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Sienna's First Christmas

Merry (belated) Christmas! I hope that you all a great holiday season :) We had so much fun, especially since it was Sienna's first Christmas. We stayed over at my parents' house for Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. My family always opens gifts on Christmas Eve because when I was little we always left Christmas day to visit our family in New York. Santa was aware of our traveling plans, so he always came late at night on the 24th. My parents would wake Dave and me up to tell us that we JUST missed him, but we should come down and see what was under the tree. So we had dinner (Mom made delicious ravoli) and then we put Sienna to bed and we opened our gifts.

In the morning we let Sienna have Christmas morning all to herself. She crawled around playing with her new toys and ripping (and chewing on) wrapping paper. It was great. Daniel's family has a fun tradition where everyone gets new PJ's on Christmas Eve and you wear them that night for Christmas morning. You will see photos with Sienna is wearing her new PJ's from Aunt Janis and Uncle Bob - they fit perfectly! (Thank you Janis & Bob!)

Sienna also wore her "Santa" t-shirt on Christmas Eve to make sure she was on the "good" list :)




It looks like it worked...

Sienna's new fun toys :)

Sienna isn't much of a cuddler, but here is a rare moment - she was hanging out with Uncle Dave for long enough to take a photo. It's a Christmas miracle....


We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and we wish you a Happy New Year!

Smarty Pants

The lighting is AWFUL in this video but I thought it was so cute I decided to post it anyway. Sienna is just starting to respond to particular words and motions and we learned this weekend that she actually knows what you are talking about occasionally. Here you go!

Florida!

We just got back from a "escape-the-cold-weather" vacation with my family to Palm Beach. It was awesome. It was a bit unusual hearing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" on the radio when it was 75 degrees out, but it was fun anyway. We stayed in a nice hotel where Sienna got her own bedroom that happened to be the bathroom. For those of you have babies, you might agree that it is difficult to share a bedroom after they have been sleeping in the nursery. When Sienna sleeps in her Pack 'N Play in our room, she wakes up at every little noise. She hears something (we move, cough, breathe...whatever) so she stands up & realizes her mom & dad are RIGHT THERE. So of course she wants us to pick her up and play with her. It doesn't make for a restful night. So when we saw the bathroom was gigantic, we decided the crib would stay in there and we would use my parents bathroom adjoining room if we needed to after she had gone to bed. And it was a great idea - Sienna slept an hour later in the morning for some reason while we were there! Here are a few pictures from our visit...

The Hotel.....

The Beach....

At breakfast. We forgot her bib so a cloth napkin had to do...

We also had a chance to visit my Mom's Godmother, Joyce. I tried to take a photo of the two but it didn't turn out. At least I got a photo of Joyce's stylin' flamingo. He came with lots of outfits, but obviously he is celebrating Christmas. :)



My favorite... :)

Thanksgiving and Happy Birthday To ME!

The past few weeks have been really great and a little crazy. The weekend right before we left for NY/Mass. for Thanksgiving, Daniel and I got the stomach flu. That was a little tricky - it was the first time we were both sick at the same time trying to take care of the baby. But Sienna didn't get it, so that is good. We did, however, seem to bring our germs to Daniel's family while we were there for Thanksgiving. I felt terrible that everyone got sick (sorry again guys!) but we had a great time there anyway. I did an awful job taking pictures but Jesse and Caroline took approximately 80,000 or so and I will update this page if I see some. :0)

We returned from Thanksgiving two days before my (gasp!) 30th birthday. Daniel out did himself to celebrate with me. He took me to dinner at my new favorite italian restaurant, Il Fornaio. The bread is amazing and we had delicious salad, soup and butternut squash ravoli with brown walnut sauce. It was soo good. On top of my yummy dinner out, Daniel also arranged a suprise-ish party for me. He told me about a month in advance that I had to come up with the best 80's outfit that I could find. That is all I knew. So I followed his instructions and we ended up at our friends Rob, Ladson & Slater's house and when I walked in I was surprised with a bunch of my favorite people - all wearing ridiculous awesome outfits. For example...

Daniel knows I really love celebrating birthdays (especially MINE!!!) so he really made my 30th special. Thank you, Super-Husband! :)

I know, I'm Slacking...

I was chastised by my mother via email this week with the complaint that I need to update my blog because she and "other family members" need a baby photo fix. I admit - I have been slacking, so I suppose the reprimand was justified.

On Nov. 4th we took Sienna with us to the polls to vote and she even received a "I voted" sticker even though she is not quite old enough to participate. It was a strange experience...I put Sienna in the Bjorn so I would have my hands free, but when we got to our voting location, the woman told me that Sienna couldn't go in the booth with me. She was willing, however, to hold her while I voted. Daniel was there so I passed her to him, but when I mentioned this story to my Dad later, he said that he helped at his voting location and he said there were no rules against bringing kids in the voting booth. So, we concluded that the lady just wanted to hold Sienna just for fun...? I don't mind if it is a rule, but if you are making up stories just to hold someone's baby...well that's just creepy. ANYWAY, here are a few pictures sporting her "I voted" sticker.


Apparently it was a emotional day for her - she ate contently, waved happily, and sobbed sadly all within 5 minutes. It is hard to be a girl. After she was done having her emotional rollercoaster, we went to Reston Town Center for free ice cream for voters :) It was delicious.

Then last week we met our friends Lisa and baby Emma at the mall so the girls could crawl around the play area. Since both girls have mastered the crawling thing, they love pulling up to stand and this play area gave them a great chance to practice. Emma liked to play in a little tunnel under a big tree and she even went down the slide by herself! Sienna, on the other hand spend most of the time crawling away from me. I thought she might want to play with her Mom, but nope! She was up and running on her own. My mom says I was the same way when I was little - I guess what goes around comes around...

Here is a (blurry) picture of Lisa and Emma...

Emma's "Tree Tunnel"...

We tried to take a picture of the girls together, but they fell over. Oops.