29. Grandpa Griff has a new camera

Baby Elle here we come!

28. Merry Christmas!

27. Like mother, like daughter

A kitty cat!

26. Bouncing

Beatrice has discovered how to make her chair bounce.

She is going to develop some ripped abs.

25. Food and drink

It is so strange to feed Bea "real" food. I have tried some of the organic jarred stuff and made some from scratch. She definitely has a preference for homemade. (Although some of the Gerber organic things are tasty. Usually, if I try something and think it is tasty, she likes it. If I think it is gross, she tends to agree.) Last night I made her some spinach and it seems to have been her favorite thing yet. (Bananas are a close second.) She looked at the bowl longingly when it was empty and I was offering her the rest of her carrots instead.

She has also started learning how to drink out of a cup. She likes to chomp on it. She also likes when I give voices to the cat and dog that adorn the sides of her mug.

Here she is trying out the drinking thing (with a nice blop of spinach leaking out of her mouth). A warning: her father said of this movie, "It kind of goes on..."

24. Christmas Tree

Every year our family goes to a Christmas tree farm and tags a tree over Thanksgiving weekend. Then, sometime in December, we go back to cut it down and bring it home. (And each year my mom--a.k.a. Grandma Fox--exclaims, "I wish we had made plans to get a live tree this year!!!" I guess you need to dig a hole in which to later plant it before winter sets in.)

This year was no exception. We went to a new farm. It was beautiful and sprawling, and on the day we went to select a tree--COLD. Beatrice and I only made it part way to the trees before deciding to turn back. So Bea's first trip to pick a Christmas tree went about as well as her first trip to pick apples. But everyone else was very pleased with the tree they picked--it was by far the best one there.

Last week Dale, Bea, and I were back up in CT, so we and Grandma Fox and Grandpa Griff made a trip to pick up the tree. The weather was somewhat milder and Bea and I were well bundled (see photo above), so this time we made it all the way to the tree.

Or rather, we would have made it to the tree.

The photo below is of Grandpa Griff hurrying ahead to the tree. And the photo after that shows what he found.

Needless to say, Grandpa Griff was not pleased. (Nor were the rest of us.) Someone had stolen our tree! (Yes, stolen--we had already paid for it and it was marked with two large, labeled tags!) Some Christmas spirit. So we had to pile back in the car and start all over. (There weren't any more nice trees at that farm. At least, none of them looked nice to us anymore.)

On the way home we passed a sign for a different tree farm. We followed it and found a cute little farm (less a farm and more a very, very large back yard planted with trees for picking). It even had crazy wheeled, jingle-belled, tree-toting carts.

Beatrice was able to help pick her first Christmas tree after all. And everyone agrees it is even nicer than the original.

23. Bundled

22. Sitting up

Beatrice has been working on sitting up for some weeks now. She has been able to do a bit of self-supported sitting (with spotting) but mostly she has needed help after a few seconds, not being very adept at self-correcting for balance. But suddenly (it seems) today she can do it!

Here is a little photo and an even better movie: