Talking to Mommy

Virginia sure does like playing with all the stuff in her toy box. Sometimes she gives Mommy a running commentary as to what she's doing by offering the constant refrain of "baa, baa, baa."

Up to No Good

The last month has been full of lots of changes - Virginia has mastered crawling and pulling up, has gotten her first tooth, and has started finger foods! She loves crawling into our bathroom and pressing her face against the glass of the shower door to check out what's inside. Although she was slow on the uptake on finger foods, she now loves puffs and Cherrios.

Here she is modeling a new outfit from Memaw, flashing her toothy grin, and racing away from me to get into something else.

Virginia's Latest Suitor

Virginia has been meeting more than her fair share of boys these days - she's a hot commodity! After meeting Johnstone last week, she has already moved onto a younger man, Griffin Guidi. Griffin is the son of Ellie Griffinger, a dear family friend of the Harveys. She and her husband live in Philadelphia these days, so we were happy to have Ellie back for a visit.

Virginia meets Johnstone

This past week, Virginia met a new pal, Johnstone. Johnstone is the six-month-old son of my best buddy from high school, Ben Flax. Ben and his wife Jean just returned from adventures in Hong Kong, where Johnstone was born. They are settling in the Bay Area and just this week are moving into a place in Lake Merritt, very close to us. We're thrilled to have them back in town. And we were especially thrilled for our babies to meet each other for the first time.

Even though Johnstone is three months younger than Virginia, he is far larger than her. Virginia clocks in about the 50th percentile, whereas Johnstone is high 90s. Here they are hanging out last weekend.

And here they are when they first met one another last week.

Virginia's Favorite Brush

Before Virginia was born, her great grandmother Gram gave her a beautiful silver monogrammed brush and comb set. Now that she has a little bit of hair, we are putting it to good use. Every night after bath time, we brush her red little head before we put her down for bed. Usually annoyed by such parental intrusions, Virginia amazingly does not object when we do this. Actually, she kind of likes it.

Virginia in Action

Back by popular demand, more video of the Worm!

Staying Busy While My Parents Work

Virginia's nanny, Kim, has been wonderful about giving us video and photo updates of Virginia's days when we are at work. Hurray for IPhones! Here are a few highlights from the past couple of weeks:

Playing catch and demonstrating her "no, no, no" head shake:

Too cool for school:

Roll Tide Baby!

Virginia and Daddy cheered the Crimson Tide on their way to the National Championship. Virginia didn't get to see the Tide pull out the big win, since she had to go to bed during the middle of the first quarter. But what she lacked in staying power, she made up for in short term enthusiasm.

New Year's in California

After a whirlwind Christmas in Bama, we headed back to California for the New Year. We didn't have to feel sad about leaving my parents because they followed us back to California two days later to see our new house. We showed them all the Alameda sights and Dad offered us some much needed advice on making little repairs to the house.

We also celebrated Christmas (again!) with the Harveys upon our return. Virginia got a red wagon from Grammy and Poppy and a glowworm from Mom and Dad.