Jael's New Year

Jael finished the holiday season with a family trip to Leavenworth, a "Bavarian" town in central Washington. We enjoyed several days with Jeff's family and Jael particularly had fun seeing her cousins (and their kittens!) and being the center of attention.

Her comprehension is growing in leaps and bounds, much faster than her vocabulary. She did learn to say "Papa" on our trip and clearly associated it with Jeff's dad, which was fun. Adding to her noises, she likes to say "Vrrrrrrrrroooom!" when she sees any car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle, or pretty much anything with wheels. She's also identifying objects with people and shouted "Dada!" as she helped me unpack our suitcase today and pulled out any of Daddy's clothes.

Today she seemed to be making believe for the first time, holding a stuffed animal and making it "talk" with her rambling chatter.

One of her favorite parts of bathtime is when Daddy washes her hair, because he lays her back in the water to rinse out the shampoo. She likes to talk and hear her voice underwater. Lately she figured out that if she covers both of her ears with her hands, it sounds a little bit like bathtime!

Jael spent her second Christmas at home. On Christmas eve, she opened one present (her blocks) and in the morning, her stocking. She was a little overwhelmed when we got to Grandma's and Grandpa's to open presents, but did like ripping paper off of packages. Her big gifts were her first baby doll from Mama and Daddy, a rocking horse from Papa, and a rolling marble/ball toy from Grandma and Grandpa.

New Year's Eve Jael got to stay up until 9PM and we spent New Year's playing games, the Wii, and going to Sabbath School in the little church in Leavenworth.

Happy New Year!

Traveling

Jael's past couple of weeks have been rather exciting, but probably a bit too overwhelming! Our trip to the South was the furthest she's been from home and the longest she has been away from Daddy. She is a little trooper, though, and travels amazingly well. She slept through most of the flights, slept through much of the driving, and was very cheerful until our last day.

Some highlights of the trip for Jael included:

*Running around the airport as fast as she could in her PJs while we waited for our next flight, poking people's luggage, and smiling sweetly at all the passersby. I had five or six people ask how old she was, several mention how cute she was, and I heard one lady on the phone as we passed, saying to whoever she was talking to, "Oh, you wouldn't believe it! There's this adorable little princess running past me and she keeps laughing and waving at me!"

*Suffering her first real "owie". Mom took her along to the drinking fountain and she stuck her hand between the metal holes in a vent. But when her hand came out, it scraped the skin right off her fingers and she was bleeding all over the place. We found some bandaids at a airport shop and Jael spent the next couple hours trying to pull them off.

*Sitting next to Rosa Parks (statue), walking the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Mama, and meeting a pastor who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, AL. Maybe someday this will be as exciting to her as it was to me. :)

Trip to the South

Our internet has been too sketchy on this trip to keep up with any blogging, but we'll finally be home tonight! Here's a little glimpse of one of the places we were excited to visit this week:



The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery is where Martin Luther King, Jr. pastored in the early sixties during the bus boycott and part of the early Civil Rights Movement. After reading so much about it, it's exciting to see where these events actually happened!