Christmas in Sacramento, 2010

We were able to go to California this year for Christmas!

We went to the fish hatchery. Cecilia loved feeding the fish. Grandma was only too happy to help her. :)

Cecilia met cousin Raymond and we had a great dinner in Oakland. Grandma only overfed Cecilia a little bit. :D

And we had such a great Christmas! Everyone had a good time and we also got great gifts.

Especially Cecilia... she got more than she was supposed to get. She loves her new laptop!

And she had such a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.
The rest of the pictures are here if you want to look.

Enjoy!

First birthday pictures from May, 2010

These are oldies but goodies... I don't believe we ever posted pictures of her first birthday weekend from 7 months ago.






Here is the full album if you want to look at more pictures.

It's funny looking back at these pictures. She was -such- a baby!

A kicking machine

Here's a pretty common occurrence at the Lubang household.



Take a note of how fast her little legs can kick! And she had already been doing it for a while, so she was already a little tired.

The Cecilia and Mr. Pig Show

Pretty funny.

Blowing bubbles in the bathtub

We started Cecilia with swim lessons when she was 8-9 months old, and since then, she has absolutely loved being in water, including in the bath. It's usually a struggle to get her to come out of the bath. One of the things she likes to do is blow bubbles in the bath. For whatever reason, she has a plastic dishwasher basket (which we use to hold all her bath toys), and she likes blowing her bubbles over each side of the basket, as you can see here:

Singing with Grandma

This is an old video from October when Grandma and Grandpa were visiting from Sacramento. Cecilia loves to sing songs, and Grandma is only too happy to sing with her. :)

Only for diehard fans...

This is the final video I will post of Cecilia from our vacation in NYC in September, I swear... It's not awesome, but you'll get a sense of how Cecilia dances. You may also notice how we let her play with our expensive camera, and how we let her get a "tattoo" on her left arm.

Playing recorders with Grandma

Another video from our vacation in September in NYC:

Pulling the duckies

This is an old video from September when Cecilia was fascinated with pulling the duckies at Grandma's house.



I think that song will forever be ingrained in my head... :)

Reading out loud

We were amazed several weeks ago when grandma was reading "Barnyard Dance" with Cecilia, and Cecilia started reciting the words along with grandma! Obviously she can't read yet, but she had memorized a good portion of the book, enough to mimic reading some of the words. I wasn't able to catch that on video, but she started to do the same thing with a nursery rhyme book that we often read at night before bedtime. Here's the video of her roughly reciting some of the rhymes along with me as I read them.

Halloween

Cecilia was an all start trick or treater - I was exhausted by the end.

More pictures.

Halloween part 2

Speaking of Halloween, I have a story to share about Cecilia that night:

She was an absolute maniac. The older boys ran off really quick and we couldn't quite keep up. But once she went to the first house and realized that she got to pick a piece of candy and have people fawn over how cute she was in her monkey costume, she wanted to do nothing else. She went to as many houses as her little legs would take her, until she was practically wobbling as she tried to climb the stairs. And all she would say was "more! more!"

This is generally how it went -
Me: Cecilia, say "trick or treat!"
Cecilia: (silent)
Me (to owner of house): Sorry, she can't say that yet...
Me (to Cecilia): Cecilia, do you want to pick out a piece of candy?
Cecilia: Yeah! (picking out a piece of candy)
Me: Cecilia, say thank you!
Cecilia: Welcome! (how she says thank you)
Me: Cecilia, what does a monkey say?
Cecilia: oo oo oo
Owner of house: Oh my gosh, that is -so- cute. Here, have some extra candy!

By the end of the night, she didn't even have strength left to stand. And because she had gotten so much extra candy, she ended up with almost as much as Aaron and Jacob! They were eating a few pieces when we got back home, so I gave her a lollipop and we bundled her up pretty quickly to go back home. She finished her lollipop, but fell asleep pretty fast, with the lollipop stick still in her hand, halfway up to her open mouth. When we got home, I tried to pry the lollipop stick out of her hand, and she woke up, cried a big cry of protest, stuck the empty lollipop stick back in her mouth, and promptly fell back asleep. And this time she was dead asleep. I carried her upstairs, took her out of clothes, changed her diaper, put her into pajamas, and put her down in the crib, all without her even stirring. I don't think I've ever seen her as tired as that night. :)

Mommy's shoes!

Cecilia has really been into wearing my shoes lately, from my heels, to my work shoes to my tennis shoes.



It's really cute, although she insists on doing everything "myself!"

Fun night with the Lubrettsky's

A few weeks ago, we had Arlene, Jerry, Ben, Jen, Aaron and Jacob all over to our new place for a big dinner. Afterward, we all just hung out and had a great time.

Guess who showed Cecilia how to climb into our ottomans?



Then there was a lot of monkeying around with Uncle Ben!

Singing songs

Cecilia has really been into singing songs lately. Before she goes to bed, we often sing her a medley consisting of 1. the Cecilia song, 2. Kumbaya, 3. Amazing Grace, and 4. Silent Night. Tonight, she sang almost the entire medley with us, word for word!

Here she is singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with her cousins, Aaron and Jacob:

Cousins

Outside of the aquarium last weekend.

Sleep-Pea

Please forgive the pun...

Swinging

As you may have noticed from several pictures in recent posts, Cecilia's new favorite activity is getting swung by her hands between two adults. Here is a quick video Bruce took in the parking lot of the Super 88 food court!

Merry Go Round

Cecilia loves the Merry Go Round. There's one between the harbor and Faneuil Hall that she has to go on every time we go down there.

Great Pictures

These are actually from the last two albums I posted, but they are so good I felt they deserved their own space.

Boston Harbor Islands

Another excursion we took with Grandma & Grandpa was to Georges Island in Boston Harbor, the site of a 19th century fortress built to protect Boston. We had a picnic out there and really enjoyed the spectacular views from the ferry.

Cecilia and I kept a sharp lookout for any approaching British ships!

The views from the ferry really are fantastic and I highly recommend an excursion like this to anyone visiting Boston.

Here is the album.

Apple Picking with Grandma & Grandpa

Joanne's parents were here for a couple weeks last month, and we spent a day picking apples about an hour northwest of the city.

Cecilia liked the hayride.

Here is a unique method for getting the apples high up in the tree.

 Here is the whole album.

Pumpkin

We went to Vermont this past weekend - more to come on that. Our friend Heather took this picture of Cecilia as she was patting every pumpkin and saying "pumpkin! pumpkin! more? more!"

Pete always calls Cecilia "pumpkin," so I suppose she learned that word quite early.
:)

Cecilia and Nicholas

We spent the weekend in Philly for our friend Missy's wedding, and Annemarie and Paul were kind enough to host us. Their son Nicholas is six months older than Cecilia and they got along great. Apparently the first thing Nicholas said when he woke up on Sunday morning was "Celia?".

Kissing a Giraffe in a Box (Seriously)

In the Lake Video (old)

From our camping trip with the Lubretskys in August.

UPSIDE DOWN!!!

Cecilia learned how to stick her head on the floor with her butt sticking up in the air at day care. I think Natalie showed her how to do it. Now she likes to do it all the time! And then she says "mommy? mommy?" meaning that I should do it too. I'm all too happy to oblige...

(Courtesy of grandma!)

New York City Vacation

We came to the realization that the formula for vacation has now become simplified to be, Vacation = Grandparents. Between that and being broke since we bought our house we decided to spend our third quarter week off with my mom in New York and it turned out to be a great choice. Cecilia had a great time with Grandma and seeing the sites of the city, and I had a great time napping every day!

Here are a few highlights and here is the whole album. Sadly I don't see a single picture with Grandma in there, but hopefully she will show up on the video when I get around to loading it.

Cloisters Overlooking Hudson River

Revelation!

Central Park Zoo

Cousin Noam

UPDATE
So I finally loaded the videos - here is one of Grandma pushing Cecilia around in a toy car in her basement playroom.

Lerner Weekend

We went to Rachel's Bat Mitzvah and then spent the night at Arlene and Jerry's last weekend. Rachel did a great job, especially with the singing parts, and we all had a good time. Cecilia loved exploring the "Farm" and there are some nice pictures of her with Joanne and Arlene. Here is the album.

Not a Baby Anymore

Following up on Joanne's last post, we can definitively say Cecilia is no longer a baby. "Baby" is a word she knows, and when she sees one she likes to point at them and say it. On Monday I was in the playground with her and there was a little stroller which she kept pointing at and saying "baby, baby, baby" over and over again, because I guess she knew it was a stroller for a baby.

So I asked her, "Is Cecilia a baby?" and she replied with conviction "no!". Then I asked her, "Is Cecilia a little girl?", and she replied "yeah". So I guess that settles it, baby Cecilia has grown up to be a little girl.

Cecilia's backpack!

Cecilia got a new Disney backpack from California Grandma and Grandpa. She has been saying "baa-paa!" now for quite some while so she's excited to have her own baa-paa. Here's a picture of her wearing it.


Doesn't she look all grown up in this picture?

Growing up

Cecilia is really growing up... how many times have I said that already? These were in another link that Pete posted before, but in her new swimsuit and drinking juice ("joos!") out of a box,

Jasper's Birthday Party

Cecilia's friend Jasper from daycare had his fourth birthday party on Saturday so most of the crew was there. Given that Cecilia spends nine hours a day five days a week with them we really have not posted enough about that part of her life. I guess that's understandable, since we're not there to see what goes on or take pictures.

Jasper is a cool little kid - he took about six months to warm up to me but now we are buddies. He loves super heroes and dinosaurs and is very nice to Cecilia - he gives her toys and lets Tahamina know if she has any problems. His sister Bronwyn is two and is also at daycare, here is the album.

That's Bronwyn there with Tahamina (Na Na) and Cecilia.

Visiting Grandma in New York

We went to New York last weekend and stayed with Grandma for two great days. Saturday the weather was perfect - not too hot or humid - and we wandered from our house to the opposite corner of Central Park and back.

It was a great day for me since I have so many memories from all over the park, and it was fun to share it with my family.


Cecilia wandered everywhere and was totally inquisitive and engaged, except during those two naps...

Here are more pictures.

Uncle Bruce

Bruce stopped in on Cecilia and the rest of us for five days last week and he got to spend some with quality time with his niece. He just went backpacking in Minnesota for five days and is headed for Scotland soon for a "business school" project. Cecilia took to Bruce right away and they had a good time together all week around the house, at the playground, and out to dinner.

.

Bruce took these great videos, but unfortunately he is not in any of them.

Bumper Boats

Joanne insisted on taking Cecilia on the bumper boats at a Mass General family function last Sunday. She was a little scared but seemed to have fun. I know Joanne definitely had a blast - see for yourself.

More Playground Pics

Here are some pictures from a couple of recent trips to the playground. Some of them have our friend "Big" Rick from Philly and his son Alex in them, who were in Boston for the weekend.

Here is the Picassa album.

Moving Day

Luckily we didn't forget this box...

The Most Ironic Thing Ever Written

I clean my daughter's room every day.

I think only my mother can really appreciate how funny that is.