Christmas

In lieu of a "Monday Morning Mia" this week, here's a short medley of what happened this Christmas.

Monday Morning Mia

Happy Chanukkah!
All goes well here. It's still oddly warm for December, but that just means we don't have to worry about snow or ice. In a way, it's not all that bad.
Mia celebrated her first Chanukkah this weekend. The presents so far have been a huge hit. At least, the boxes were.
We built gingerbread houses at our friends' house last night. We didn't get to finish ours, as Mia was exhausted, but we had fun with the construction. After the excitement of the gingerbread houses, Mia slept THROUGH THE NIGHT. She hasn't done that in months. It was a very welcome relief for all of us. Let's hope it's the beginning of a new trend!
Hope you all are well.

Getting cultured

As a brief aside, the new Institute of Contemporary Art open recently on the Boston waterfront, and I just had to drag the kid down to see it. It's the first new museum to be built in Boston in the last 100 years, and I'm happy to report, they got it right. Highly recomend it if you find yourself with time on a weekend.

Happy Chanukkah

I'm sure she likes the paper just as much as the tractor underneath, but for this year at least, we're going to enjoy getting her junk she doesn't want. And if the farm noises freak out the dog, all the better.

Proud Papa

Mia said DaDa today.
Looked him right in the eye, smiled her million-dollar smile, and said, "Da Da!"
A prouder father you never saw.

Final Wednesday

Well this is it for me. Going back to work full time as of next week. It'll be hard enough to give up the sense of having 2 fridays each week, but harder still to only see her at most one hour a day during the week. She's not up long before I have to walk the hound each morning, and doesn't stay up much past the time I get home from work. Just going to have to make the weekends that much more fun.

Monday Morning Mia -- Alarm Clock Catastrophe

Have you seen that Dunkin Donuts Commercial? Where everyone is running late, so they need to stop at Dunkin to get their new French Toast roll up? Well, we had an alarm clock catastrophe here. For the first time since we got Walter, we slept past our alarm. Actually, it didn't go off--in cleaning our room, we must have adjusted the volume. Anyway, we slept until close to 7 am, so we're in a bit of a tizzy around here getting Walter off to the park and Mia ready for babysitting.

Be that as it may, we owe you a MMM, as I neglected to put one up last week.

All is great around here. We're getting into the holiday season. Ben has been buying up gifts--he's very diligent like that. I have been procrastinating, although I have gotten several things for Mia. Our menorah is up from the basement and the wax has been cleaned off, and a wreath has been purchased, although we have nowhere to hang it. Mia has special dresses to wear for the holidays. Photos to follow.

Mia has been crawling like mad, and pulling herself up on everything in sight. Sevearl weeks ago, we bought new ottoman cubes for our living room, and they have turned out to be the perfect height for cruising babies.



In big news, we're pretty sure Mia said "duck" the other day in the bathtub. Scientific experimentation in a variety of contexts have been able to reproduce this phenomenon. So she now has two words--dog and duck. It's so cool to see language development.

And, because we've not really taken them, obligatory bathtime photos. We'll spare the internets our tushy photos, but here's a few good ones.

Oh Danny Boy

Mia loves Danny the duck:



Danny quacks. Or more precisely, he once quacked. Let's just say, he don't quack no more.

Like all good stories, Walter was the instigator. He one day decided to chew Danny a bit, and, after sopping up a quarter cup of Basset Hound spit, we figured it would be best to wash Danny before letting our daughter play with him again. Danny survived the wash with dignity, but something went horribly wrong. He wouldn't stop quacking. Or more to the point, he would quack erratically. Quiet for an hour, then a ray of sun would set him off. It was downright creepy. Obviously we couldn't live like this, but what could we do? Baby likes the duck.

So that's how I ended up performing open duck surgery this afternoon. The stitches have since healed nicely, which wasn't the tough part. No, the moment that I never thought I'd witness as a father came when I smashed Danny's evil quacking heart with a hammer on our back porch. So like I said. Danny don't quack no more.

Now here's your obligatory cute picture.

Baby Book Entry--Nine Months

Today was Mia's 9 month visit to the pediatrician. She weighed in at 18 pounds, 1.5 ounces, and was 27.25 inches long. Turns out she is perfectly proportional--31st percentile for height and weight. She took her flu shot and lead test like a champ. Our next visit is the one year visit--wow!
She is also in the midst of serious teething. All four top teeth are coming in at once. The top right center tooth has poked through, and the tips of the other three are just under the surface. Looks like she will be getting her two front teeth for Christmas (or Hanukkah!) this year.