Ella just came from the doctor. She was an excellent sport about the vaccines. And is super healthy and right on track. 25lbs and 33″ tall and cute as a button.

I realized as I looked at Ella’s shoe collection that maybe she has enough. These are all her shoes that currently fit her little feet. How can you resist buying little itty bitty shoes? Apparently, I can’t.

I may have mentioned before that Ella loves a new song. It’s “Single Ladies” by Beyonce. I can’t explain it. But I finally caught her dancing on video. And here for your viewing pleasure, is my single baby.

So, I was just thinking today of how rapidly Ella is picking up words. Off the top of my head, these are her latest

Mama
Dada
Dado (originally meaning Milo, our dog, but now applies to all dogs)
Ma, meaning mas or more. Most time she sounds like the birds from Finding Nemo
Cracker (once using this to point out her grandfather….)
Ella (loves to point at her picture or reflection and exclaim ELLA!)
Agua — new one, still ironing it out
Cuckah, we taught her this word to try to keep her from licking Milo’s toys or people’s shoes
Thank you (used properly too!!)
Uh-oh (first actual word used in context)

Okay – fair warning, this is going to be a photo heavy post. I was finally organized enough to get all of our photos uploaded last night, even if it took until midnight! But there are a lot of great ones. This holiday we stayed home. San Francisco is delightful at the holidays, mainly because it’s deserted. You can park anywhere! We seriously thought about driving around the city just to park. That must sound strange to anyone who doesn’t live in a big city and doesn’t understand how precious and rare parking is.

We kicked off the holiday season by attending the Kessler’s annual cookie party. Ella has a recent love of dogs, or “dados,” as she calls them. This night she got to meet Tatanka.

In this picture Shawn is holding Tatanka back. Because we found out quickly, he is much stronger than Milo, and kept knocking Ellie over. At one time he jumped up, knocked her through Alex’s legs (he was standing behind her to prevent such an occurrence) and the throw was so powerful it took out a barrette and a shoe!

Last year we splurged for a family membership to the California Academy of Sciences. What a great buy. It’s only a few blocks away, so we can just pop down and check out a few things and head home whenever Ella has had enough. It opened in late September, and the crowds have been unbelievable. But Sundays from 10-11am it’s members only hour. This usually means lighter crowds, but still pretty heavy. The Sunday before Christmas – empty! It was fantastic. We roamed around checking out all the sites we never had time for before. We even caught the planetarium show (although Ella didn’t appreciate it, and finally fell asleep). Here are some photos from that delightful crowd free hour (don’t worry, at 11 the floodgates opened and people poured in).

I took of the 24th and 26th so we could have a nice long weekend together. We started things off right on Christmas Eve by having breakfast at Tartine, arguably the best bakery ever. Ever.

We haven’t let Ella watch television hardly at all. But this year we decided to let her watch one of Alex’s holiday favorites “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.” She loved it!

That night I made a big Christmas dinner. I made a rack of goat (delicious, like lamb but not so fatty), roast carrots, green beans, and potato/broccoli mash.

Then a family picture before we sent Ellie off to bed.

Christmas morning we woke up late! 9am!!! Delightful. We took Ella out to see this:

She walked up, looked at the tree and gifts, then grabbed a book and brought it to Daddy.

Maybe next year she’ll be more excited! But she enjoyed opening her gifts.

After presents we had our traditional breakfast of crepes with bananas and nutella. Delicious!!

After a morning nap we took the whole family for a walk.

The rest of the day we mainly just hung out together. Ella and Milo are such good friends.

Somehow he found his way into her toy box. Crazy dog.

One of Ella’s presents this year was more swimming lessons, and a new swimsuit. We put them both to the test on Sunday at La Petite Baleen.

Well, there you have it. Holidays at our house, in nutshell – a large nushell, but jus the same…. Whew, I’m exausted.

I have been slow in uploading pictures from December. I started the process this morning, but I think I have about 200 to upload, so it wasn’t really a project I could finish before I left for work. But I was able to get a couple pictures and some videos, so here’s an update from December.

Every Saturday we go to the Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Plaza. It’s the best in the summer, but even winter brings great finds. Ella especially enjoyed carrying the pomelo.

Here we all are waiting for the bus in the rain. Lots of our families have been having major snowstorms. But here in SF, winter brings only rain.

I’m not sure of the context of this next photo, but it is very Lord of the Flies-esque.

We took Ella to Pizzeria Delfina. She was most excited to see herself. Lately anytime she sees a picture of herself, or her reflection she points and exclaims “ELLA!”

And to end this random smattering of photos and stories, here are two videos. The first is of Ella’s new favorite game, “Daddy Elephant” where she rides around on his back.

And the other is Ella feeding Milo (who she calls Dado, kind of a hybrid of “dog” and “milo” – and now all dogs are dados).