It's All About Coco

It's All About Coco
The Love Of Our Life

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Coco Walking around in the house.

We are considering Coco's first walk to be January 18th. Victor was on the phone in our bedroom and Coco walked about 10 feet. He almost fell over. She was pretty tentative the following week, but a little more that a week later she was walking long distances holding things and squatting down to pick things up. Here she is on January 29th.



Here is a link to her scooting around the house.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Christmas in Rye

It was a very special holiday season for us this year, if not the best that Victor and I have spent together. Last year it was difficult for us to relax because Coco was due in early Feb and we were getting ready to leave for LA on Jan 4th 2010. We were glued to our phones since Kira had been early with her previous pregnancies and we were very concerned about missing Coco's birth. Before last year, we had spent every Xmas since 2003 in Florida, which we love, but it just isn't the same as being in a cold, wintry environment.

As soon as our guests left from Thanksgiving dinner and everything was cleaned up, I went down into the basement and started gathering up all the Xmas stuff. Mariah Carey's holiday album was on repeat on our ipod docking station for about two weeks (until Victor started going a little crazy and added a few more holiday tunes to the shuffle). We had two trees, a real one outside and the fake one was inside. Last year, they were both inside, but Victor expressed concern about Coco eating the tree fallings, so I agreed to put it outside. The outside was decorated with about 20 strands of lights.
On Christmas Eve, we went up to Glastonbury CT to visit at my aunt Lil's house. My mother's mother's parents emmigrated from Poland, settled in Glastonbury, and had 9 children, most of whom stayed in Glastonbury. I used to joke that I was somehow related to half the town. We always went to my great-grandmother's house on Xmas eve as a kid, as now the family meets at Aunt Lil's, who lives next door. Santa always visited when I was a kid since there were always a large pack of kids that were believers. A couple of years ago, Santa stopped coming, but when Mom confirmed that Coco was coming, she went into the basement of Lil's house and found the Santa outfit. Coco was a little freaked out at first (as you can see from the pic - yes, that is my mother), but she ultimately warmed up. There was a great turnout of about 40 relatives, many of whom I had not seen for 10 years.

Granny Self arrived on 12/20. She was a huge help watching Coco and helping us prepare Christmas Dinner. We had about 16 people over for brunch and about 15 over for dinner. Only about half of our guests were able to stay for both. It was a great format since most of our family was able to stop by at some point during the day. Best of all, we didn't have to travel anywhere with Coco and she could nap whenever she felt like it. She took two very long naps on Xmas day, so she was very well rested and able to be her charming self.

Coco had a blast ripping open the presents! We were overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends and family with all of the gifts that Coco received. It took about two hours to open everything, and about two days to assemble everything (although we are not done yet).





Believe it or not, these matching outfits were Victor's idea! I couldn't believe it when he came home with them. (I thought I was supposed to be the holiday geek??) At first I wasn't really into it, but we ended up having a lot of fun. Granny Self told me I looked like a convict.





The day after Christmas we had a massive blizzard. It gave us a great excuse not to leave the house for three days, which was incredible. It was a hassle getting all the snow cleaned up, but seeing our Xmas tree filled with snow was magical and made it all worthwhile!!



















December 2010

Coco turned 10 months on December 4. It is amazing how fast she is changing. She has been sleeping very well with usually a good solid 11 hours at night and two solid naps that are between 1-2 hours each. That might be becuase she is getting so much exercise. She is not walking yet (as of the date of this post), but it feels like it is going to be any day now. She will stand on her own and balance for a few seconds at a time. She has no problem walking if she is holding on to someone's finger. She also loves the walker and loves to chase Poppy around the living room while sitting in it.


I went to San Francisco the second week of December for work and when I came back Coco starting doing this full mouth laugh. It is so funny to watch. She gets so silly! Here Daddy is practicing some cheerleader moves with Coco from his UVA days.

We had a pretty serious blizzard in the Northeast towards the end of December which kept us cooped up in the house quite a bit. I decided to get Coco some fresh air. It was still very windy and the snow was blowing around quite a bit. Coco kept trying to catch the snow with her tongue.


We went over to Weehawken to see our friends Kellen and Patricia who just had a baby named Olivia in September. Coco is normally pretty rough with kids that are smaller than her (pulling noses, hair, etc), but fortunately she was pretty gentile with Olivia. Here they are holding hands...so sweet!


The other shocker when I was away in San Fran the second week in December was that Coco clearly started saying words. We were sitting in the living room and Coco pointed to the picture of Victor and said "Dada". I almost fell off my chair. She can also say "Nene", "bye bye", "night night", and "baba" for bottle. She is still working on "Poppy" though.



Victor went to walk Nene and Coco crawled over to the window and stood up to watch them walk away.