Julia is answering questions about her breakfast with a new nod and one of her favorite words ‘More’. We haven’t been able to get her to say ‘more please’ yet, but we are working on it. We also see the ‘No’ head nod a lot more often than the ‘Yes’ nod. She is really pleased to be able to communicate with us though.

Mommy is a train person, Grandpa is a train person, Daddy sure likes to build track, and we are starting early to create little train girls. This year the girls started their Thomas the Train collection. There has been a layed out track everyday since Christmas with engines running around it.

Robby was chomping at the bit to build track layouts with all of the track, but we thought it would be best to wait for Emily to get used to the toy with just the starter set. Emily has enjoyed talking to the engines and quickly wanted to name the engines that didn’t come with names. She hasn’t mastered all of the rules of trains, like she thinks they can make turns and double back at switches. It is really cute.

After a few days of the simple layout Robby has started building larger track layouts that take up almost the whole floor. Amazingly the girls play with it for a while before destroying it and when it is destroyed it is always Julia’s work. Julia has been imitating the rest of us by running the engines around the track some too. This is going to be one fun toy for a while!

Christmas is always a fun, busy day, and it is so easy to put the camera down and forget to pick it back up. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get family photos on Christmas and I never got a photo of Emily looking at my camera. This Christmas I guess Emily was the photographer. These are just two photos of the girls from Christmas day and the joy that they shared that day. It was a good and fun day. May all of our Christmases be so merry!

What happens to the bows after they come off of gifts . . . well, you can decorate your head with them. I’m not sure if Julia put it on her head first or if Emily decorated Julia with it. Julia definitely took the bow off, looked at it, and then put it back on her head. Last Christmas, we had a little baby laying on the floor covered with all the bows that came off the gifts. I guess this year we will have a toddler covered with bows. Fun times!!

We are continuing a tradition from Robby’s childhood of hanging an ornament on the advent wreath each of the days of December. Robby has really enjoyed watching Emily pick out the ornaments remembering back to he and his brothers doing the same thing. It was a lot of fun to do with her and Julia enjoyed looking and touching them. We saved a Santa ornament for Christmas Eve and baby Jesus for Christmas day.

The girls are pretty busy these days and getting them to pose for a photo with anyone let alone a parent is not easy to do. Julia and Emily had been playing in Robby’s lap sweetly and as soon as the camera came out Emily started covering her face and refusing to look at the camera and Julia was upset at Emily’s odd behavior and started to cry. So when the craziness had calmed down and Emily had moved on to play elsewhere I tried again and was much more successful.