My funny girl

Our little girl is becoming quite a comedian, I tell you. It's really great to see her sense of humor developing. She constantly cracks us up, and at the end of the day, we can't remember all her funny sayings to write them down.

Just the other day, as I was washing dishes, Sasha calls out to me "mama, you know what?" So I reply "What?" and she ever so sweetly says "I love you, mama". My heart just melts! Of course, she's learned to use the "I love you sooo much" when she is about to get in trouble for something, but you just can't resist it (trust me, I've tried!)

She is also ridiculously sweet and caring with her baby dolls (and her favorite Teddy, whose name is actually Teddy): always feeding them, bathing them, putting them down for a nap. When they "cry", she consoles them and rocks them. She lets me hold them sometimes too, cautioning me to hold their heads extra carefully. I hope this lasts till when her baby brother gets here (and at least until he starts stealing her toys, at which point all bets are off anyway ;))

 

Oh yeah, baby brother's carseat arrived last week and I'm so happy we have someone to test drive it for him!!

And the charger for my DSLR also came, so yay for decent quality, non-grainy photos!!

Pre-holiday fun

We went to a "holiday circus" held in a local theater near my parents' house. It was a blast - Sasha was completely mesmerized by the contortionists - she couldn't take her eyes of them! And then last act was the cutest little puppies doing funny tricks, so that got a huge smile out of my girl.

We then went over to my grandma's by way of some Christmas lights:

 And then we made a gingerbread house (which looked better than it tasted to be honest, but that may be because we made it too far in advance.... maybe)

Oh, and this is us at the Rockefeller Center a couple of weeks ago when my good friend was visiting from London:

Baby milestones

Itty bitty baby milestone: I am now officially in the third trimester! You know what that means? That means I have about 3 more months to go, ahhhh! Slightly nervous, but not in full-out freaking out mode, which is good, considering how much of a worrier I generally am. We have most of the big things, some clothes for the kiddo, and ordered the carseat the other day. And we even have some diapers, so I feel pretty good about it. 

Kiddo was in the 90th percentile, as of my last ultrasound a few weeks ago, so still measuring big (although they're mostly worried about him measuring small, which clearly isn't an issue with my kids!) Still no name, which is really bothering me, but I'm determined to go to the hospital with a name picked out, we'll see  how that plan works out for us...

And in the big kid news: we had an appointment with Sasha's new pediatrician and she's a sweetheart, so yay! Sasha really liked her and was a chatterbox (and she's usually pretty shy around strangers). Big girl is now 30lbs and 37" tall (25th percentile for both) and everything looked perfect. 

We found a pre-school for her which we really like and she's starting in January. She'll be going 3 days a week till at least July or August, and then start full-time in September. I'm really looking forward to her getting some new friends (that are real and her own age!)

Oh, and I broke the charger for my DSLR, so while I'm waiting for a replacement to arrive from Amazon, I'm saving the battery in my camera and using our old point and shoot (basically, I'm hoping the batteries last till New Year's Eve, in case the charger doesn't get here before then)

And speaking of New Year's Eve - we're hosting it this year, ick! We'll have a bunch of family over here, which will be fun, but it's only a week away and I'm busy planning and preparing.

Happy Hanukah!

Today, we celebrated the Festival of Lights with delicious latkes (the yummiest greasy stuff there is out there!), lighting the menorah, and enjoying our kid's face light up when she opened her presents (we don't go crazy, so she got a Toby train for her collection and a couple of cars, which she was so excited about!)

Holiday crafts and cookies

This time of year, I especially love making super obviously holidays-y crafts and baking cookies with my girl. I'm really tempted to venture out to our local Michael's for more crafts, but I might not get a chance to before the end of year, we'll see.
Today, we even got to make cookies with Sasha's cousin Emily (granted the girls got tired after 20 minutes, and us mamas had to finish making the cookies, but they had such a blast!)

Oh, and apparently, we need to buy this car-loving, Thomas-the-train-playing girly girl a tiara!

Feeling the holiday spirit

So a few weeks ago, if you'd asked me if I was excited for the holidays, I'd have honestly told you that no, I wasn't quite feeling it yet. This happens every year more or less, but this year with the move and all the insanity that comes with it, it was even harder. Presents were not purchased, some weren't even finalized, the tree wasn't up, the decorations were somewhere in boxes, in our garage. But last weekend, it happened: the holiday spirit has landed on our doorstep and took over our house! And it all started with a walk across the street to buy the tree:

 

Oh, the kiddo picked out this skirt all by herself, telling me "It's pretty good!" which we assumed to mean "It's pretty"

Papa made us some ahh-mazing cocoa (which may or may not explain Sasha's crazy dancing and jumping around that night...)

And yes, Sasha and I are wearing matching headbands, which was totally accidental, but made my little girl very very happy!

Then I started pulling out holiday crafts (we now have a sparkly sand art menorah and a foam tree on our mantelpiece), but I'll post about that separately. Tonight, we're making cookies, and next week it's latke time (and possibly some more cookies, hehehe) The presents are almost all purchased/ordered (though I tend to leave the wrapping til the last minute) And while the outside of our house still doesn't look like it, if you ask me today, I'd definitely tell you that yes, I'm indeed feeling the spirit of the holidays!

Funny English

Caught Sasha "helping" papa put together (yet another) shelf and attempting to speak English. Z and I were staring at each other, saying "Where did she get all this from?!" I'm starting to think we've underestimated this kid.
Oh, and this was today's English lesson: