Week 48, Dec. 28 - Jan. 3

Our big news this week is that Lily started walking!! First she took a couple tentative steps, and a few minutes later she took 7 steps in a row by herself (you can download the video below). It was on Jan. 1st, too, so the new year is off to a great start!


My good friend Mark came to visit for New Year's, with his wife Elizabeth. They both had fun playing with the baby. Elizabeth was looking mighty maternal, so there might be a little Mark Jr. or Elizabeth Jr. in the near future! Mark and I and our third Musketeer, Mike (fourth picture -- I saw him at Christmas) have known each other for 23 years. Which means we're all very old now.


Here's the video of Lily walking for the first time. We are so excited and so proud of her! Mark caught this on his digital camera. The video file is very large (21 MB, 1 min. 40 sec.), but you can download it here. (You'll probably want to right-click and save it on your desktop before viewing it because it's so large.)


We took our visitors out to a buffet restaurant for dinner on New Year's Eve. Due to the large crowd, we had to improvise to find Lily a seat.


Here's what our refrigerator looked like on Dec. 31st. Notice our daughter had her own drink chilling for the evening!


We had to restrain ourselves from buying Lily presents for a while so that other people could pick out Christmas presents. But now Christmas is over, so we get to buy stuff again! We got this Pooh couch for her to sit on. It also folds out into a little bed.


This isn't a picture of Michelle being over-zealous in cleaning up the family room and tucking Lily in a storage basket. She crawled in there by herself. She had a little trouble getting out of it, but we cheered her on, and she made it.


We used to sit her in this small chair to feed her, but now she crawls into it by herself when she's playing. She's probably copying our couch-potato behavior at home.


Cheetos are a big hit with Lily. She's got one in each hand here.


Michelle bounces Lily on her leg for fun. Sometimes she crawls over to Michelle and sits on her foot, waiting for some bouncing to start.


Lily's godfather Axel sent her this white bear for Christmas, which we named Snowball. Lily likes hugging the bear, but when I sat Snowball on our daughter's recliner, she yanked him off and threw him on the ground! (Actually I don't know whether Snowball is a him or a her.)


Here are my two ladies in matching outfits!