Julia was a little under the weather and was due a re-weigh so we had a visit to the pediatrician. She just had a bad cold, and thankfully it had not turned into anything like the other colds in the house had. As far as her weight, the doctor was pleased that her weight gain had begun again. She gained almost 2 lbs in three months (now 17 lbs 6 oz) and grown to a length of 28 3/4 inches. Her height percentile has remained around 25%. It doesn’t appear that she is going to outgrow Emily and is remaining just a little smaller than Emily at this age. We will wait and see if she is able to pick up steam and surpass her at some point.

Julia will return for another checkup at 18 months to see how she is doing. We are keeping her diet and milk the same for the time being. It is good to see her continue to thrive and explore around her little world.

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.

Emily’s version of the Gingerbread Man – She was quite proud to sing it for me. She will correct herself soon enough, but I want to remember it forever.

Emily and I had some fun with lunch today and used her sandwich to reinforce the letter we are learning this week. The rod pretzels were broken so that she could also make the letter A, but it was much more fascinating to eat than to play with. She thought it was pretty cool. In addition to our fun lunch we read books and looked for the letter A and attempted to trace the letter with our finger.

Tomorrow’s fun food is going to be pancake shaped letter A’s for breakfast. I have a variety of things to do with her to reinforce the letter of the week and we will see how it goes over the next 26 weeks. If every day could be as fun as today was we will be doing well.

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!