Crimson Tide Christmas

It was back to Bama for the Harveys this Christmas. Having flown to CT at Thanksgiving, we weren't thrilled with the idea of another cross country plane flight with Virginia, but we lived to tell the tale and had a blast!

Virginia loved spending time with Mimi, Papa, Great Granny, Aunt Liz and Uncle Dave. She especially loved Liz and Dave's dogs, Cherry and Bailey! She chased them around the house, gave them hugs, and let them lick her face.

We had the chance to do all sorts of fun activities in Montgomery as well. Zoo Lights at the Montgomery Zoo, which came complete with a petting zoo attraction, was a highlight. Virginia also loved the train at Montgomery Mall and lunch at a Chinese restaurant with the Pynes and Webbs. She finally got to meet her cousin Brice! Virginia did not particularly love the candlelight service at First United Methodist Church, however. She lost it about 5 minutes in, and I had to leave the church with her for the rest of the service. I will spare Baby Harvey readers the subsequent details, but suffice it to say that leaving daddy behind in the church caused Virginia grave concern and I had to deal with the biggest tantrum she's ever had by myself in the church parking lot.

Christmas itself was a blast. Virginia definitely figured out how to open presents herself, but soon lost interest with the sheer volume of gifts. It pays to be the only grandchild on both sides - more presents than can possibly hold your attention! Her favorite gifts included a sparkly silver purse from Liz, a musical train from Mimi and Papa, and a play camera from Janet and Rick.

In the Christmas Spirit

Thomas and I weren't sure whether Virginia would be quite old enough to "get" Christmas this year. But we are happy to report that we have an honorary elf in our house - Virginia is totally in to everything Christmasy!

Virginia can identify Santas of all varieties in pictures, decorations, etc. And when you ask her what Santa says, she exclaims "ho, ho, ho!" She also loves spotting snowmen, Christmas lights (she can correctly identify most of the colors), and gingerbread men ("ging bed man"). She is also a master at singing Silent Night and Jingle Bells. She's had a lot of practice with Silent Night, as her nanny, Kim, sings that song to her before her naps. Right around Thanksgiving, Virginia started spontaneously saying "Si nigh, ho nigh, all cahm, all bight!" Perfect timing for the holiday season, Baby V.

Virginia has also seemed to enjoy our family Christmas dance parties. When Thomas and I come home from work, we fire up Christmas carols on the radio and dance with her. She laughs and laughs when I giddy up along to Johnny Mathis's Sleigh Ride. She spins around in circles until she falls over from dizziness.

She's had quite a few holiday outings already. When I was out of town for work earlier this month, Dada and Grammy took her to the Oakland Zoo to see the lights. Apparently, she was just in awe the whole time. And Dada also took her to Thompson Street in Alameda - a place where all the houses are decorated and lit up for Christmas - and she went wild.

Unfortunately, Virginia went for the gold in the Santa Tantrum award contest when it came time to see the real Santa. She seem thrilled on the car ride over, repeating again and again that we were going to see Santa. But when faced with a real bearded guy in a dimly lit house, she panicked. We are going to try again when we get to Montgomery.

Virginia's Great Gram

Some sad news to report... Virginia's great grandmother, Jane Mack ("Gram"), passed away on November 17. We feel so blessed that in Virginia's short 19 month life, she got to take three trips to Connecticut to meet and spend time with Gram. Virginia was Gram's first great grandchild, so I know she was thrilled to see another generation of her family taking the world by storm. Gram was 93 and had 7 kids and 14 grandkids! She lived an amazingly full life, and we will miss her dearly.

The memorial service was scheduled for the Friday after Thanksgiving, so Thomas and I scheduled a last minute trip for all of us to go to Connecticut. Nearly everyone in Gram's very large family was able to attend, so we really enjoyed getting to spend time with the Mack clan. It was so nice to spend the holiday together and recount our favorite Gram memories. Virginia took every opportunity she could to keep spirits high - she was entertaining the crowd with the best of them and appeared to be totally unbothered by the dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins surrounding her at all times.

The Game

The the air has turned crisp, the leaves are turning firey colors, and I am wearing a moth-eaten Yale jersey saved from my days in New Haven. Yes, it is that day of year again, when Mother Yale pits its glorious football team against that of the finest technical college in Eastern Massachusetts. This year, we decided against watching the Game at the Yale Club, and instead hosted our own party in Alameda. Who knew that this matchup would be available to us on basic cable?!

At times the game looked like it was being played in a Pop Warner league. But that does nothing to take away from storied football tradition of the Bulldogs. A little known fact about Yale football: until recently, it was the winningest football team in the history of football. (Mostly due to the fact that it has placed the most games.) A few years ago, Michigan overtook the top spot after threatening for many years.

I will not delve into the details of the on-field play, or the final result, since both were unremarkable. What I will say is that we had a great group of Yale friends with us to celebrate, various breakfast delicacies from guests all over the bay, stiff bloody marys, and a wonderful time.

Bernadus and Big Sur

Leslie and I recently had a chance to have a little parents' getaway. Her firm had some unused rooms at the Bernadus Lodge in Carmel Valley, California, which it made available to associates. So with the help of Grammy and Pop Pop (babysitting), we snapped one up and were able to get away for some mommy and daddy time.

We made a point of visiting Big Sur, which continues to be one of the best places in California. We drank a few beers and ate lunch at Nepenthe, the Big Sur restaurant perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. By luck we wound up with the best seats in the house, right on the rail outside facing southwest into the Pacific coastline. Here are a couple pictures from our lunch.

The hotel was just what the doctor ordered. We kept it pretty simple: sitting in their warming pool, playing tennis, hanging out in our room by the fireplace, and reading and eating crackers in bed. The highlight was breakfast in our room the following morning (eggs benedict, but of course).

On the way back we made a pitstop at the Gilroy Outlets for a little early holiday power shopping unencumbered by squirmy family members. It was a great success.

Kee Kee

It is a well-known fact that Virginia loves pets of all kinds, especially kitty kitties. Basically as soon as she could learn to walk, she would treat walks down the street as her opportunity to scout for neighborhood kitties. She quickly became familiar with the kitty hotspots and now regularly insists that we visit them. (It happens that one such hotspot is the backyard of our next door neighbor, home of an crotchety old tabby cat named Touche. Virginia would trespass every day to visit him if she could.)

A while ago, when my cousin Katie Jane returned from time abroad in South Africa, she returned with a little stuffed leopard for Virginia. Over the last four or five months, it has become an essential item in the Harvey house. It is just her size and perfect for carrying around. Virginia takes it pretty much everywhere she goes. She also sleeps with it in her crib and feeds it Goldfish crackers. It is the closest we have to a family pet.

Halloween

Halloween in Alameda is awesome. An island of victorian houses, it automatically is two steps ahead of the rest of the area in getting spooky. Our neighborhood is well known for getting dressed up for the holiday, and we had been advised that we should be prepared for a crowd of trick or treaters.

Virginia, our little pirate wench, made the most of it. She did do a little trick or treating on our street, heading to the houses of a few neighbors. But for her, the highlight was actually staying at our house with us and passing out candy to visitors. I would estimate that we had over 400 trick or treaters that night. She camped out at the doorway -- which was rarely closed during the height -- and then dutifully transferred candy from our cauldron to everyone's bags. It was for her an operation in logistics, and she approached the work with the utmost seriousness.

Whiffenbabies of the World, Unite!

One of Thomas's fellow Whiffenwinks/Winkenpoofs (Spizzwinks who were also in the senior singing group at Yale), Marc Suskin, recently came to the Bay Area for a visit. And he brought along his beautiful wife, Alexa, and their 12 month old baby Sylvie!

The girls had a fantastic time playing together and baby cuteness abounded. We took the girls to a local pumpkin patch run by the Alameda firefighters and also to ride on the steam trains at Tilden Park. While the weekend had plenty of highs, it was also a comedy of errors at times. Virginia had her first urgent care visit while the Suskins were in town - she dropped a pack of Jello pudding cups on her toe, causing it to turn very blue. Then, Marc and Thomas managed to catch a stomach bug. Plus, it rained nonstop too! Despite the hiccups, we had a blast. And the parents even got a night out on the town - we attended a neighbor's Halloween bash.

18 Month Update

On 10/10/10, Virginia officially hit the 18 month mark! Hard to believe we have a 1 1/2 year old. The last few months have just been an explosion of development, and it has been so fun to watch. Here are a few random highlights of Virginia's life at 18 months:

• Virginia likes to "sing" along to songs. She knows only a couple of words to each, so she just makes noise until we get to the word she knows. Her favorite is still Twinkle, Twinkle. She knows the following words in the song "how," "up above," "hi", "di" (diamond). She ends each song with vigorous clapping and celebration.
• Virginia officially has an Elmo obsession. Somewhere along the way, she began to conflate Elmo with another Sesame Street character, Abby, and she refers to both of them as "Abba." Its strange because she can definitely tell them apart, but she just pronounces their names the same way. She begs for "Abba" and points to the TV a lot, so we have to keep her out of the family room and keep the entertainment center doors closed a lot.

• Virginia can identify almost all of the major Sesame Street characters: In addition to Elmo and Abby, "Cook, Cook" is Cookie Monster, "Osga" is Oscar the Grouch, "Bur" is Bert, and "Go" is Grover.
• Virginia loves pillow forts. We keep all the extra pillows from our bed in corner in our room and she loves burying herself in them. After getting out of the bath, her favorite thing to do is to run into our room stark naked and collapse in the pillows. Luckily she hasn't had an accident on them!
• Virginia has graduated from the toddler tub to the regular tub. Bath time is full of lots of exploration in the big bath now.
• Virginia is definitely showing the early signs of interest in potty training. When we change her diaper or she sees a toilet, she proudly exclaims "poo, poo." She even will help wipe her bottom during a diaper change, which is hilarious.
• Thomas's best efforts at turning Virginia into a little tomboy appear to be succeeding. I'm sure we'll have our princess stage in the coming months, but for now, Virginia is interested in planes, trains, and cars! We live near Oakland airport, so when the fog is bad, the airplane flight paths will sometimes be changed to pass over our area. Virginia loves looking up in the sky and seeing a plane fly overhead. Her airplane noise is "shoooo," and she accompanies it with a cute little hand gesture that looks like a plane soaring. Trains are probably her favorite, though. She has a Thomas the Tank Engine toothbrush, so the evening bedtime routine is filled with lots of "chugachuga" and "TomTom."
• Animals are still a major obsession as well. Virginia's nanny Kim has a cat, Funston, and also recently got a bulldog named Charlie. Since the weather was so hot earlier this month, Kim has taken Virginia out to her condo complex to go swimming in the pool and to visit Charlie and Funston. Virginia comes home raving about the "kitty, kitty" and the "daw." And she loves "hops" as well (bunnies):

• Virginia likes to talk and Skype with her Mimi and Papa in Alabama. She remembers their names from their visits last month and now associates all computers and telephones with them. She will hold up a telephone to her ear, and when I ask who she is talking to, she responds with gusto: "Mimi!" I will ask "who else," and she'll say "Papa!"

We had our 18 month appointment with Dr. Oken recently, and our little V isn't so little anymore. She is 80% for height and 60% for weight (33 1/4 inches and 24 lbs, 10 ounces).

Picking Pumpkins at the Patch

Virginia decided it was time to get into the Halloween spirit and took us with her on her first visit to a pumpkin patch this week. She invited her friend Natasha along to maximize baby cuteness. Plus, Natasha's parents are real Halloween experts. Natasha's dad Dan was unfortunately under the weather, so her mom Irene came along alone.

The girls loved running among the pumpkins and even shared a pony ride. Virginia also took a ride on the train -- which she loved until it stopped. We were then treated with a full blown terrible twos tantrum, which is still kind of amusing to us because Virginia is just starting the process. I'm sure once she's had 100s of such tantrums, we won't find them as amusing. She made a speedy recovery, purchased some pumpkins and went on her way.

Beth's Wedding

We had another "Thomas" join our extended family when my cousin on the Neeland side of the family married Adam Thomas on September 25, 2010. The wedding was in Wilson, NC, so Virginia got to take her first trip there. We visited lots of relatives, ate some fantastic Eastern Carolina barbecue, and watched Virginia party down at the wedding reception. The girl is a dancing machine!

Before causing various mischief on the cross country plane trip:

Loving on Aunt Liz at the bridemaids' luncheon:

Good eatin':

Receiving her musical training from Cousin Candy at an early age:

Virginia only decided to be quiet in the church AFTER the ceremony was over:

Virginia got the party started on the dance floor:

Those are some moves! (note the cheese straw in her hand)

The whole Neeland/Dunn clan!

Virginia made fast friends with the flower girl: