The Wills Family: Portman, Harper, Roman, and Caitlin

A month or so ago, Harper's verbal skills literally exploded overnight. She went from saying 2 and 3 word "sentences" to singing full songs and carrying on full conversations with us. It's been really fun to watch her language skills grow, and the most recent development was her discovery of pronouns. She still mixes them up a lot, but uses them consistently. Anyway, today I wrote down some of the funnier things she said:

"How 'bout dis?" (hands me a red crayon)

"Daddy do it!"

"That's me's!" (instead of "that's mine")

"Dis my sfoon!" (translation: this my spoon)

"I cookin' Dada hot cupcakes!"

"Where are you, Christmas treat?" (translation: Christmas TREE)

"Cupcake in my hair!" (the letter "C" on Roman's ABC mobile knocked her in the head)

"Mimi, where are you?" (mimi, her lamb, was rolled up in her blanket after nap)

"Uh oh a shark's comin'!" (watching Finding Nemo)

"I like-a cheese!" (she saw me eating some cheese)

"I need some snacky, pease!"

Finally, the thing that cracks us up the most is that she has started saying "Mommy so happy" (or Daddy) when she knows that she has done something right. For example, yesterday we were headed out to the doctor and I set Roman in her little chair. I asked her to watch him and make sure he didn't fall while I made a bottle. I came back in the living room and found her sitting next to him with her hand on his leg, and of course I gave her a huge hug and told her she was so sweet! She smiled at me and said "Mama so happy!"

This was the first year that we were able to celebrate Christmas with all three of our families. It only took two weeks, but we did it! Our holiday started with a visit from Grampa and Grammy Anderson and Uncle Jared. They made the trek up 95 from North Carolina and spent a lovely, relaxing weekend with us, punctuated by a 2-days-before-Christmas trip to Tyson's Corner (not so relaxing, oops). Even though she doesn't see them often, Harper latched right onto Grammy and Grampa, and within minutes she was leading them around the house to see the "Christmas treet" and her "alligator... eat you!" Harper loved all of the attention, and particularly enjoyed playing "too hot" in her kitchen with Grampa... it doesn't take much to entertain her. The only hiccup in the visit was our trip to the pediatrician Monday morning. Both of the kids had double ear infections and double pink-eye, despite having already finished a course of antibiotics. Just what I wanted, a Christmas with everyone on yucky medicine!

Harper and Roman (with help from Mommy) opened all of their Christmas gifts from their grandparents (and birthday gifts, in Harper's case) in a matter of minutes, and Harper was very enthusiastic about each one. She even took a break to put on her new pajamas after declaring "new pj's!" Harper's favorite gift by far was her new "beep beep car." I thought her head was going to explode with joy when she saw it!

Less than a day after the Andersons left, we headed up to Downington, PA for a family Christmas Eve party. Every year Portman's cousins, grandparents, Aunts and Uncles get together for a traditional Swedish Christmas Eve meal (one of Portman's Aunts is Swedish). This was our second year attending the party and it was super fun, despite sitting in traffic for 5 hours. Shortly after desert, the doorbell rang and all of the kids rushed upstairs yelling "the elves came!" On the doorstep was a big Santa sack filled with matching pajamas - one for each kid. Luckily we snapped a few photos before Roman projectile-vomited all over one of the little girls:

We got home close to midnight on Christmas Eve (the kids slept the entire ride home), tucked everyone in bed, and "Santa'd" the living room. Harper was VERY excited Christmas morning when she woke up to a room full of gifts. This year we instituted a 3-gift maximum for each person, using the mantra "if it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for you." Santa brought Harper a big reading chair, an Elmo Live, and a huge tub of Bristle Blocks (her favorite things ever). She loved all three gifts and was satisfied to just sit in her chair and build things all morning. Daddy got a much-needed new laptop, and Santa brought me a beautiful necklace with three engravings: our wedding date, Harper's initials and birth-date, and Roman's initials and birth-date. It made me cry!

Roman spent most of the morning bouncing:

After a pancake breakfast and speed-packing, we got back in the car for a 3-hour drive to Wintergreen, where we celebrated the holiday with all of my family. It was a very unusual Christmas in that nothing blog-worthy really happened! We did get a nice family photo (minus the parents), and of course I am the only one who looks like an idiot in it.

The kids and I spent a phenomenally relaxing week in Wintergreen (minus the drama of having to give them their medicine), while Portman had to return to work. We only left the house a few times, and pretty much stayed in our pj's all week... my kind of holiday! Harper watched Horton Hears a Hoo ("elephant mooooovie") about 20 times, pushed her new baby from YaYa and Pop-Pop around in its stroller, and took trips to the playground and the swimming pool. After a super exciting New Year's (went to sleep at 10pm), we headed home for our final Christmas celebration with Portman's mom and brothers.

We had a joint Christmas -and- Harper's birthday party with Portman's family. Harper got so many gifts for Christmas and really had no idea that it was her birthday, so we decided to make it low-key. It turned out to be a great decision because she was also exhausted from the two weeks of partying. After a nearly 4 hour nap, Harper put on her party dress and entertained us with a final round of gifts. Nonna (Portman's mom) gave her a parachute, which was the hit of the party by far. It is one of those rainbow-colored ones from elementary school. We put Harper in it and bounced her around like popcorn. She thought it was the greatest thing ever!

We ended the big 0-2 with about 9 rounds of "Happy Birthday to You" and 2 rounds of blowing out candles. Yup, she demanded that we re-light them and do the whole thing again. Mommy made a delicious carrot cake and had a bit of a decorating disaster. It turns out that cream cheese frosting is not the best thing to decorate with. Some uber-tacky Abby Cadabby cake toppers fixed everything! There are hundreds of pics on smugmug, but here are a few more from our festivities:

Decorating cookies - can you guess which one is Harper's?

Ro Ro watching a movie, and watching football. I can't tell which one he likes more:

Roman is 5 months old today! He is getting so big that it almost seems like he is older than just 5 months. I think he is close to 18 pounds, and he is wearing 9-12 month clothes already. He always has a huge smile on his face, and he is such an easy-going baby. He loves to just sit and watch his big sister! He rolls over, when he feels like it, but mostly just watches the chaos going on around him. He can sit for a few seconds on his own, but mostly likes to play on his back.

He already has his two bottom front teeth, and I'm pretty sure the top two will emerge in a few days. He is teething on anything he can get his hands on, usually his own shirt, which gives new meaning to "I'm so hungry I could eat my shirt!" A few weeks ago I started giving him pureed food. He loves pears and sweet potatoes, but is not crazy about cereal of any kind.

Roman still isn't sleeping through the night, but when he wakes up he eats a full 8-ounce bottle, so I think he's just a very hungry boy. We have a new strategy for the nights. He wakes up between 5 and 6 every morning to eat, and often he was waking up Harper and she wouldn't go back to sleep. We decided to put Roman's Pack n' Play (portable crib) in our walk-in closet and have him sleep there instead, and it's working out great! He sleeps really well in there, and Harper can't hear a thing. This morning he slept until almost 9:30, and even slept through us rummaging around in the closet for our clothes!

Harper continues to impress us with her big-sister skills. She really is wonderful with him and very rarely shows any jealousy. I absolutely love their age difference because Harper doesn't remember a time when Roman wasn't in our family. It seems very normal for her to have to share Mommy and Daddy's attention, and she doesn't get mad when I have to ignore her for a little bit to give him a bottle. She is very affectionate towards her brother and gives him the sweetest hugs and kisses. We've only seen her get upset with him once - they were both in the bath and I accidentally wrapped Roman in her pink bunny towel. She was already tired and ready for bed, and she took one look at him and burst into tears saying "no that's HARPER'S towel!" Ever since then I make sure to ask her if it's okay for Ro Ro to "borrow" her towel!

Harper turns two in just a few weeks and we are having so much fun with her at this age. She is talking in full sentences and says the cutest things. I'll write more when it's closer to her official birthday.

Last week we flew out to Cincinnati to visit our friends Dave, Jenn and Katelyn ("Kiki," according to Harper). The flight out was easy, despite backing up the security line for a good 20 minutes as we unloaded the stroller. Harper loved the plane ride and, much to the dismay of the other passengers, shouted "blast off!" when we took off! Roman fell asleep in his car seat mid-flight and didn't seem to notice his sister bouncing around in the seat behind him.

The Bastos family moved into their new condo just a few days before we arrived, so we got to see it in all of its move-in (and still partially under construction) glory. Their new condo is absolutely gorgeous and inspired us to plan a few home-updates of our own. About an hour after we arrived, Portman said "well, I thought this trip was free since I booked it on miles, but now I see it's going to cost me more like $10k. Thanks, Dave!"

Sleeping 4 adults and 3 babies in a condo required creativity. Kiki is temporarily sleeping in a pack n' plan in her parents' closet because there are no shades on her windows, so Portman and I got to bunk on her daybed and trundle. Portman insisted on calling it a "grundle bed" and asked me to tell him a scary story every night when we went to sleep. I refused. Luckily Aunt Jenn is still pregnant with twins, so Harper got to sleep in the twins' crib, and Roman camped out in a pack n' play in Kiki's bathroom. Everyone was nice and cozy and slept remarkably well! The twins' room also doesn't have shades, so Harper woke up every morning shouting "lights! cars! cars walking!" as she looked out over the Cincinnati skyline. She thought that the tiny cars driving on the bridge looked like "cars walking." It was so cute!

The girls were so excited to see each other, and despite the frequent arguments over toys, they had a great visit. We took them to the Newport Aquarium to see Scuba Santa, which is exactly what it sounds like: Santa, in a scuba suit, in an aquarium complete with an elf, his sleigh, sharks and sea turtles. It was actually really cool and we got a decent picture of it.

The next night we took them to the Children's Theater to see "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer." We weren't sure how they would do in an hour-long play, but they sat through the whole thing and even sang along to the songs! They were the most excited about the random penguin and panda bear that were in the production (yes, seriously random), and of course about Santa. I stood in the back with Roman and about 10 other moms with infants. He was really good but didn't want me to sit down!

After the show we walked to an area with a lot of restaurants and happened upon a huge crowd watching Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty repel from the rooftop of a Macy's! It was part of the Macy's Christmas Tree lighting celebration and we caught it right as Santa jumped off the roof. This picture is really blurry, but you get the idea:

We had lots of time to relax because Aunt Jenn is on bed-rest, so Portman was able to get a haircut and Jenn and I got much-needed pedicures. We were all set to go home on Monday when Harper all-of-a-sudden got really sick. We ended up taking her to the doctor and managed to miss the only flight home that day. Unfortunately they couldn't find anything wrong with her other than swollen tonsils, so it seemed like our extra night was kind of a waste. We got home Tuesday evening and Harper was still really sick. She pretty much screamed through Wednesday and Thursday, and I took her back to the doctor on Friday. Turns out she has double ear-infections. Poor baby! I talked to Jenn and Kiki ALSO has double ear infections, so I guess the girls were sharing something - just not toys!

View from the condo:

Harper and Kiki at the aquarium:

Yesterday we took the kids to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum at Dulles and it was freakin' awesome! This was our first trip to the museum and I can't believe we waited so long to visit it. Portman thinks it is the best museum he's ever been to, and Harper would probably agree with him. We got lucky and had the place to ourselves, and Harper spent two hours sprinting from plane-to-plane screaming "uhr-pain!" and "hell-copper!" Her favorite was definitely a little yellow prop-plane, and my favorite was either the space shuttle Enterprise, or the Blackbird. Both were absolutely fascinating to see up close. Harper and Portman rounded out the trip with a ride on the flight simulator. Harper has been talking about riding on the "rocket ship" all day today, and even adds a countdown to her story! Needless to say, we will be back there very soon... maybe this afternoon if the weather doesn't clear up.

About a month ago I put Roman down for his noon nap on the basement couch simply because we were down there and he fell asleep. Well, he slept really well and it kind of turned into a habit. Now he takes his afternoon nap on the couch every day, and sometimes he sleeps for up to 4 hours! It works out well because Harper naps at the same time, and being on opposite ends of the house they don't wake each other up. I've sectioned off a little corner of the sofa for him and lined it with a nice clean blanket. He loves his little bed!

And for all of the panicky parents reading this, don't worry - he can roll over just fine and is OK sleeping on his tummy! Also, I don't leave the basement while he is down there, just in case he decides to roll off.

Harper and Roman have a new "cousin!" Oliver James Sandifer was born at 1:02am Wednesday. Oliver's daddy, Tim, is Portman's best childhood friend from England, and we remain very, very close to their family. We are so happy for you guys and can't wait to meet him!!

Harper loves to dress up. We have lots of old purses and hats that we gave her to play with, and she is usually wearing something funky. This morning she put two purses over her shoulders, then declared "need hat!" She found her hat, put on two shoes - mismatched, both left feet - then got her baby stroller. She turned to us, said "bye mommy! bye daddy!" blew us kisses, and strolled her baby into the living room. She returned a few seconds later and declared "Trip! Yaya's house! See Pop-Pop! Outside pumpkin!" It was obviously a very exciting "trip."

Mismatched left-feet shoes:

The whole ensemble:

We celebrated Thanksgiving 2008 with a box of Kleenex and a nose aspirator. Both kids were sick all week with bad colds, and Portman stayed home sick on Wednesday. In addition to my usual 2 wake-up calls per night from RoRo, Harper has been waking up each night because she is having a hard time breathing. Needless to say, it's been a fun week of no sleep!

On Wednesday night we went over to Portman's mom's ("Nonna's") house in Great Falls for a pre-Thanksgiving Indian food dinner with their extended family. Nonna's parents, brother, sister and their kids were all in town for the holiday. Harper immediately latched onto Portman's 12 year old cousin, Zoe, and didn't leave her side. Zoe was so sweet to play with her and we left at 8:30 with Harper rubbing her eyes saying "more Zoe!"

Both kids were up by 6:30 on Thanksgiving morning with coughs, runny noses, and severe sleep-deprivation. I spent the morning cooking, then after 3 hours of "getting ready," we finally were on our way to Nonna's house. Harper immediately found Zoe and I didn't see her for the next 2 hours, at which point we realized that she hadn't had lunch or a nap and was on the verge of a major meltdown. Portman ended up laying down with her in the basement and they napped together. It was very cute.

The good thing about having lots of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins around is that I didn't have to hold RoRo all day! He had a long nap in the morning but was kind of grumpy and having a hard time falling asleep in the afternoon. He finally fell asleep in Portman's cousin Bennett's arms, then was transferred to his Aunt Karen:

The nap was short-lived, and as I was changing his diaper he put my finger in his mouth and... ta-da... teeth! No wonder he was so uncomfortable! I took some pretty terrible photos, but I put them on Smugmug anyway. Here are a few more highlights:

RoRo and his great-grandparents, Gaga and Pop-Pop:

"White Elephant" gift exchange with all 19 of us. Harper played the elf:

Today I went to Trader Joe's. I couldn't find a spot in the parking lot. I had to park 6 or 7 rows away from Trader Joe's and walk across the K-Mart parking lot to get there. Once I got into the store, it was completely packed. I did my shopping, then waited in the checkout line with 4 people in front of me. My total bill was about $70 and I left with 3 very full bags of groceries.

After Trader Joe's I went to Whole Foods to get a few other things. I was able to park right in front of the store in the first spot in front of the door. There were probably only 20 other people shopping. I got 4 things, went to an empty checkout line and paid... $50. For FOUR things. And this is why I love Trader Joe's.

I told Portman my story when I got home and he immediately said "oh interesting, so Trader Joe's must be counter-cyclical." That's my budding economist :)