It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

This past week has been a busy one, topped off with Josie randomly vomiting mangoes all over herself and her carseat on Friday and then coming down with the runniest nose in history on Saturday and today. Oh and she has four teeth coming in - all of her canines (most of her molars are all of the way in now) - including one tooth that we think might be an "extra." Anyway, needless to say, she's not been feeling herself, so we tried to stick close to home this weekend (and had to reschedule with the Haddens again - boo). Anyway, here are some highlights from this week. Likely the next post won't be until after Christmas, unless we can convince Josie to actually sit on Santa's lap next door at Macy's, in which case I'll be sure to get that one posted ASAP.

Here are Josie and Carissa (who she now calls "Sissa") just before Carissa headed off for her Winter break until (gasp!) January 12th (wow, we're going to miss her). I'll be honest, I had to take this photo so I'd have it to show Josie when she needed a "Sissa-fix" and I'm not kidding, I already resorted to that at least once. You've all heard me say it before and I'll say it again and again, I cannot even tell you how much we all love Carissa and there is absolutely no way we could survive without her. Those of you with little ones know the value of good childcare. I mean, Josie spends 25 hours a week one-on-one with Carissa and so many of the things Josie does are things that she's learned from her. At the risk of getting totally mushy, Carissa has totally helped raise our daughter and how do you thank a person enough for that?
In fact, here is one of the many tricks Carissa has taught Josie to do. Check out this super cheesy smile when you tell her to "show me your teeth." She definitely can give her Uncle Michael a run for his money with this big grin! (Get ready to pose for that one over Christmas Michael.) And, maybe I should explain this photo a bit more in case it's not obvious. This is in fact Josie wearing her bee costume over her pajamas coloring a piece of packaging paper taped to the floor one morning at about 7:30am - because heck, why not?In other Josie high-fashion moments, here she is sporting her "nothing but a onesie and my sweet acorn slippers, holding mama's lip gloss with a deathgrip" look.

And here she is all bundled up for a trip into the arctic tundra that is Cincinnati at the moment! (I didn't know this at the time I took the photo, but this was actually just minutes before something major happened. For 16 months, I've walked out the front door of the condo and carried Josie around the corner to our parking garage. She points to buses and cars and people with one hand and holds on tightly to me with the other. But, not this day. On this day, as soon as we got outside, she wiggled down by body and onto her own two little feet and insisted on walking herself all the way around the corner and to the garage. Sure, it took us 10 minutes instead of 2, but it was one of those "frozen moments" when I realized how big of a girl she is and how far we've come, her little hand wrapped tightly around my pointer finger and smiling like she had never been so proud.)

In other exciting news, here is Josie getting her very first Christmas present of 2008 from our friend Kelly! Not only did this awesome new Taggies Christmas book get a big "WOW" out of Josie, but Kelly's awesome new engagement ring got a big "WOW" out of all of us. CONGRATULATIONS KELLY AND NICK!! Now hurry up and get married so you can make babies for Josie to play with! :)

I'll leave you with some funny moments from this week. This first one is of our budding blues musician who is hilarious on the harmonica. The kazoo and recorder are pretty great too, so I'll try to get those on film soon as well. Enjoy!

This one makes me laugh due to her awesome winking skills (no joke, she loves looking in the mirror and winking at herself) and because of the sheer happiness that this wooden spoon provides. You'll see what I mean when she picks it up... Enjoy!