All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth...

...my two front teeth, my two front teeth.

Yes, folks, Aria has a 2nd (bottom) tooth just popping through. And after a couple of rough days (lots of fussiness), she seems to be feeling much better.

The holidays were full of Aria developments, most notably that she's now crawling, pulling herself into a standing position and sitting herself up from a laying down position. What a difference a couple of weeks make! Our girl's also started dancing to music and mimicking us a lot more, singing back to us what we sing to her (La, la la, la la) and trying to repeat words. Most words come out as some variation of DaDa; for example, "Shadow" comes out "DaDuh", but the wheels are definitely turning.

Aria's first Christmas was filled with hustle and bustle. In order to have time to do our family Christmas, not cut into Aria's naptime and still get to my dad's Christmas lunch on time, we opened gifts as soon as she got up on Christmas morning. At 7am. I don't remember the last time I got up that early to open gifts; for many years (if not always) I've pushed the gift-opening as late as possible, wanting to sleep in. (There's a great gift - extra sleep.) But this year, sleepy-eyed and in desperate need of caffeine, we began a new tradition =).


I think the whole gift-opening thing was a bit overwhelming for Aria. She was most interested in the tissue paper and boxes which we kept taking away from her, much to her dismay, as she would chew them to the point of disintegration. Yum, paper... She received some very cool gifts, though, among them wooden rattles and a little wooden wagon she can pull around, a musical, tri-lingual octopus and a brightly colored, oh-so-soft elephant, a handmade Peruvian llama, a couple books, some awesome clothes and even a CD of beautifully soothing lullabies. Aria's now played with and chewed on all the toys (and a little on the books), giving them all the official Aria Seal of Approval.