Merry Christmas to All

Our kids were completely spoiled this year -- and not because they got too many presents from their grandparents, which they did. No, they were treated to a White Christmas thanks to last weekend's big snow. I grew up here, and I think the best we did was one Christmas with a light dusting of snow in 20 years.

For all of the family off celebrating elsewhere this year, here's a rather long video of our Christmas. We missed you all.

(Also, two new albums of pics linked here, with two samples below).

Chloe wearing one of Sophia's hairbands. You know, to keep the hair out of her face.

Sophia playing in the snow.

Going for a twirl in a new dress

Nonna & Opa visited for a week over Thanksgiving. As always, they came bearing gifts, this time including a lovely dress for Sophia. Here, Sophia dons the dress and show us a twirl.

Also, linked here are some more pics catching up from the fall.

A few teasers from the new picasa album:

Sophia making banana bread for her preschool class.

And Chloe's hair finally starting to come in.

Indian Summer

It's still summer, no? Catching up on some pics from August and September here. Keep coming back for more updates over the next week. A preview:

Chloe's first birthday.

Sophia likes to climb into Chloe's crib in the morning. And, I guess, start changing her.

Inspired

Inspired by Amit's visit a few weeks back -- in particular, inspired by the great pics he took (what's new?) -- we just bought ourselves a real camera. Still figuring out how to use it, but here are a couple pics from the first few minutes playing around with it.

It was great seeing Amit, Gillian and especially Sonali. She's so cute!

Chloe turned 15 months old yesterday.

Sophia is almost 3 and a half.

They are much better kids than their parents are bloggers.

Turning the corner

In the past few days, Chloe has turned the corner from walking two to four steps and falling down, to walking across the room, picking something up and carrying it back across the room. Pretty amazing leap.

Here she was on Thursday:

On Friday she turned one.

Here she is this morning (Sunday). Warning, this video is a bit on the long side.

Mid Summer

New pics posted here. These catch us up from Sophia's 3rd birthday through our trip to Maine at the end of July.

A few pics from Maine:

Still playing catch up

A few pics from early June linked here.

Some highlights:

A couple of months ago, Sophia started climbing into Chloe's crib in the mornings. Chloe seems to mostly tolerate this.

Sophia on her 3rd birthday. The guitar was one of her presents.

More catching up

Some new pics posted on Picasa (link on the right), from April and May.

A teaser or two...

Sophia Chloe (yikes, that mistake is probably a full year of therapy later in poor Chloe's life) in early April, around 7 months old:


Sophia in late May, not quite 3 yrs old:


Higher!!


Awwww:

Catching up

We have a lot of catching up to do. At right is a link to Picasa, where we've uploaded new pics from Jan - March, including our trip to Sicily for Silvia and Adam's wedding. Below are a couple of those pics, plus a quick video from this afternoon in our backyard.

Big news today, which we haven't captured yet on video or in pictures: Chloe stood up by herself! 10 1/2 months old. Exciting times.

Oh, and I upgraded the video in the Dancing post below this one...

Dancing

Computer is finally fixed, so we should be back to posting some videos here and pics on Picasa soon enough. Here are the girls dancing while I was cooking dinner tonight.

Kids under the table

From just a few moments ago, before nap time. We now tell Sophia that it's just "quiet time" because she's opposed to the concept of naps, even though she occasionally drifts off during quiet time.

Flip Video HD

I'm a terrible blogger, but I've got all kinds of excuses, including having poured an entire glass of water right into the back of our Mac, where it turns out to be wide open (for ventilation, but apparently not intended for water cooling). The Mac is fixed -- more or less replaced in fact -- and in the meantime, my college friend Joe Ross sent us the incredibly cool Flip Video camera that his company makes. It is super cool. Here are the first couple of videos we've taken. Sorry 'bout the shaky-cam in the 2d video. That's entirely my fault (holding it at a tough angle) and not at all the camera's.

The Mac is fixed but not working 100% properly yet. When it's back to 100% later this week, I promise to do some video catching up from the past few months.

This was a few weeks ago. Valeria says, "Don't post this one. She's a much better splasher now!" Well, Valeria, time for you to learn to wash and hold the kid with one hand, and use the flip video with the other. In the meantime...



This one's from today, when my folks came over for a visit and brought some new "blocks."

Skiing on her own - Vail

On several days during our trip to Vail, I took Sophia out for 3 or 4 ski runs, mostly so she could start to get the feel for it. On this, the third such day, I decided to let go on the run prior to this video, to see what happened. Sophia "skied" down about 40 yards until I stopped her at the bottom. It was pretty amazing.

This is the subsequent run, where I again let her go for a bit on her own at the very end. You can tell at the end of the video that she's still not totally sold on skiing (but does like looking at pictures and videos of herself). However, when our plane took off from Denver several days later, she turned to me and said, "I want to go skiing again!" And she's asked about a half dozen times since, including this morning when she announced that she's going skiing tomorrow. Hope she has fun with whoever is taking her.

We start out very small in this video, but eventually you can make us out.

Sledding in Vail

Posting like crazy today! There's another video below this post, from Christmas.

Also, two new albums posted on picasa, linked at the right.

This was sledding on our 2d day at Vail, in late December. Opa (Herman) gave a push at the top to get them started.

Christmas: NanNan's morning routine

Sophia is obsessed with NanNan (Nancy). First words out of her mouth when she wakes up in the morning? "What's NanNan doing?" If told NanNan is still sleeping, Sophia says, "I go check."

Sophia usually follows NanNan around throughout her pre-work morning routine. For Christmas, Santa brought Sophia all the stuff she needs to recreate NanNan's routine. This was Christmas at the VB's.