Christmas in Iowa

Christmas cousins (Penelope, Sabine and Nicholas).

Bine having fun with mommy and daddy.

Bine playing with the awesome easel Arlene and Mike made her.

Christmas morning is crazy! Bine really bonded with Uncle Scott.

Playing in the snow.

Time to get clean!

Waiting for Nuevo

We are officially announcing the appearance of Nuevo, due June 8th. Nuevo is at around 16 weeks and doing great. Heather had another really rough bout of morning sickness in the first trimester, but she is healthy and feeling pretty good now. We will probably find out the gender at our next ultrasound in early January.

Since Sabine was known as Huevo in her early development, we figured Nuevo would be a good name for the new baby. Nuevo was not really planned, though we did want to have another baby - but not quite this soon (not that we're complaining). But, we think having the siblings so close in age will be good for them. And the age difference of 20 months will be similar to that between Heather and Scott.

We will keep you posted on all the latest Nuevo developments, as well as the latest news on Sabine. She is doing great and having a lot of fun. Recently she's been saying "at!", when she sees a hat. Tonight she ate ravioli and baked beans. She's walking really fast now and swings her arms a lot.

In other news, after being unemployed for ten months, I got a job last month! You can imagine our relief, especially after having found out about Nuevo. The new job is a step up and more challenging than my old job, but I think that will be good for me. I'm the new Creative Production Director at Paulette Carter Design Group, and the position is similar to my old job - half creative work and half project management. The nice thing is that I am really valued for my copywriting skills and will be doing a lot of it.

The only down side is that I won't be able to spend as much time with Sabine and I already miss her a lot. She will now be in daycare full time - luckily she really likes it there. Unfortunately we can't get her in on Tuesdays, so we'll probably get a nanny for that day until a spot opens up.

Happy holidays to everyone, we are off to Iowa in two days to see Oma & Mike and Scott, Megan, Nick and Penelope.

Operation One Nap

Encouraged by Sabine's teachers at daycare, we've decided to take the big step of going from two naps to one nap. So far, so good. We're also trying to wean her off formula and the bottle. It's been fairly easy to wean her off the formula, we just diluted it with whole milk. So she's now at 3/4's milk and 1/4 formula. But she just doesn't want to drink from anything other than a bottle/nipple.

We've also been trying to give her more solid foods and she is really liking that. She loves to eat what mommy and daddy are eating. Over 4 hours this morning, she ate an entire banana, a whole baby yogurt, a little scrambled eggs and a small bowl of cheerios and milk!

Sabine loves her new early Xmas present....

MORE PICTURES & VIDEO HERE!

Catching up with Sabine

Sabine had a playdate with Coleman twins, Jane and Casey, who are already big Beatles fans. Here Bine is watching the twins watching the Fab Four.

Bine wanted to try on daddy's shoes...

Bine still loves wearing her bike helmet, even though she's never been on a bike!

Bine has a new trick for meal time - she bites down on the spoon and won't let go!

Here's a preview of what Sabine might look like with hair eventually...

And, below are a couple of videos showing how well she is walking now.

MORE PICTURES & VIDEO HERE!

Now that she's One

Sabine is so much fun these days. She is feeling better (getting over her 6 month "cold" since she started taking antibiotics) talking, and walking. She is also coming into her own as a fashion forward super-baby. She started wearing hats ... she insists on putting on big floppy summer hats or her bike helmet pretty much as soon as she wakes up. The bike helmet is huge on her but very cute.

She's now moved on to wearing both her summer hat and her bike helmet. She's a nut.

Happy Halloween!

Sabine went trick or treating with Mommy and Cindy and brought home lots of treats.

Look who's becoming a real pro at walking!

MORE PICTURES & VIDEO HERE!

What does a one-year old do?

Now that Sabine is one year old, we decided to list some of her new accomplishments.

Her first words are "uh-oh", "quack", "hi!" and apparently "boo-ya".

She can't say "no", but she is great at waving stuff off and shaking her head vigorously. Especially when it comes to picking out her books at bedtime.

She's down to two naps a day, with three hours between them - leaving lots of times for walks.

She is getting better at coloring and likes to dance to her favorite music.

Bine can hold her own bottle now and is becoming a pro with the sippy cup.

She can pick up food off her plate and put it into her mouth.

She eats 5,000 Cherrios a day.

She loves her bike helmet and has a good laugh looking at it in the mirror.

She has six teeth - 2 on the botom and 4 on top.

She's getting really good at walking now. These videos are a week old and she's already walking further and longer.

She always has a new trick - lately she's ben scrunching up her face and loudly breathing in and out of her mouth.

MORE PICTURES & VIDEO HERE!