First hair cut

Oh my. I know Julia's only 15 months old, but man, was it time for a haircut. Within the past month or so, her curls have gone WILD. So we went to Snip-Its, a cute hair place for kids, where I was fully prepared for hysterical screaming. But much to our surprise, Julia was a real trooper. It may have been the fact that they had BUBBLES! Can't go wrong with that distraction.


Anyway, her hair has been tamed and she's looking as cute as ever. To celebrate we went to Chili's for "toast," which is Julia's way of saying grilled cheese.

P.S. Below, the first picture is a before pic. The second is after.

15 things

about our sweet Julia on her 15 month birthday:




1. When I tell her "I love you to pieces," she says back to me "peeee says" in a sweet sing-song voice.


2. She waves "hi" and "bye" to Elmo every morning on Sesame Street.


3. She can say baby, cracker, duckie, away, keys, ready, stuck, hi, bye, dada and happy. (Still no mama.)


4. She loves to go shopping. I swear she says Target when we pull into the parking lot. She's also a huge hit with the cashiers and baggers at Publix. They gush over her cuteness (so much so they sometimes forget to bag all my groceries).


5. Every four-legged creature is "Casey," the name of Grandma's dog.


6. She is the only person on the planet who likes my singing.


7. She loves hanging out in the ktichen with me when I'm cooking. She flips through cookbooks, unfolds napkins and rearranges spices. I can not wait until she can stand on a chair and help me bake cookies!


8. She still takes two naps a day!!! One in the morning, one in the afternoon.


9. She always wakes up in a good mood. The first thing we hear in the morning on the montior are "hi hi hi" and "baby baby baby."


10. She can sing "Ba ba black sheep." Her version goes like this "Ba ba ba."


11. She has alphabet blocks that have an object inside for each letter. The B is banana, the K is keys, etc. She knows every one of them. If you ask her to bring you the umbrella, she will. The duckie, she's got it. The watermelon, the guitar, you name it. How smart is that? Seriously?


12. She has eight teeth. Four on the top, four on the bottom.


13. She likes to turn on her CD player (yes, she can do it by herself) and dance. Her moves are bending at the knees and bobbing up and down. So cute.


14. She loves to be chased. And she laughs like a maniac the whole time.


15. She's obsessed with her belly button.

High-tech New Year

Happy New Year everyone. We're high-tech this year, well, sort of.

I took this picture with my fancy new iPhone:

And, I figured out that I could take video from my digital camera. Only, it's sideways... See, I said sort of. I held the camera vertically and I can't figure out how to flip it on my computer. But it's cute anyway, so just tilt your head...

Note my sad and pitiful attempts to get her to say mama.

And a couple other things to share.

Does anyone on Mike's side of the family know where these curls come from? I don't think they're from me.

And this one just cracks me up. This is where I found Julia's "baby" the other day. In the pantry. RIght next to the bread crumbs.

We're still here

It's been a while since we've posted new Julia pics, so here are a whole bunch from our Christmas festivities. As you can see from the previous post, our girl did not care one bit for Santa. Who can blame her really? He is kind of scary with the big beard and hat...



Anyway, so much has happened since our last post....



We went to West Palm to celebrate with the Pignottis and the Casales. It was so fun for Julia to be with her cousins. And, while I didn't hear it, my sister-in-law says Julia said mama! Oh happy day. I mean, she's been saying dada since July and has added other bigger words, like happy, duckie, cracker, stuck, ball, baby and bye-bye. And after all, am I not the one who carried her for nine months and got up with her every two hours in the night when she was a newborn, and am I not the one who changes 96 percent of the diapers? I am so ready to hear mama!




We celebrated Christmas day at home with Julia's nana. Julia was a little confused by the whole presents thing. She wasn't much into opening. I think she was overwhelmed. Santa brought her a Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn kitchen. It is so darn cute. Her favorite things to play with have been my spices and measuring cups and spoons, so this is perfect. We're nurturing her inner Rachael Ray. (Mike will kill me for typing that....) Everyone was spoiled this year, Mike with lots of new pants and tickets to see Kathy Griffin and me most of all with..... an iPhone. That's right. I went from being one of the only people left on the planet without a cell phone to having the mac daddy of all cell phones. Holy crap. It's a bit initimidating really. Wish me luck figuring it out.

Merry Christmas

Never a dull moment

Certainly not around our house. This morning, Julia walked into our bedroom and emerged like this:


in my beach hat, the one Mike despises. I think he's embarassed when we go to the beach but I wouldn't be caught dead without it. It keeps my head and the top of my ears from getting burned...




Anyway, as much as he can't stand the thing, you have to admit Julia sure looks cute in it ...

Girl on the go

That's right. Our girl is a walking machine. It started out as a few steps here and there a month or so ago. Then it was making laps around the love seat, holding on with one hand. Then one day last week, I came home from work and Julia walked across the room. Just like that...


Now she doesn't crawl anymore, she walks.... all over the house.


Oh, and now that she is upright, her hands are free to carry stuff... all over the house.
She takes her dirty laundry out of the hamper and carries bibs all the way to our closet on the other side of the house. The set of blocks from Aunt Lisa, they turn up in the strangest of places. The other day she carried around a new container of Diaper Genie refills, who knows why....


It's exciting to see our girl doing new things, but it still tugs at my heart that every step takes her further away from being my baby... ugh.


But one good thing about all this is that we're shoe shopping and finally getting to wear some of the ones already in her collection.