Other Snapshots from Christmas

Mark making the Christmas meal

Opening presents

Reading time with Grandad

Learning a New Language

December 21, 2008

Last year, my niece Lois was not yet crawling. Oh how much changes in a year. Now she is walking and running and jumping and talking and screaming like any year and a half old girl. Let’s just say I had a quite the learning curve to conquer. The reason being, although she is talking, there are many occasions when I have no idea what she is saying. She just keeps “talking” with such serious or silly body language that I wish with all my might I could understand what she was saying. Gradually I began to catch on. The words I hear the most are again, cheese (which was for the food and for a camera), where’s it gone?, book, spin, pippin (a dog on a TV show) and daddy. Daddy I heard twice as often because not only does she call Mark daddy but she also calls Hilary daddy with slightly a different tone. Plus she also knows some sign language which I also have had to pick up on.

Although I couldn’t understand her a lot of the time, she had no problem understanding me. If I asked her to go and get my water bottle, she would know exactly what she was to look for and would work her hardest to carry it to me even though the load was sometimes 10% of her body weight. She is a strong little cookie.

She definitely has some of the Westbrook blood in her when it comes to being fearless and the need for action (and also wild hair but that is another story). I can toss her around so much that I think I will make her sick. But the second I stop, she says "again". She loves to dance and flip and climb furniture and people. We have practiced our circus act on more that one occasion causing me to be sore the next day.

I am sure I will see her again within the coming year, but she will be a different girl in a lot of ways getting closer and closer to the age of children that I love. But by the next time I see her, she will have another role in the family besides being the crazy little daughter. Come mid-May she will have to play the role of crazy big sister and share mummy and daddy's attention with a little brother. I will have to go through the learning curve all over again with them both I am sure. Fortunately, kids (especially family) are too much fun to mind.

Cookie Exchange

December 13, 2008

Well I am back in England for the holiday season. My visit this time around is a bit longer than last year; 4 weeks in total. I arrived only to hit the ground running as Hilary and I started a baking frenzy. Hilary decided to challenge some of her friend over here to go a little out of their comfort zones. Baking for the two of us has been something we have been doing for years. You see, Hilary decided to host a cookie exchange; an event where everyone that is invited bakes a certain amount of cookies. All the cookies are then brought to one centralized please where each person then takes some of all of the other people’s cookies. The result is a fabulous smorgasbord of tasty treats. Well, for many of Hilary’s friends, this was the first time they have ever attempted to bake let alone bake in this high quantity. My taste buds decided with a shadow of doubt that all passed the challenge with flying colors.