Alexis at Two Months

Alexis is two months old today and we thought we'd share some observations and thoughts. She continues to be a very laid back baby. She loves going in her swing -- when she's in there she looks around and smiles. She also smiles when she sees herself in the mirror. Here she is wiggling around in our bed.

She's been sleeping 6-8 hours at night and goes to bed real late -- usually after 11 PM.

Evan really likes Alexis and she lets him hug her. It's very cute. We're glad she is part of our family.

Baking Cookies

With the holidays upon us Jill has taken to baking tons and tons of cookies. On this particular batch Evan helped out. He's rolling out balls of peanut butter cookie dough and later put chocolate chips on top of them. H

Jill made something like 12 batches of cookies this year for us and to share with our friends. Yum.

Evan, Alexis and the mobile

Alexis is really into her mobile, just like Evan was at her age. Evan doesn't want to get left out of the fun so sometimes he hops into the crib with Alexis and they watch it together.

Evan has been very sweet with Alexis (this is a pretty big change from ignoring her which had been his MO for quite some time). He wants to hold her, play with her and she even reads stories with him before he goes to bed at night. I figure this will last until she eats one of his toys, but that's OK. For the time being, it's great to see him taking such an interest in her.

Breakfast with Santa

Jill found a "breakfast with Santa" event this year and it sounded like fun. It gave us a reason to get Evan and Alexis all dressed up.

Here we all are at our table with The Big Guy. Evan was very excited to see him.

He was even more excited when he got to top his waffle and french toast with whipped cream, M&M's and syrup. What a morning!

Our First Live Tree

We decided that this would be the year we tried out a live Christmas tree. After thoroughly looking through the selection at the local garden center, here is what we wound up with.

It took a few weeks to get it lit properly and just the other night we pulled out the ornaments and decorated it. We thought that Evan would be into hanging ornaments with us this year but he had no interest. Even without Evan's help I think it turned out great.

Bellevue Botanical Gardens

Last year some friends tipped us off to a large light show at a local garden. We went again this year and Evan was way more into the light display than he was last year.

Here's Evan and his friend Liam.

And here's Jill, Alexis, Zoe and Phoebe.

Gingerbread Houses

A local hotel has architecture firms build gingerbread houses each year. We decided to check it out and some of them were quite impressive.

What was truly exciting was that we found someone to take our picture as a family and we wound up with a picture of us all looking at the camera!

There was also another hotel we visited that same day that had a teddy bear suite all decorated up. I'm not sure what we expected it to be but we only stayed for a few minutes. Here's Jill and Alexis by one of the big bears.

Alexis Update

I know I'm a bit late on this one - things have been busy. Alexis turned one month on Thanksgiving. We took her to the doctor's office the next day. Despite the massive amounts of food she spits up, she has grown. She was 22 inches (we hear the length measurement isn't very accurate at this age but we'll go with it). She weighed 10 lbs 1 oz. For you mathematicians out there she has grown 1 1/2 inches and has gained almost 2 pounds. Alexis continues to be a very sweet baby. She likes to cuddle and often curls up in a ball on our chests and goes to sleep. She is sleeping longer during the nights (knock on wood). Alexis makes lots of baby noises like she is talking. She is looking at people and objects more and is tracking them with her head. She seems to like music. Even Evan, who has been very wary of her, is appearing to come around "the Lexis " or Lexi as he calls her. We have caught him kissing her and patting her. Here is a video and some recent pics of Alexis.