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. :)