We are proud to announce the addition of two new teeth to Julia’s mouth. They have been taking their own sweet time, but finally we have numbers four and five. She now has three on the bottom and two on the top. Humorously, she had the third on the bottom come in while she only had one on the top. Then, in the next couple of days the second top tooth came in to complete the set of four front teeth. While you can’t see all of her teeth yet in photos, her smile is definitely changing with the addition of teeth. No more toothless grins for us.

This is Julia’s second Christmas coming up and she is not a baby any more. Her milestones right now are that she has finally gotten her second tooth and she is quickly improving at standing and walking. Her teething hasn’t passed yet so maybe another tooth soon, but the second tooth that came in was a top tooth directly opposite the first tooth. I guess she wanted to be able to crush a cheerio between some teeth and hurried that one out.

Julia has a lot of control in her standing. She can stand up without holding onto furniture if there is something small to push off from. She likes to stand and swing her shoulders back and forth and giggle. She can squat down and stand back up too without much support. I still love to watch her plop down onto her bottom from a standing position, but that trick’s days are numbered. She can take 3-4 steps in a row to get some place, but if she is walking to me as she gets close she just falls toward me knowing that I will catch her. She knows that crawling is more efficient, so if she can’t get someplace by walking along the furniture, she is more likely just to get down on her knees and crawl.

Swinging is a favorite of both of the girls. Julia’s smile just gets bigger when she is swinging toward you.

Julia is sporting her first tooth, the bottom front-left tooth. I doubled checked to be sure – showing off her teeth to anyone is not a favorite of Julia’s. I guess it was her first birthday gift to herself. She is continuing to work on more teeth. We haven’t let the lack of teeth hold us back on food options though. If she sees real solid food she becomes disinterested in her puree food and likes to sample the grown-up food. Her favorite is Mommy’s bagel.

(17 months) We are happy to announce the introduction of two new teeth in Emily’s mouth. We think that they are the two top molars, but there isn’t very much of it to see at this point. It has been so long since we have seen any new teeth and she has so few we have been hoping that she would get some new ones soon! She was a little fussy this afternoon which is what made me look to see if there had been any changes. One step closer to eating like a big girl!

(10 months) We had a string of bright temperate days after our leaves had started to accumulate in our yard. I decided that it was time for Emily to be introduced to the fun of playing in the leaves. She was so satisfied to just sit in the leaves and touch them. She had found so many treasures to look at, touch, and sometimes taste. These days are such simple days of joy for us! Next year I will rake the leaves into a pile and let her jump into them. I might even join her.