Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Look Who's (Soon) to be 23 Months!

Ho! Ho! Ho! As we rush headlong into the holidays, we wanted to take a moment to catch you up on Julia's adventures! I kind of skipped her 22nd month update, seeing as how Thanksgiving was right in the middle there, so for the last month and a half, she's been a barrel of fun! For Thanksgiving, we did two family gatherings, both involving some travel - on Turkey Day proper to Steven's uncle's to dine with a whole herd of Smisecks (this was a first for Julia as well as me). It was a little overwhelming at first, but she settled in and played a bit with her second cousins and charmed her great aunts and uncles as well as her great grandma! It was a really nice time! The next day, we took off for Indiana to get our turkey on again with my family and got to play around out in the woods a bit with the soon to be arctic cold starting to rear its ugly head. BRRRRRRR. But, of course, Julia and her daddy love the cold and the wind in their faces, so it was all smiles from the Baby Bear!
Things started moving pretty fast in December - she went on her first trip to Wildlights at the Columbus Zoo, which was a pretty cool trip for all of us! She loves the zoo, but specifically remembered riding a stationary bench on the carousel and said very clearly, "horsies" as we walked towards it, indicating that she was interested in a ride. Well, guess what she got - a ride on one of the horses!
This year she is really catching on to the whole Christmas thing - when we (finally) got the tree and decorations out, she was all excited, running around and playing with the noisy things and saying "tree!" once the lights were on. She has been relatively respectful of the presents and ornaments, which is good; we think this has more to do with the fact that she's afraid of the Lionel train we have set up surrounding the tree - and we thought she'd love it because she loves the real train that goes by her school! Oh, well. Keeps her out of trouble.
It's harder to shop for her this year, as opposed to last year when we could do all of her Christmas shopping with her in the cart - this year she has been throwing fits when she can't have what she clearly saw go into the cart. Next year, Santa will have to hire an elf! Still, it's going to be fun to watch her on Christmas morning. She's got one heck of a memory, though - she's all about a dancing Mickey Mouse that she's seen all of twice in the stores (and threw fits over); Daddy Claus ordered one online and was in the room next to the bathroom where Julia was getting her bath, trying it out to make sure it worked. Well, somebody heard it, got a funny look on her face and said, "Mickey!" She'll be thrilled on Saturday!
Julia is a talking fool - she will "parrot" thing quite often, but has also become quite adept at saying things (and oftentimes things we haven't taught her, so it takes a minute to figure out what she's talking about). She'll talk non-stop . . . until someone wants her to talk. Then she just looks at them. She's in a very shy stage of her life, but we're hoping that goes away soon! She's also in a very sweet and loving stage - she will give kisses freely to mama, daddy, and sissy (and gives them when requested to others in the family), but the most poignant one was last week, when she had a 24 hour stomach bug; after several hours of discomfort and hourly vomiting, she looked up at me after her latest event and turned her face up to give me a kiss as if to thank me for taking care of her (daddy was nearby helping, too, but missed out on the gesture because he was collecting the latest batch of items needing laundering) - it was sweet, and definitely a thing that only a parent would truly appreciate and understand.
So that's about it until Christmas, at which point I hope to get a few photos up. In the meantime, enjoy these last few days until Santa arrives!!