visiting, and a walk. After lunch we said goodbye to everyone and returned to Modesto.

We continued the new year in style the following day by going to Uncle Jimmy's house for eggs benedict. 

That afternoon we took Solace and Amari to frozen yogurt for their Christmas adventure.

Gayle has Christmas bells for each of the grandkids and every year adds a new one in their color to the tree. Mary's are silver, and she enjoyed exploring her first one this year.

Thursday we headed over to Ukiah to spend the night with Bethany and Laura. We had delicious tacos and played games, then had breakfast together the next morning.

Friday we made the trip back home. The drive felt particularly long, but we made it and were happy to be home. The house was cold, so we bundled up until the heaters had time to warm things up.

It was a great visit with everyone in California, but it was also nice to be home. We enjoyed settling back into a more normal routine over the next few days.

First Christmases

We kicked off Mary's first Christmas celebration early by opening gifts as a family on the Thursday before Christmas. Mary was in the midst of some serious teething and wasn't feeling her best, but she seemed to enjoy opening her gifts and playing with them.

The following day we drove down to Modesto.

Amari was happy to share his highchair with his little cousin.

Saturday we attended the Holiday Follies show that Joy was working on. Solace was a little lamb in the Nutcracker part of the show and did a great job. It was Mary's first ballet; she slept through the middle of it, but was interested in the beginning and end.

Dave and Joshua made shortbread cookies the following day, and Mary learned how to fork them with the family pattern.

Christmas day we had brunch, then gathered for gifts and Christmas dinner. Mary got to sit with Grandpa while he read the Christmas story from Luke.

We had a food themed gift exchange this year, and it was fun to see what people did with the theme. Some of the gifts were almost totally edible while others were cooking related.

The next day we headed to Visalia to round out the Christmas celebration with my family. We started with cinnamon rolls for brunch, then had the traditional picture in front of the tree before opening presents. We finished the day with Christmas dinner. There was a lot of good celebrating with all three of our Christmases.