I can't believe that it's the 10th of Janaury already. It seems like we haven't recovered from the Christmas holidays just yet. It's back to the real world for us, and that begins with John starting to travel again. This time he is headed to Pittsburgh to work with a reputable ketchup company. He checked the weather, and the temperature won't get above 25 for the first week. At least here, I can rest assured that we'll only see 25 degrees one or two times in the next week, and we may even see 65 degrees a couple of times. The weather is doing some crazy stuff. Today we have rain again. We need it.

Anabelle is saying more and more words thanks to the peer pressure from Cousin Marlee. Marlee is a machine and will repeat anything you ask her to say. I am very proud I taught her to say ta-tas and tooshie! She would squat and bounce a little when she said tooshie. How cute! Anabelle's favorite two words are "eat" and "milk." She really emphasizes the 'k' in milk. She also likes to say book and does the same with the 'k' in that word, too.

This morning, a little milk dribbled out of her sippy cup, she got a towel from the kitchen, and wiped it up! John and I could not believe what we saw! I hope that trend continues, and she's neat and clean with everything. Maybe that will help eliminate the stains on her clothes. She refuses to wear a bib, and everything she eats somehow ends up on her shirt, pants, and head (occassionally).

Emma Rose has two new baby giraffes that Santa left for her in her stocking. She named them Grape and Giraffe. When Auntie Cathy handed out party horns for Uncle Eric's mini-surprise birthday party, Emma Rose was in love. The new name for Giraffe became Party Horn. She has been consistent with that name ever since. Today, we played puppet show, and Grape and Party Horn were two of the main characters. She can also tell them apart. Since they are identical twins, that's quite impressive.

Emma Rose has also started to insist that she put her own hair bow in her hair. She misses most of the hair the hair bow should hold out of her eyes, but this is one more step toward independence. She's growing up so fast!