Happy New Year!

Whew! Can't believe that it's 2009! Merely 2 years ago, I was in Berlin and didn't even know that I was pregnant. Last year, we were so sleep deprived that we don't even remember what happened over the holidays. So, here we are in 2009 and Chloe is 15 months old and we get more than 6 hours of sleep in a row (mostly). Had a wonderful holiday with the family and as always as I write on the eve of going back to work, it goes too quickly. It was awesome to have the time off and relax and cook and eat...sadly, all the treats I ate have already caught up to me and I can't fit into any of my work pants! New year's resolution: Work out more, duh. Anyway, it was great to visit with everyone that was in town. Chloe had a great time opening presents although I'm pretty sure that she didn't really know what was going on. She's on the verge of talking. Lots of inflection and "almost" words... like "appo" (apple), "nananana" (banana), "ba ba ba ba" (bottle), "da de" (daddy or sometimes dog), "dis" (this?) ..she actually came and found me in the other room and came in saying, "mama?" not really, but it sounded a lot like it. sometimes it's hard to decipher what it is that she wants...and trust me, she KNOWS what she wants, but struggles to express it sometimes and has little breakdowns. She's fascinated by the fridge and wants you to open it..thinking she's hungry, but then she just wants to play with and touch all the condiments and then won't get out of the way when you figure out she's just messing around! We started working on feeding herself...and you can see the result. She ended up ditching the spoon and just used her hand! Today we tried more solid foods with a little fork and that worked better. She still loves dogs and got a stuffed one from Auntie Kate from Christmas which was a big hit. She can identify many farm animals (thanks to the little farm from Uncle Mike) and she understands quite a bit. Her 15 month check up was earlier this week and she's 25 pounds (75th%)....we had some blood taken to check for allergies and surprisingly, she's not allergic to many of the things that we thought were causing her itchiness. We still think she has a lactose intolerance, but she's not blatently allergic to dairy. It's a relief to know at least...so her diet has started to expand a bit this week and she's not complaining! She had 2 oranges yesterday with lunch and had some eggs for breakfast this morning. Anyway, life goes back to "normal" tomorrow as I return to work and Dave resumes daycare duties. Ho hum. It's been great being home and not thinking about school AT ALL! Oh yeah...so I've opened a shop selling things that I have crocheted. I hope you get a chance to check it out: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6600362

also, i realized that i hadn't uploaded a bunch of photos to kodak gallery in a while. here are 2 albums: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=b2h0app.7cyxes61&x=0&y=-x44sy8&localeid=en_US