Today is Elizabeth’s 16 month birthday, so I thought I would give you an update. 

21 lbs. 11 oz.  and 30″ tall and has 9 teeth.   Most of these things Elizabeth has been able to do for quite some time, but I know the family in England is interested:  She can say ‘dad’, ‘mama’, ‘nanny’, ‘nana’, ‘dog’, ‘what’s that’, ‘ba-ba’, ‘ga-ga’, and ‘uh-oh’.   Elizabeth crawls, walks, claps her hands, and clicks her tongue.  She can understand anything we say and can point to what we tell her.  For example, eyes, nose, ears, hair, mouth, teeth, toes, book, dog, milk, banana, etc.   When Paul asks Elizabeth if she wants to sing ‘Wheels on the Bus’, she brings him the book.  If you ask her to bring you the dog book, or the flashlight, she’ll go get it and bring it to you.  (Very clever girl)

Tonight, I had Elizabeth on the kitchen counter to help me make dinner.  She was sitting right by the cupboard that houses the flour, sugar, etc.  Elizabeth opened the cupboard, reached in and got one tea bag, and then placed it in Paul’s dirty mug, which was sitting right next to her, waiting to be washed.

Favorite things:  rubber duckies in the bathtub; reading books; doggies; dancing to 60’s music; cheerios; chocolate; “talking” on the phone to nanny; helping mommy bake cake.    Things she hates:  being told off; teething; staying up past bedtime; loud noises.

Since we already has our traditional family gathering, our Christmas day was uneventful — except that Elizabeth sprouted another molar!  Her fourth molar is on its way and she’s very unhappy about it all. 

For breakfast, we drove around until we found IHOP open.  Elizabeth and I really liked our blueberry pancakes.  We lounged around the house and did some small chores and then went to the Rickshaw for chinese dinner, which Elizabeth also loved.   She likes egg drop soup, rice and bits of chicken.

This is the year that my entire family spends Christmas day at their respective in-laws, so we celebrated a bit early this year. 

David and his family came down from Denver and met at our house last night.   We ordered a bunch of pizza’s to go with our chips & sodas and Cynthia and I made some desserts.   So we had David, Tammy, David Jr., Mindy, Jessie, Cynthia, Eric, Emily, Daniel, Jessica, Ryan, Sage, Dalton, my mom, my dad, Cameron, Elizabeth, Paul and myself.  It was quite a housefull!  The kids all went downstairs to play while all the ‘grown ups’ stayed upstairs and talked.    We had a great time.

Our shy little daughter loved the party, which was odd.  She’s usually clinging onto our leg and burying her head, but she was walking around and enjoying the party as much as the rest of us. 

Jessica (David’s daughter) decided to stay the night at our house instead of with everyone else at Daniel’s.  We took the extra chips downstairs and watched a movie.  Elizabeth loved being with Jessica.   She’s the perfect house guest.

Today was our Christmas.  The same group all converged on Daniel’s house this time.  Jessica made a turkey, stuffing, frog eye salad, and dinner rolls and the rest of us brought stuff to balance out the dinner.   We also sat around and opened presents to each other. 

After dinner & a visit, David went up to Glendale and will be leaving there early on Christmas morning.  It was really good to see them again. 

After we got home from Daniel’s house, we finished off our Christmas since Cameron was going to be gone on Christmas day also.  We started by opening presents to each other and then we opened presents from England.  Some of the tags fell off of the UK packages, and on the others, Elizabeth ripped the paper so fast that we didn’t have time to see what was from who.   Thank you everyone for the presents — everything was lovely.  I’ll have some pictures of Elizabeth & Cameron in their new clothes soon.

Here is a movie of all the kids playing in our curtains.  From the left, it’s Sage, Ryan, then Dalton.  Then Emily (the blonde) and Elizabeth (the cutest one) join in.  Jessica came over to try and get the kids to not tear down the curtains.

[kathy]8dPWef9uvm0[/kathy]

Today was snowing really badly, so instead of a nice romantic dinner with just the three of us, I picked up some chinese on the way home from work and we sat in our nice, warm house and looked lovingly into each others’ eyes.

This is a video Paul took of Elizabeth walking.  She started walking on December 6.  This is Elizabeth just one week later.

[kathy]No5vxwWSudk[/kathy]

Elizabeth has another tooth on the way and it’s a good thing – Her bottom two teeth were getting lonely.  The one top molar still isn’t 100% in yet, and this bottom tooth is just showing white under the gumline.   Poor Elizabeth is in so much pain, but still manages to be cute & smiley. 

On Thursday, Elizabeth will be joining us at my office Christmas Party at Alan’s house.  This should be entertaining.  Of course, all the old ladies will cuddle and kiss on her, but what about the rest of the time?  Now that she can walk, she’ll be going from one disaster to the next.  I’m nervous.   Tomorrow she gets to help mommy make pies for the party.

After putting up our new 4′ Christmas Tree, I was leaning against the chair and looking at what else needed to be done.  Paul was sitting on the couch and Elizabeth was playing by the gate at the top of the stairs.   Paul and I were talking and suddenly, Elizabeth stands up and walks from where she was, past me and over to the dog.  That’s at least 20 steps.  Paul & I stare at each other in amazement. 

Over the course of the rest of the day, Elizabeth has been walking like that all the time.  It’s like she just woke up this morning and decided this was the day that she was going to let us in on her little secret — that she has been walking for months, but crawling just so we don’t get too excited.

This morning we woke up to frost on the ground, but not on the cars.   The temperature is in the mid 30’s at night and the upper 50’s during the day.  It’s so cold that Paul even started wearing socks!!   During the day, Paul manages to rake up some leaves, but not for too long because it’s just too chilly to keep Elizabeth out there.  Buster does love playing in the leaves, though, and that makes Elizabeth giggle like crazy.  Our tree is just over 1/2 way done shedding leaves.

In Paul’s office, we have some child gates arranged to make about a 5′ x 5′ play yard.  In that yard, Elizabeth has a rubbermaid type bucket with her toys in it. 

Yesterday, Paul said she was in there playing and then he heard giggling.  He turned around to see that Elizabeth had flipped the bucket over, had climbed on top, and had one leg over the side of her fence.

Cameron and Elizabeth have a new came called “Cameron says”.  It goes like this….  Cameron puts his hands over his ears – Elizabeth puts her hands over her ears.  Then Cameron points at Elizabeth — She points back at Cameron.  This goes on & on for a long time, with Elizabeth giggling the entire time.   It’s really cute to watch. 

Paul & I have decided (a bit late) to teach Elizabeth some sign language.  Hopefully this will ease some of her frustration when she can’t tell us what she wants.  Elizabeth has been super cranky again.  One of her molars is completely in now, but the other isn’t quite finished.  Her bite is so painful that I’m not sure if I want to see if she has any more teeth coming in yet.