Lily's Walking Status

Lily's walking is improving by leaps and bounds. Each day she gets better and better. She is walking most of the places she wants to go now. If she falls she usually gets right up and keeps going. That is unless she is in a hurry and the fall is usually forward and she lands on her hands and continues in her bear walk style because it's speedier than walking right now. Boy is she quick when she wants to get somewhere. Keeping her out of trouble keeps getting harder and harder to do. Christmas was interesting since one of her favorite things to do is eat paper. She has some kind of paper radar that allows her to hone in on any tiny scrap that might be good eating before anyone else knows it's there.

The Christmas One Where My Son is Not a Heathen...

...unlike the one where he throws the Magi to their doom in the lava.

I was signing Christmas cards and Jay was busy with Zach doing homework. Ryan seemed to want to be in the middle of something, so I gave him a stack of white paper and crayons and set him up at the table where I was signing cards. He drew a picture of a "Christmas tree with ornaments" and said it was for friend Ben. It was actually a pretty good drawing. I told him we could mail it with the Christmas card I send to Ben's mommy and daddy. [I need to ask Erin if I can borrow it to scan it for his scrapbook. Stupid me I should have thought of that before I put it in the envelope.] I went back to signing cards and Ryan went to work on his next drawing. He handed it to me and said, "This Christmas tree with ornaments is for Mom-mom and Pop-pop." He went to work on his next drawing of a Christmas tree while I labeled the previous one. Then I signed another card. He handed me his next drawing and said "This Christmas tree with ornaments is for Jason."
The cycle repeated...
"This Christmas tree with ornaments is for cousin Ben."
"This Christmas tree with ornaments is for Emily."
Then the best one...
"This Christmas tree with ornaments is for the Lord Jesus." [All together now, awwww.]
and then
"This Christmas tree with ornaments is for Mary."
"This Christmas tree with ornaments is for Joseph."
"This Christmas tree with ornaments is for the angels."

So we decided Jesus could give Mary, Joseph and the angels their drawings and we put them in Jesus's stocking. Jesus has a stocking in our house where we write things that we are going to give Jesus. Things we are going to try to do to be better followers. Zach put his first real one in this year. Up until this year he would say "I'm going to give Him my heart." As in the poem, "What can I give Him poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I'd give Him a lamb, If I were a wise man I'd do my part, What can I give Him? Give Him my heart!" In all fairness it was only one time because I didn't start this tradition until last year. I got the idea from a friend the year before when I asked about the stocking in her house with Jesus written on it.

3 3 3 3

Ryan is 3 years 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days today. Seemed like a day to note. Happy Christmas Eve!

Walking?

In my Christmas letter I said we wouldn't call the steps Lily is taking walking until she can take more than 6 steps without falling. 6 steps had been her record until today. This morning she took 9 steps and stopped. She didn't fall. She just stopped. So I think I am going to officially call that walking.
It's a little harder for me to judge her starting to walk than it was for Ryan. She took her first steps sooner, but they were sporadic and she mostly crawled. Ryan waited until he was fully 9 months to take his first steps, but he took off walking pretty quickly and didn't look back. Since Lily still does most of her getting around by bear walking and a little bit by old fashioned crawling now. So it's hard for me to judge if she is a full fledged walker. Either way she is growing up fast. Maybe a little too fast!

Newspaper

Ryan was watching a Blue's Clues episode where they make a newspaper of all the happenings in Steve's house. He ran in the kitchen to get his crayons and some white paper. He couldn't find his crayons, so he comes to ask me. Then he says, "I need them to write my newspaper." How great is that?! I love Blue's Clues. It was better with Steve though. I can heard him in there talking about Port Discovery now.