Elizabeth and Molly

I am still looking for the CD of our informal Christmas Day pictures that I've been wanting to post, so in the meantime I thought I'd post some of the photos from our Christmas photo shoot. A couple of these are different than what we sent at Christmas.

I'm feeling inspired to share a couple of Elizabeth stories after reading the cute stories that my cousin's wife, Sheila, just posted about their daughter Lauren (who is just a few months younger than Elizabeth).

Elizabeth sure does keep our lives fun and interesting! She is such a creative little one and has so much energy and spunk. We recently bought her a stuffed dog that barks a few songs. She is in love with this dog and has named her Nuffy (or Niffy or Neffy - we're not quite sure). We asked Elizabeth how she came up with this name and she says it the snowman's dog's name on Dragon Tales. Anyways, this is perfect for her, as she is a pet lover at heart and is so cute with the neighborhood animals, but we aren't ready for the responsibility of a pet. So she is satisfied - for now.

Well, we were at Old Navy last week and Elizabeth started playing with some of the dog toys on the endcap right before you check out. She picked up a bone and an octopus and would not put them back. She kept saying that she needed them for Nuffy. I told her that she could have the dog toys as a reward for going potty if she wanted (we were going to start serious potty training the next week). This made her put the toys back. I figured that was the end of it. But no. All I kept hearing about was the octopus and the bone. So finally this past week while we were out running errands, I had Greg run in to Old Navy and buy them so that we had them on-hand as reward. Greg got back to the car and looked dumb-founded as he said, "Why in the heck did I just buy dog toys for Elizabeth?" I realized I hadn't told him that they were dog toys and that they were for her stuffed dog. I watched Greg put two and two together and start laughing as he finally realized why Elizabeth wanted the toys. We had a good laugh together.

I could go on and on with stories, but here's just one more. For a little bit of background, our family has been making the transition off of sugar and white flour. There are still a few things that aren't completely whole-grain that Elizabeth eats, but she hasn't eaten any sugar for quite some time. We're finding that we are particularly sensitive to these foods and that we feel much better physically and emotionally when they aren't a part of our diet. So, anyways, we were at my mom's Stamp/Scrapbook store the other day and Elizabeth picked out some Cookie Monster stickers. She was showing them to one of my mom's employees who was sharing her enthusiasm for Cookie Monster. The employee (Mara) said, "Wow, Cookie Monster. Do you like Cookie Monster? I love Cookie Monster". Elizabeth nods her head "yes". Then Mara says, "Oooooh, and chocolate chip cookies. I love chocolate chip cookies. Do you love chocolate chip cookies?" Elizabeth answered matter-of-factly, "No". End of conversation. I think Mara was about speechless that a 3 year old wouldn't care about chocolate chip cookies. Greg and I had a good chuckle about that one too.

Molly isn't getting so much press because she isn't talking yet, but she is at such a cute age. She plays pat-a-cake, peek-a-boo, waves bye-bye, and just recently started making a couple of animal noises. She busted out with a "quack, quack" yesterday and it was so cute! She also does the dog bark. She is very close to walking, but hasn't quite taken the plunge. She is incredibly physically active and I am chasing her around everywhere as it is. So walking will just make it all the more interesting! She is doing a lot more climbing at this age than Elizabeth ever did. The other day I found her standing on top of her rocking chair. Now she is trying to climb up on her little play table. I can tell that playing outside this year will be interesting! Elizabeth was pretty cautious and never wanted to get dirty, but I have a feeling Molly will have no fear and not care one bit about being dirty.