Merry Christmas!

Well I hope everyone out there had a wonderful holiday - Channukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, whatever floats your boat. We sure did. We spent the week leading up to Christmas with friends and family who traveled from all over the place to be here: my dad & Karen from Miami, Mommy 2.0 and Ronnie from outside Austin, Pam, Eric & Gunther from Houston, Brian and Jessica from Charlotte, NC and my brother John and Angela from outside of Dallas. And of course Jen and Micah were there as well.

We stayed at a wonderful home in Breckenridge that was comfortable and well appointed. It had a hot tub, a game room and a home theater. It was a fun and relaxing week. We put up a Christmas tree, Roan got lots of quality grandparent and aunt and uncle time, and Arwen taught me how to snoboard!!!

Oh but wait I forgot the most fun of all. Remember the nasty stomach flu that our house, Roan's buddy's house and our nanny's house all came down with? We managed to share our Christmas germs with our out of state visitors. I think in all, 11 people came down with some form of it, from mild to merciless. At least it was over quickly and our vacation was long enough that folks were able to get back on the slopes after recovering. Surprisingly, even the 2nd time it reared its ugly head I managed to escape its wrath.

In Roan news, she slept horribly all last week. It proved too great a temptation sharing a room with Mom and Dad. Either that or she was having a growth spurt. She kept waking up at night wanting to eat. There were two nights in a row that I didn't get any sleep at all. She's also had two new teeth break through the surface, one incisor and one on the bottom, giving her six in all. I suspect it's those teeth that have changed her eating habits. Lately she's not been interested in anything on a spoon. So I'm mostly giving her real food now - she likes broccoli, apple, carrot, squash, tomato, spiral pasta, crackers and toast. She is not interested in cheese, cottage cheese or yogurt in the slightest. It seems like she actually ingested much much more when I was spooning it into her mouth. Now that she's in charge of shoveling food in, most of it seems to end up in her lap or on the floor.

She has been making more word-ish sounds lately. She seems to say "ma ma," "da da," "daw" for dog, and "sss" for shoe with some regularity (although Arwen says I've lost my mind). She gets a thrill out of waving hello/goodby, and I *swear* tonight she waved at me from across the room and said "hi." But then again maybe I really am crazy. In the last week she's also started standing on her own from anywhere between 1-10 seconds. She can stand there even with toys in her hands. And then tonight... she stood for about 5 seconds, took one solid step, and stood for about 5 more. Looks like walking is just around the corner!

Roan must've been a very good girl because Santa brought her all kinds of fun things. She got her very own rocking horse that makes horsie sounds, so now she can be a cowgirl. She also got her first kiddie computer, so she can be a geek like mama and daddy. And she also got some happy music to listen to at playtime and lots and lots of new books to read.

There are a lot of fun pictures from the week, and I'm working on getting them posted, but in the mean time here are a couple I hope you enjoy.