Singer

Lilly loves singing. Her favorite places to sing are the car or in bed. She has quite a repertoire - thanks to Sandy the music teacher at school. Oh yes, and she loves dress up especially with mom's heals.

Christmas.. .

This Christmas Lilly began to understand the magic. If you ask her what Santa says, she will say "Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas!" She knows that Santa brings toys, and loved the presents. Thanks to her Nannas and Aunt Judy she knows that Christmas is "Jesus Birthday". We did the usual Christmas Eve in Yakima and Christmas Day in Seattle.

Santa brought Lilly a grocery cart full of food!

Christmas celebrations with the grandparents

This past week- Lilly met Santa Clause. First with her cousins, Emma and Lucy. She loved the idea, but when it came time she screamed even with her cousins right by her side. It made a great picture (which we do not have electronically).

This we headed to the Yacht Club - Oh Lilly loved Mrs. Clause. She even called her Nanna Clause.

This is the closest we could get to Santa. Mom and Dad had to be in-between.

We had a great time with our grandparents!

St. Nick

We had the chance to visit with St. Nick again this year. Mr. Lewis is a very good friend of Nanna and Grandpa Einstein's. Lilly is still trying to figure out what to think about Santa Clause and St. Nick. She does not cry just sits in shock. Her new favorite song is "Jingle Bells" and how fascinated we are by the Christmas lights.

Kauai . . . oh how we miss it!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Nana and Grandpa invited the Einstein Clan to join them at their thier timeshare. It was the perfect time of year to get away to the sun and the surf.

The Einstein clan- but we missed Will, Brooke, Emma and Lucy!

Nanna had a great time with her grandkids! And we appreciated all her help watching them.

Lilly loved the giraffe- she even sat in the giraffe in the condo! "Swimming pool please!"

Lilly's Favorite part other than "swimming with the whales" was watching the sunsets and counting the stars! A gal who loves nature .. . but how could you not love these sunsets.

Daddy's Birthday

This year we had many celebrations for ChrisO- The best part of these celebrations is that Lilly now sings "Happy Birthday to you. . ." She thinks that every day is Daddy's birthday. She has also learned about Birthday cake and ice cream.

3.5 hrs in the rain for a H1N1shot

We waited 3.5 hrs in the pouring rain for the H1N1 shot. (ChrisO took Lilly away for some of it, while I waited in line). Don't worry Lilly your health is worth every minute of it especially after this virus knocked ChrisO out for 2 weeks. But the exciting part was that the entire family was interviewed by the local news station about the wait!

more singing

Lilly will not stop singing. We sing in the car - since Mommy does not have a good stereo and she sings at school. The teachers write down the words because we don't know all the songs. The only problem is that we don't know the toons. Luckily, Lilly is learning them so quickly.

Sing-a-long

Thjs is too cute!

Lilly The Lion

We finally had the magic touch and got Lilly to wear her lion costume on Halloween night. She ran around like a wild child for a good half hour, and even gave some good roars to the audience. We ended up having a very relaxing weekend at Whidbey Island with Kate & Will and Melissa & Todd, who were visiting from Cleveland. The previous weekend we toured a pumpkin patch in Yakima, as we got to visit Nana O and Papa, as well as Uncle Dave, Aunt Kadie, Cece & Jack.

FIrst view of halloween

Lilly's school - the Mount does a parade. She refused to wear the lion costume. Luckily, I got the body on and she was just fine. I think being around other kids dressed up helped. We will post more later. . . .

He other buddies are Stella and Anastasia.

Playtime

As the days are getting shorter and colder, we're figuring out how and where to have playtime. We just joined the Childrens' Museum at Seattle Center and Lilly had a blast. The Metro bus was a favorite (much to Mommy's delight!), and of course the Sesame Street exhibit was a hit (Lilly loves Elmo and Ernie). We still frequent the park quite a bit, as it is so great to live a block from an elementary school; Lilly invited Lucas over a play date this past weekend.

Our little gal

Since this is Lilly's baby journal - I had to document tonight's bed time. Lilly just loves her bed much like her mommy loves her bed and night night. First, she insists on a "bubble bath" - that was thanks to Uncle Matt because Lilly was not enjoying bath time. Matt recommended bubbles! Now we can't do it without bubbles. Then pjs, books and brush teeth. Every night, she comes running to the one doing the dishes - tonight it was me to give her bed time hug! Then she goes back and forth giving us hugs - she is doing such a good job sharing her loves! But tonight she said "Love u" as she was walking to bed. No tears, no complaints, she jumps in bed and snuggles with her "blanky" from Aunt Brooke! She just loves her bed- thank goodness.

Fall day at the beach

It was the most beautiful fall day - we decided to go down to the beach to try our new camera lens. Sometimes we forget how lucky we are to have the beach one mile down the hill!

Year and Half - where has the time gone?

Today - Lilly is 18 months we cannot believe it! Where has the time gone. . . to think last year we were struggling with going back to work and starting day care. Now, we saying "Lilly use your words" as she waddles around the room frustrated. Times have changed - she definitely has opinions!


A few of the favorite things Lilly does:

1. We find her reading books in her room to her self - quite often she is making sense "brown bear, red bird, green frog" and "Moo, Baa, Lala - No no". She has quite a memory.

2. When she tells us the obscure animals - penguin, armadillo, hyena, peacock, etc.

3. When she runs back and forth between her mama and dada - giving hugs and kisses. We do this almost every night for a few minutes.

4. When she goes down to bed without a tear- she love night, night.

5. When she sucks her thumb and twrils her hair (she will be doing this till 13!)

6. When out of the blue - she points out planes. She can hear them from anywhere.

7. When she arrives at school, and yell her friend's names. "Sasha, Na na, Teo"


Oh every day it is something. . . we are loving it (except for the struggle with separation anxiety)

Potty

We had to document Lilly's first potty experience, (since this is her baby book!). The wonderful thing about school is that I learn what the other parents are doing - and it was time to buy the potty! It came via Amazon - our savior because we cannot stand shopping especially at Babies R US. Lilly played with it in the living room. When we moved it to the bathroom, she insisted it stay in the living room - she carried it across the house.

Later that night, she tried it out for the first time. And much to our surprise she peed! We are trying not to make a big deal of it. And by no means are we potty training - rather introducing the concept. Pictures to come. . . .

August Fun

With September staring to bring in the rain & chill, we felt we needed to post what an awesome August we had in Seattle, and how much fun, as well as growth, Lilly had! To name a few, Lilly made great strides in acclimating to water- we got to take her swimming several times and she even let us dunk her! She also enjoys her park time, especially the swing, got to go to two concerts at the Woodland Park Zoo (Son Volt, Cowboy Junkies, and Mofro), and also learned a few things about gardening with her Mom, as well as a trip to a working farm. She also spent a wonderful weekend with the O'Claires at Discovery Bay, and graduated from the "baby room" at Mount St. Vincent! Lilly continues to work on her walking and talking, as her Dada's new favorite word is "Elpadant" for Elephant- just like he used to say it when he was Lilly's age (according to Nana O).

17 months - videos

We are having such a good time with Lilly - and finally got a chance to upload some videos! She is so active - trying on shoes, learning to dress her self, pushing her baby around, etc. Her opinions are really coming out "no no purple shoes mama!" What she has an opinion on her shoe color- or she likes to be in charge!

Some fun summer videos.

our friend caleb

we had a chance to hang out with some of Mommy"s friends from high school at Devon's wedding. Little Caleb flew all the way across the country with his mom - Megan! He is such an easy going sweet boy!