Catching Up...yet again!

Well here we are in another year! Happy New Year everyone. December flew by so quickly, and now I feel like this winter will soon be over...right?

For Christmas, Adam and I decided our gift to each other would be a new camera. Right at that moment, our old camera's batteries died, and we refused to purchase replacements. We also refused to open our camera gift until Christmas. Add to that the 10 past days that both Liora and I have been under the weather, and that leaves us with about a month of undocumented Liora.

But never fear, at least we still had our flip video at the ready!

Here's Liora demonstrating her walking skills early in the month. She loves to play with Zooks and his favorite toy.



Other things to report on Liora's growing personality...

• Her words (in order of appearance): Mama, Dada, Kitty Cat, Dog-Dog, Gi-Gi (for her giraffe lovey). Some new ones: Bye-Bye, Night-Night, Nina, Aneta (her former caregiver at daycare), "get dressed," shoes (sounds like shhh), christmas tree, ok, all done, and the ever present "no" (which is more of a head shake than a word, but she does get the "n" out). I think there are more; I'll add to the list as I remember them.
• Her favorite things to do: walk, walk, walk around the house. Empty things (whether it bandaids from their box, peanuts from a shipping box, or kitchen utensils from her new kitchen--Thank you Auntie Laura and family!) We are glad she can empty her own kitchen cabinets instead of ours, though she still enjoys the tupperware drawer. Climb the stairs. Read books--she is very good at opening books and pretending to read them herself.
• She's just like mommy and daddy: Liora is starting to mimic us and get involved in things around the house. She likes to pick up the phone, put it next to her ear, and say "hhaa" (ooh, another new word: Hi). She helps daddy sweep. She cleaned up a spill with paper towels. She likes to help clean up her room before bathtime by putting her books away (although that often turns into more play, but at least she's trying to get involved).
• Liora has opinions: After doing things my way for a while--and meeting resistance--I finally realized that if I asked her if it was ok, and sometimes provided her with choices, things would go a lot smoother. For instance, when I show her a diaper and say "It's time to change your diaper. Can I put you on the changing table?" She'll be ok with the fact that we are transitioning to diaper time, and the diaper change will go swimmingly. If I don't do that, she will toss and turn and make it very, very difficult! So now, Liora helps pick out her outfit every day, the hat she will wear to school, and her shoes. She helps put the shoes on, and also tries to put on her own shirt (though that doesn't go so well).

The beginning of this video is Liora demonstrating her love for peek-a-boo, and then playing with a cool door board from Aunt Randi and showing how she loves to share. I need to catch on video the times she tries to share with the cats, but haven't done that quite yet.



I'll post some Christmas videos soon! And hopefully by then we'll be up and running with the new camera. Again, happy 2011...and I hope to be more on top of the blogging once again this year (a resolution of sorts).