From our home to yours, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

My favorite Santa photo….Jason blinks, Ellie is freaked out by Santa and Santa isn’t looking at the camera.  At least I look good :D

This year, I “got” Jason the special lightning edition of the PS3 slim as well as Final Fantasy 13.  We actually had to preorder the PS3 because it’s a limited edition.  Both items were officially released today and so we went to pick it up after Jason got off work.

We did the preorder at Sakuraya in Shinjuku.  Let’s just say that they must’ve invested a lot in advertisement for this much anticipated game.

Ads with Lightning from FF13 posted on every column in front of the subway exit.

This is what the storefront looked outside…

These tv screens were playing the pv of the game…

And more promotional stuff…

Here we are at home with the new present!  Jason was so happy with the pretty pink and white PS3.  Ellie tried to help him unpack it too but the pictures on the box kept distracting her.

They didn’t waste any time playing with it either.  Look at my little gamer-in-training.

The PS3 does indeed look very pretty on our tv so I’m glad we got one :)

Guess who’s 9 months today?

No, not me….though there are times I wish I was.

Ellie’s 9 months today!  Hooray!  That means that in 3 more months, she will be hitting a big milestone by turning 1!

So at 9 months, what kind of madness is she up to these days?  Well….

- She can definitely crawl and quite fast especially when she realizes that I will be walking to a different part of the room.  She can sure chase you down!

- She’s got her 2 bottom teeth!  You can see it in the picture above.  I think the top ones are coming soon.  I think I can see one of them about to peep out.

- She has absolutely no problem pulling herself up to a standing position.  In fact, she loves to do it so much that sometimes that’s all she really does.  She’d pull herself up, sit back down and then proceed to pull herself up again.  She’s really working that thigh muscle.

- She eats everything.  Paper, tissue, cardboard, meat, rice, food of all sorts… anything you give her that’s not plastic or made of metal, she will eventually break it down with her saliva and ingest it.

- She can converse in Ellie-speak.  She has mastered the sounds “ne-ne-ne”, “nai-nai-nai” and “de-de-de” with the occasional “da-da-da”.  She still “oongey” when she’s frustrated or upset but she has added a few more sounds to her vocabulary.

- Sleep or something like it….she sleeps erratically these days but she is starting to sleep for longer periods.  She can also put herself to sleep sometimes though that normally involves her crying for a while before giving up and passing out in her crib.

- She still has separation anxiety and is starting to throw tantrums….hopefully those will pass with time and discipline.  Oh yea, she still has a tendency to cry her little brains out for no apparent reason and go from a happy child to an upset one in blink of an eye.  She is quite madness these days.

- She is also quite fun to mess with these days.  I would play with her by squeaking one of her toys and making her follow the squeaking noise.  Then I’d hide the squeaker under something and squeak it a few times and she would be so confused but she will actually attempt to look for it.  It’s quite entertaining watching her little mind work.

So there you have it.  My little 9 month old running amok and causing havoc everywhere she goes.

I joined this class called “Journal your Christmas” a few weeks back. It’s essentially a scrapbooking/journaling project that documents the month of December and the first 6 days of January. I’ve been gathering materials and waiting and getting excited for this day to come for a while. So finally, December 1st has arrived!

For my first page, I made a declaration of my intent for this project. I really wanted to make this book and see it through because it is E’s first Christmas and I want to record it all. I’m hoping that it’s going to be a fun month despite her current mood.

Here’s what I have so far:

I was originally going to incorporate 2 other December daily projects (one is called “Holiday in Hand” by Jessica Sprague and the other is “December Daily” by Ali Edwards) but it might be more than I can handle.  I might actually combine it with one of them, which mostly involves me writing about my day.  I have yet to figure out if I want to just add a small page with a photo and journaling on it or if I want to put it on the back of this page….I guess I’ll have to see how tomorrow’s page turn out.