Bringing in the New Year with a BANG...

...Or with some Roses!!! On New Years Eve Juan came home from work with a dozen roses for me. What a sweetheart! Love you baby!
We had a nice New Year's Eve night together. Juan finally got to be home on New Years Eve. We put Leyna down and stayed up and watched "Dark Knight" and then had some sparkling cider and went to bed. Poor Juan had to wake up at 6am the next morning and we ended up not getting to bed til almost 2am. What a trooper!

The cutest pic of Leyna with her daddy before she went to bed.

New Year's Kiss

Happy New Year!!!

Baby's 1st Christmas

Luckily, after staying up real late Christmas Eve, we got to sleep in til almost 11 am. It was so nice. We had a very good Christmas. Santa was very nice to all of us. I think we were all surprise with what we got. I didn't take a whole lot of pics, but my big surprise was a diamond Journey necklace. We ate some delicious cinnamon rolls and canela (cinnamon tea) while we opened presents. We were so excited for Leyna to open presents because she had already found presents under the tree and opened them before Christmas. She wouldn't really tare them open like we thought she would. Of course she wanted to do it when she wasn't supposed to, but when we wanted her to she didn't want to as much. She was still very cute to watch though.

Leyna's first Christmas ornament

We had a hard time finding an ornament for her so I decided it would be fun to make one. It's her handprint in clay with her name on it and a pink bell that says Baby's 1st Christmas 2008. I'm gonna make all our kids 1st Christmas ornament like this. It's a nice keepsake.

Family picture, in our new Christmas pajamas, before opening presents

Looking in her stocking. Doesn't she look so excited? I love her expressions in these pictures

Ready to open presents

And now the most exciting present!!!! A bouncer! She loved it!!!
After-math of Christmas morning

Another family pic after opening presents

Christmas night Brooke, Eric and Alaura came over for a fabulous Ham dinner, that I made (I was very proud of myself). Then we exchanged presents.

We got both the girls ready for bed and I just had to get a pic of the two of them in their cute cuddly pajamas. Neither of them would really cooperate for the picture.

Christmas Eve

For most of the month of December we were out of town in Yuba City for Juan's job. We drove home the night before Christmas Eve, Dec. 23. We didn't get home until after 4am that morning. When we got home I put Leyna in her bed and she was not happy. I left and shut the door for a few minutes and for some reason went back to check on her...I hate letting her cry herself to sleep, but that's kinda what I've had to do lately. Anyway, thank goodness I went back in her room. She was standing up in her crib holding onto the side. She had just figured out this whole standing up thing so I hadn't put her crib down yet so she was standing pretty high. There was NO WAY I was gonna let her sleep in her crib like that. By this time it was 5am. and we had get the screw drivers out and move her crib down. What a night! We finally got to get to sleep. That day we had to do a lot of our Christmas shopping still. After all that was done we headed out to see Juan's Family. They celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve and open presents at midnight. I had originally not planned on staying out that late, but we did...and Leyna was up the whole time too, poor baby. She was really good though and had a lot of fun "opening" presents.

Here she is in her bed. She isn't even standing up in the picture, I got the camera too late to catch her.

Building Leyna's BIG Christmas present

Mommy's little side kick helping out

With Juan's family...Her Tia (aunt)

With her cousin Isaiah

Mommy and her baby girl

It's MIDNIGHT!!!!

Let the presents begin!
Leyna was diffidently more interested in what was on the outside that what was inside

Juan opening the GPS Navigation we got from his brother. Thanks Raul!

With her Tio (uncle)

Play with all the trash on the floor

A Family Pic

Goodnight! Can't wait to see what Santa will bring in the morning!

First Visit to Santa

We didin't know what to expect with Leyna sitting on Santa's lap. She has started recognizing what a "stranger" is. She'll smile for strangers until they try taking her from mommy or daddy. We were very surprised when Juan put her on Santa's lap she didin't even care. She was just smiling at us and looking up at Santa. I was just waiting for her to pull his beard, but she never did. Santa was nice and gave her a candy cane which made Leyna very happy. We let her play with it not thinking she would be able to get to the candy through the wrapper, but boy were we wrong! When she wouldn't take the wrapper out of her mouth for nothing we kinda figured she was getting a little more than the wrapper, and sure enough she was.

Daddy taking Leyna to Santa

See that cute smile
I'm so bummed this picture with her looking at Santa turned out blurry... =(

If you look close you can see all the red drool in the candy

She's reaching for the candy cane. I took it away to try and get her to look at the camera.

Leyna 7 months old

On Dec. 22, 2008 Leyna turned 7 months old. In the last month Leyna has been learning a lot. She has discovered that she can climb up things. This was pretty funny, but also scary, seeing her try to climb on everything. She still isn't crawling though. She gets up on all fours and rocks then just plops right back down and does the army crawl. She has tried crawling a couple times on her own but won't keep doing it. I thought babies usually crawl before they start climbing on things. She seems to have that backwards. =) She is also learning some sign language. She knows how to say more and we are working on learning how to do please and nurse/milk. We will start others as time goes on. She has started getting very opinionated and vocal. She use to be so mellow and calm, but has shown us a different side now. This is not a bad thing though. It shows that she is learning and getting a mind of her own. She loved trying to "figure things out". She is always getting into something and making messes too. She is just learning so much each day and we are enjoying watching all the new thing she is learning and doing.

As soon as we got home from Utah we put up our Christmas tree. Leyna loved it! Especially the beads. I couldn't keep them on the tree for more than a few minutes. It was fun watching her play with them though.
Here she is with her new favorite toy that Mamma let her have when we left Utah. Thanks mom, she loves it!

With Grandma eating a teething biscuit for the first time. She really liked it!

Trying to figure out how to get up...

Climbing on her BumboShe looked like she was trying get in it.

I thought she was gonna end up doing a head stand in it...
Trying to figure out how this box works. I think she eventually ended up biting a piece off. She loves paper or boxes. I have a difficult keeping them away from her. She will find them anywhere.

Here she is doing "more" in sign language. I was feeding her cereal puffs because that was the only way I could keep her happy while I was taking these pictures.

Not very happy

We got to go visit Daddy at work and see what an oil rig looks like up close.

She loves driving the car! This was probably one of the only times we got some kind of a reaction from the food we fed her. Can you guess what it is? PEAS. She wasn't very interest at the time, but has ate them since. She is a very good eater, not picky at all...I better knock on wood. =)

Leyna in her pretty Christmas Dress. Isn't she just too cute?!?

Happy 7 months baby girl!