A New Year - A New Post

We hope all of you had a wonderful holiday.

We did... and yes, we took a vacation from the blog.

We will apologize in advance for the serious lack of pictures.
We forgot our camera almost everywhere we went.
We will get pictures from other people and put them up soon.

Here are the updates

Ali continues to do very well. 

She is still crawling, but much faster now.

She pulls up on things and walks along the furniture.

I can't wait until Ali can start walking.


She has also started to mimic things more.
One day she said, "Night, night." when we put her down for a nap.
She hasn't done it since though. Here is the video.

She has started having whole milk with her formula and we think that she is taking it fine, but still too soon to make that determination. We decided to give her organic milk to see if that helps.

I tried the organic milk, and I like it.

She has four teeth in, two on top and two on bottom. She'll be getting some more in soon.

She is eating more foods as well. Here she is eating bananas.

Now, for Christmas.

We spent Christmas Eve with the Glenns. We acted out the story of the nativity like we do every year. Ali played the role of Baby Jesus, but she wasn't a fan of lying in the manger.
Her aunts and uncles got her lots of fun toys, and we got some fun presents too.

Christmas morning with just mom and dad was fun.

She was not sure what to do with the whole tearing paper off things.

Usually, mom and dad tell her not to tear things.

We would start to tear it for her and then leave it for her to do the rest, but she would just look at it wondering what to do.

But, by night time at Mimi's she got the hang of it and was tearing through it all.

We did get to Skype with Grandpa and Grammy Westenhofer. It was fun for them to see Ali open the presents  they sent, and Ali enjoyed seeing her grandparents.

She got a toy train that has buttons that makes noises, a toy giraffe that has buttons that plays music, and 

a beautiful dress that does not have buttons and does not make noises.

(We like the dress..., but Ali loves the train and giraffe.)

Ali did see Santa this Christmas, but it was not in the hospital like it was last time.
She was so much smaller then. She has grown so much.

She was not sure what to do with Santa and thought it best to go back to mom.
Maybe next year Santa.

It's official. Ali loves animals, but especially dogs. Next time Allan and Suzanne bring their dogs to Birmingham, we'll have to take a video for you to see her excitement!

I don't think we've mentioned it on the blog, but I've been loosing weight. To date, I've lost 30 lbs and need to loose another 30 lbs in the coming months. Exercise and thinking about what you are eating does pay off! Here's to a new goal!

I do have some bad news. My grandmother, Nanny, died on Thursday evening. She lived to raise 10 children and was a wonderful example to all of us of faith and strength. She will be missed, but I'm glad she could move on to a place where she can be at peace.
As for now, I started a new semester of new classes for my program.