Merry Christmas!

Here are some pictures from Christmas...





Opening her first gift:



Family togetherness:



Random Ajax spot..he helped himself up:



Maya in one of her favorite presents-a hat aunt Tessa knit for her:



With all her loot:

15 Months!

Maya is 15 months today...crazy! She is turning into such a little lady...

Maya's been practicing for Christmas by unwrapping every bar of soap in the house. She's sure to be an expert on Christmas morning!

We've been transitioning to one nap during the day--some days it works better than others. Today was great! She napped for over 2 hours!

Waipo, Tessa and Dziadek are coming down on Saturday for Christmas. We're excited to be celebrating all together..

Here are some pictures from today-a more in depth photo shoot to come :)





Baba always thinks she's hungry...





We capped off our celebration by trying Oreos for the first time...

Healthier...

Last weekend the whole family came down with the stomach flu. It was holy hell. Maya got it first, then me, then Peter, then poor Babcia. Turns out we weren't alone-Maya's friends Owen and Grace got it too, which means their parents got it too. We managed to recover by Monday-ish, but it wasn't pretty.

It's been a busy week of Christmas shopping and decorating and chasing after our little toddler. We also celebrated Babcia's 60th birthday this week, which was nice.

Here are some random pictures from the last week or so:

Purchasing the Christmas tree:





Decorating the tree:



We find another use for the tree skirt:



At the park:





On the phone:



Wearing her wellies:



In the bath:

A few more pictures of the snowbunny...

The cheery looks in these pictures are deceiving..she actually didn't want to play in the snow at all...

And a new favorite indoor picture...

What a difference...

a year makes. This was us last early December for the first snow fall.

This is Maya this year:







There's a little less snow in Arlington than Evanston :)

Who likes chocolate?

Maya!!



Maya decided that she takes after her parents and enjoys a good chocolate covered pretzel-yum!

She's been talking up a storm lately-lots of imitating and real verbalizations. She'll say "Mah" if she wants more and today she said "sah" when I said we had to put her socks on. According to Babcia, she also tells Ajax to sit down..

Anyways, here is a picture of her after the bath:



And a little festive picture of Ajax (otherwise known as Ah-jah):

It's December already!

Christmas season is upon us! It's Peter's favorite time of the year...

We went to NYC last weekend for Dziadek's 60th birthday party. It was fun to be in the city and walk around a lot, even if it was cold! We got to see Amy, Mike and Abby on Saturday afternoon, so that was fun. We even took them to our favorite place...a cupcake bakery one block from the apartment where we were staying. They snapped this picture of us (note the chocolate on Maya's face):



This afternoon we ventured to the Tyson's mall to get Maya's picture with Santa taken (picture to be posted when we can scan it in). I have vowed not to return to the mall, especially on a weekend, until after the Christmas season is over. It was crazy! But Maya did play a little at the playground:





Afterwards, we went to dinner at Cafe Deluxe, where Peter had the best pot pie ever. Maya insisted that he should eat some bread too:



After we got home, Maya pretended to shop on her own:



Maya's new accomplishments:

She dances. The music moves her.

She eats with a fork. Don't get too excited. She can get the fork with food on it into her mouth..she hasn't yet mastered actually spearing the food onto the fork, but we think it's great progress!

She says "no no" when she points to her nose.

She says "he he" when she points to her head.

She'll roar if you roar.

She shakes her head "no" if she doesn't want something.

I'll update soon with the Santa pic and the short story that goes with it...