8 months, Christmas, 8.5 months, New Years, whew!

Boy, have I got a lot to catch up on!! Well, our little girl is growing like a weed. We witnessed, what we are calling her first step, on December 13. She just stood up, and took a step, stayed standing, then in trying to take her next step she tumbled. The day after Christmas was when she took 3-4 steps at a time, consistently. Her favorite thing seems to be bending down to pick an object up, standing up, chewing on it, then dropping it so she can begin the process all over again.

She has become quite an adventurous eater! Her new foods are pasta sauces with small star pasta shapes. She really enjoys sweet pasta sauces flavored with basil, and is not a fan of heavy duty cheese sauces (surprisingly enough). Notice the star on her face?

Yes, we did let her open her own Christmas packages. Her "technique" consisted of any of the following: tearing the bow off and then attempting to tear the bow apart, untying the ribbon by pulling HARD, climbing on her package of all of the packages under the tree (she's an equal opportunist), chewing and making the corner extremely soggy, grabbing and ripping any exposed edge of paper, standing on the package to get better leverage to rip, explore, and pull bows off.

Unfortunately in VA we didn't have a white Christmas, but it was white back home! We tested Juliana out in my old snow suit. Poor thing, it was like Ralphie from a Christmas Story. She couldn't sit, just laid. But she did enjoy being outside. We also have a precious video of her eating snow. She loved it!

And now, just some cute pictures of our growing girl!

We spent the New Year getting the kitchen ready for our little explorer trying to put things on the lower shelves that she could reach and enjoy pulling off and chewing on.

She got all 4 teeth on the top in the 4-5 days around Christmas, so the toothbrush in her stocking on Christmas was highly appropriate!