Merry Christmas! We are looking forward to this Christmas – the joy of Emily opening gifts and hugging on Julia.

A few funny stories from Christmas Eve.

I’m not sure what is sweeter than this display of love. I had put Julia on the couch, and Emily had proceeded to climb up to play with her. Hugging and kissing is one of her favorite games to play with her sister. After hugging her she got a blanket, laid down next to Julia, and covered the two of them up with the blanket. I guess she wanted to play night-night with Julia.

We needed to move some leaves in our yard, so Emily and I spend a couple of hours outside accomplishing the task while Robby had baby duty. Emily had some toy rakes to help me with, but she liked to use Mommy’s rake. Lucky for me, she didn’t enjoy wrangling the awkward adult rake for long and went to play with other things. More leaves have fallen so I will put her to work again soon.

I decorated for Christmas in stages because of sickness in our house. One evening I brought out the fireplace decorations. Emily was very curious about the decorations and inspected each one. She was very taken with the snowman and brought her blankets over to him. She proceeded to lay down next to him to hang out. It was so funny! She talked/babbled a lot when I explained the birdhouse decoration. I wondered if she wanted to know where the bird was that was going to live in the house. The perch was her favorite part of that decoration.

We took the girls to see a local outdoor train display after church on Sunday. The collection included a number of trains depicting different eras of East Tennessee train history and some actual train equipment including the crossing sign and pump car. There was a train hauling lumber to a mill, one hauling coal from a mine, a Southern engine pulling passenger cars, a CSX engine pulling container cars, a Chessie train, a UT Volunteer train, a marine life transport train, and I’m sure some others that I can’t remember.

The day was cool and we were all bundled up. The train exhibit was inside of a tent so it was a lot more comfortable inside. Emily enjoyed her freedom while exploring around the equipment and train set. She wasn’t very interested in posing for photos, so Mommy had to settle with ‘action’ photos. Emily was very tempted to touch the trains as they ran by us, but she resisted.

Julia enjoyed the activity from the front pack that Daddy wore. Daddy tucked her tiny feet into his coat to help keep her warm. At this point she likes to lay her face up against the person carrying her and go to sleep. I can’t imagine anything sweeter. This is how she spent the whole event.

After exploring the trains and equipment we took a cold stroll in the gardens. Emily followed Daddy for a while, but then decided that we needed to take a different trail. After that she picked the paths.

We were happy to warm up in the car on our way home as Emily took her afternoon nap in the car with Julia. We are hoping that this display will become a yearly tradition so that we can pass on Mommy and Grandpa’s love of trains on to our girls.

I thought that it would be fun to make a list of all the words that Emily has been using. I made the list at the beginning of her 22nd month, while she has added more words since then I am going to keep the list as it was at that point. Emily has a lot to say, but a lot of it comes out as babble. Her words consist of the beginning of the word and if lucky two consonants. The back half of words, additional syllables, and ending consonants are usually dropped completely. Of the babble that Mommy can translate these are the words she is saying:

mama, da (daddy), sister, julia, hi, hey, bye-bye, night-night, eat (will also sign), thank you, please (will also sign), yes, yeah, no, on, off, up, down (will also sign), nana (banana), lid, knock-knock, pee-pee (will also sign by patting diaper), milk (will also sign), juice (will also sign), phone, teeth, hot, cold, purple, pink, kitty, doggie, k / ok, shoe, help, backpack, map