December 29 - Stitched with Love

Happy Holidays! We traveled to Tampa for the holiday and Julia had a fabulous first Christmas. She was showered with presents from both grandmas, grandpa, her aunts, uncles, cousin, friends and neighbors. In addition to books, ornaments, stuffed animals, clothes and toys, Julia received some special homemade gifts from Nonni, Aunt Katherine and Grandma. She is so lucky to have such talented, crafty family members! Who knows, maybe she has the sewing gene as well (it skipped me!).

'My First Reading Quilt' from Nonni

Embroidered plaque from Aunt Katherine

1930's Replica Quilt from Grandma

To make the holiday even more special and memorable, Julia also pushed herself up for the first time using her arms (she hates tummy time and usually just lays there screaming) AND she rolled over from her stomach to her back!! She also 'found' her feet (she found her 'legs' last week and has been moving them around like crazy). She is so cute, she was holding onto her little piggies most of the carride home this weekend. We are so proud of our little bean!

Julia also 'found' her tongue last week and sticks it out at every opportunity (she even tries to stick it out while she is sneezing and coughing..which it is a tad difficult). She tries to put everything in her mouth and loves to pick up toys and thrown them to the ground. So cute!

December 22 - First Meal

Our little bean enjoyed her first bites of rice cereal this past weekend. She had a few bites on Saturday and a few more Sunday. She seems like to like it but hasn't gotten down the whole tongue and swallowing motion yet. She does open her mouth real wide though for the spoon!

In other Julia news, we officially switched to a regular stroller for neighborhood walks. We've been using a frame that our carseat snaps into (which is a fabulous product, I highly recommend it for anyone with a new baby) but now that she can hold her head up on her own and sit up (with a little assistance), she wants to see where she is going. She LOVES the regular stroller!!

December 19 - Rice Cereal, Baby!

Can you believe Christmas is less than a week away? I mailed our holiday cards yesterday but the only gift I've gotten so far is for my fabulous niece Victoria. So...Nonni and Grandma, you may get yours after the holidays. I'm sorry!! The month slipped away from me.

So the Yamo family has had a pretty terrific week. Our friends Chris and Kerry visited from south Florida last Saturday along with our friend Ben, while Grandma and Aunt Katherine came to visit on Sunday. I wish we had more time with everyone, but it was still great to hang out and catch up (I also wish we took some photos of Julia with Aunt Katherine, I realized we didn't get any after she left!! So Aunt Kat, that means you need to come back super soon and visit your favorite niece!).


Yesterday marked our 4 yr wedding anniversary (J.D. suprised me with 2 dozen roses, they are absolutely breathtaking!!) and Julia's 4mon birthday. She had her 4mon check-up this morning and she is doing great. She has a clean bill of health (no more ear infection, woo hoo!) and we can start introducing food (rice cereal, then veggies, then fruit is what our pediatrician recommended). Our ped was also impressed by how strong Julia's neck and legs are and how much control she has.

December 14 - Say Cheese

December....this month invokes visions of cold winter nights, warm sweaters, snowmen, skiing and hot chocolate by the fireplace. Since we live in Florida and I can't partake in (what I would consider) traditional winter festivities around holiday time, I settle for the next best things-decorating a fabulous tree and creating a nice holiday card. Okay-I admit that filling out holiday cards never used to be a super exciting activity, but with our recent addition, I could not wait to get started!

I'm a tad embarrassed to admit that I started brainstorming picture poses before Julia was even born. I had some great ideas: put Julia in a stocking so just her arms and head were sticking out [she is way to big for that]. Another idea was to pose her with Amelia and Guinness: Jules with a Santa hat, the pooches with reindeer antlers [however, thinking this one through..I'd never successfully posed the dogs together, so thinking I could do it with props AND an infant was probably a little lofty). I was still trying to figure out something cute when Julia received two holiday outfits: a beautiful dress from Nonni Cook ('nonni' means grandparent in Italian, my mother prefers this over the traditional 'grandma' or 'nonna') and an adorable Santa suit from Great Grandpa. She also received a really cute knit cap from Grandma Yamo that is kind of holiday-ish. So-I thought to myself-no problem, I'll just dress Julia up and snap some photos; it will be easy! Well-as you can imagine, it was anything but easy. Julia was not a happy camper in the dress and by the time I got around to taking her photo in the Santa outfit and the hat, she had (and still has) an ear infection and cold. So between her sneezing, watery eyes and just plain not feeling well..it wasn't the photo session I had envisioned.

Anyhoo-these are a few pictures that I didn't use for the holiday card (you will have to wait to see what those are..I plan to mail them out this week) but I still think Julia looks really cute in all of them. I'm also including a recent shot from bath time, I can't resist, she is such a cutie!!

And our little bean is on antibiotics. She hates them, but she is doing much better.

And we got our tree today and are in the process of putting on the lights. Well..JD is putting the lights on. It is a Yamo family tradition to wrap each branch with lights so it takes 15+ strands of lights and a lot of time!! After JD gets all the lights on, I add the ornaments. I'll definitely post some photos once it is totally done!

December 12 - Riddle Me This

What do the following things have in common?

• 1 large bag of hoagie rolls


• 1 cantalope [uncut]


• 5 uncooked ears of corn


• 1 box of instant grits


• 1 slice of banana bread


• 1 box of tampons


• 1 loaf of bread


• 1 bag of sugar

Scratching your head? Have you figured it out yet?? Come on..wager a guess!

Okay, okay. I'm sure the suspence is killing you. I'll give you a few hints...long black hair...obsessed with fetching...slightly arthritic....yep, I am talking about G-Man!!

We always knew Guinness had an obsession for fetching. Whenever anyone comes to our house one of the first things we say is "Do not throw the ball, he will not stop." (we are not exaggerating) We also knew he loves bread, so we try to keep food out of his reach. What we didn't know-he is pretty thrifty and sneaky about other food and misc items as well. He is very smart..we've never seen him so much as jump on on the counter or sniff the garbage while we are home.

His latest conquest was the bag of sugar. To get that, he had to pull out a bin full of dry goods and dig to the bottom of it (there were other things piled on top of the sugar). Then, he put the bin back were it originally was!! I probably wouldn't have known he ate it except he left a few scraps of sugar bag laying around (and had a few specs of sugar stuck in his beard). Well-after this latest incident (which required a lot of cleaning..we don't want ants and bugs!) we decided he can't be loose in the house when we aren't there. He is just too sneaky! Well-yesterday we put in the crate (it was raining, otherwise we would have put him outside) and the little devil somehow escaped out of the crate TWICE!! Sneaky AND one smart pooch!

So, if you have seen previews for the movie 'Marley and Me'..Guinness is giving Marley a run for his money!!

December 2 - Happy Belated Turkey Day

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving, ours was a ton of fun! Greg, Jill and Victoria stayed over last week on their way to Miami and it was great having both girls at the house. But I think Amelia had the best time of all-she fell in love with Victoria and could not stop giving her 'puppy kisses.' She also wanted to follow Victoria around (V's a fast crawler these days) and a few times looked like she was protecting her (Victoria would be standing next to the couch and Amelia would be sitting right next to her. We tried to get a photo but they moved too quickly).

We piled everyone into the Honda and drove to Miami Wednesday evening. We avoided the highway and took a back road until we hit the turnpike, which added a little
time to the overall drive, but avoided traffic. Julia slept most of the way and we were concerned she wouldn't sleep that night (we got in around 1am) but after a quick bath, she fell asleep.

As always, we all had a fab time in Miami.

Julia was psyched to see the family, including Pat, Cindy and Myron (Craig's mom, sister and her new boyfriend). She also finally met her uncle Bryan, who flew in from Salt Lake City, and cousin Morgan, who drove up from Naples. Last but not least, she met her animal cousins Brownie (chocolate lab) and Pearl (horse).

In addition to the amazing Thanksgiving feast, we had a picnic lunch in the Everglades National Park, went for a nature walk, visited

the horse farm as well as Brian and Craig's farm. Amelia and Guinness were super excited to play with Leyna all weekend and got in plenty of exercise (they are still recovering).

Overall, we had an amazing time. The ride home was a little rough (we got stuck in horrible traffic around Orlando..the typical 5h drive took 8.5h) but Jules did great in the car.

Special thanks to Brian and Craig for hosting a fantastic feast!!

T-23 days to Christmas...time to gear up and start shopping!