Goodbye, 2012

When 2012 began, I was expecting a baby but did not yet know if it was a boy or girl. Sylvia had never been to school; never been away from us for more than a couple hours -- let alone spent a night away from us. Max was applying for jobs, and we had no idea where we would be by the end of the year. 2012 brought Hannah, two job offers, my cousin's baby Cole, and a million changes and milestones for us and our girls.  2013 will be another big one.  We'll be leaving Santa Barbara, our home for our adult lives and for our daughters' whole lives.  We'll be living outside of sunny California for the first time -- first time out of driving distance from our families.  And when I think about how much Hannah and Sylvia are going to grow and change over the next year!  It's more than I can try to comprehend!

Well, my previous posts covered noteworthy occurrences of 2012 through Halloween.  We've been on another whirlwind since then.

For Hannah's first Thanksgiving, we drove down to my uncle's house in Orange County. Hannah was super charming, and Sylvia had a great time - especially playing with her cousin Amelia.

We leapt straight into full holiday mode with Chanukah & Christmas decorations, and Sylvia really got into it all.

Max turned 32, and got the best birthday present: a visit from our friend Aaron, who we hadn't seen in about 2 years.

After his visit, we drove down to San Diego for the last few days of Chanukah. Sylvia had a blast. She sang, danced, and helped make cake; and she wanted to open everyone's presents! She especially loved playing with her cousin Brynn ("Baby Binn").

  

And Hannah was the picture of cuteness. She turned 6 months on the trip. Even though she's a little bigger than Sylvia was on her first Chanukah, she still fit in Sylvia's first Chanukah dress.

On our way north, we went back to Legoland (using the free pass we had after our October trip), and had an excellent time; it was even better the second time!

  

As Sylvia would say, the girls both "conked asleep" for the next few hours in the car. They "conked awake" (also a Sylvia-ism) just in time for us to stop in LA to visit my cousin Michelle, who was a few days past her due date. We dropped off a few things and asked her baby to stop dawdling.

Less than 24 hours later:

 

Thanks to Sylvia being in school most of the day and Max offering to hold down the homestead, I was able to drive down and be there for his birthday.

It was hard to leave him, but it was some consolation that I knew we'd be back a week later for Christmas! We didn't see much of the little tyke. (He was only a week old after all.) But Max & Sylvia got some snuggle time.

As I have done almost every Christmas of my life, we spent Christmas Eve with my dad's family and Christmas Day with my mom's. The girls were gorgeous, and had lots of fun. 

Hannah did an amazing impersonation of a kid on Christmas morning.

 

In the meantime, these girls keep getting bigger and older. Sylvia seems to have gone through a major cognitive transition. She had a period of peak limit-testing and fighting, and then seemed to have some kind of major reorientation and became much more responsive and agreeable. She's still stubborn and likes to push us (sometimes to get something from us; sometimes just for fun), but she's generally very cooperative, helpful, and pleasant. Which is extremely nice for all of us -- she has fewer time-outs and gets what she wants more, and we get to enjoy her company instead of disciplining her constantly. It's especially nice because Hannah -- while still mostly sweet an adorable -- has been having more fussy, difficult times. She's gone through a lot of changes. She's totally competent at rolling in both directions and pushing herself up onto all fours, and she's on the verge of crawling. She can sit for almost indefinitely long periods of times and can hold herself completely upright with stabilization help. She seems to have fairly advanced fine motor skills for her age -- she's quite good at getting her pacifier into her mouth, holding her bottle, and manipulating toys.

 

 

She's recently expanded her dietary repertoire beyond milk. In spite of what these pictures look like, it's actually going really well:

 

On Christmas, she went for her first ride on a swing

and loved it!

At her 6-month checkup, her doctor said she was doing great. She measured in at 90th percentile weight, but only 25th percentile height! We're expecting a growth spurt one of these days...

On New Year's Day, we sent Sylvia to zoo camp. I was nervous about her having some kind of emergency, so I decided to stay close enough to get back quickly. I ended up spending almost the whole time walking around the zoo with Hannah, which was actually really nice. The Santa Barbara zoo may be kinda small, but it is gorgeous. There are lots of big grassy areas to sit, and there are many spots from which you can see the hills or the ocean in the distance. Sylvia had fun, too.

Of course, if yesterday was New Year's, then today must be Kurt's birthday!  Five years old.  How did that happen?

We miss our sweet boy, and can't wait to see him (and his family) again!