Where to start? How about we start next door at our neighbors, the Chrismans. We have mentioned them before, but it is worth saying again how lucky we are to have them living next to us. And Callie loves Sharon and Chris.
But she especially loves when their daughter Sarah visits and brings her dog Claire. This is one of many photos that we took of Callie just squealing in delight over the mere presence of Claire in the house. Claire, meanwhile, was jealous of any attention her owner gave to Callie. It was quite a show to say the least. 
As many of you know, some of our closest friends in Lexington are Fiona, Charles and their son Iain. Iain is now ten months old and it is fun to see him and Callie actually playing together. When we gather at our house, Iain and Callie get to hang out in Callie's play corner and Callie loves to share her toys. At times this means she dumps them in Iain's lap. We are working on the "gentle" share.We're sure all you parents out there can understand that it can sometimes be difficult to get a night out on your own. Therefore we have negotiated a monthly babysitter barter with Charles and Fiona so that each couple gets at least one night out a month. January was all about both couples being able to go to the movies for the first time. So the following pictures are from the afternoon/evening Iain spent with us while his parents were enjoying "The Dark Knight".
Now that Iain can crawl, he and Callie can move around the house together. Callie is more than happy to revert back to her crawling days so the two of them can get some quality time together.
Fortunately, both kids love a good book. Here John points out some highlights from both children's parents' past through a dramatic reading of "Good Night Los Angeles". Nothing puts a kid to sleep like a parent talking about the good old days. Many of you might remember a similar picture of Callie like this about a year ago. She certainly has grown a lot since then, but she is just as interested in looking out the window at the winter wonderland in our backyard.
January 2009 brought an ice storm to Lexington that closed both UK and EKU down. Indeed, EKU cancelled classes for 4 out of the 5 days of the week. When we first moved to Lexington, we heard a lot of stories about the "Big Ice Storm of 2003". Everyone talked about it, and quite honestly, we thought they were being a bit over dramatic. Oops.
Here's the front of our house after a half day of precipation. The first was freezing rain and the second was snow. This picture makes it look kind of pretty, but underneath the snow is about two inches worth of ice. Our poor trees were not happy. And with every passing hour the branches dipped lower and lower with the weight of it all. It really was crazy to watch. When the storm had passed, thousands of trees throughout Lexington and the surrounding areas were destroyed. We got extremely lucky and none of our trees lost more than a small branch or two.
This is our backyard. Speaking of lucky, we never even lost power. Again, that was pretty amazing considering we have really big old oak trees just hovering over our power lines. Most of the people we know lost power for a day, and some of John's colleagues down in Richmond lost power for a week. However, we were ready for any trouble because Sharon Chrisman (a.k.a. our local MacGyver) hooked us up with candles, matches, and safety tips for surviving without power in an ice storm. Thankfully none of those tips were necessary.Of course, when all is said and done, there was snow on the ground and a hill nearby. We wanted to take advantage of the time together and introduce Callie to some sledding. Unfortunately, she did not enjoy the experience as much as we had hoped she would.
This picture does not truly capture Callie's general unhappiness with her time sledding. It also does not capture Sarah after her one run down the big hill where she caught air and busted her butt. Seriously, she was in pain for a couple of days. That is what we get for going sledding after an ice storm.
Fortunately the weather improved in time for a visit from Callie's Auntie Gret. Gret flew in from LA for the weekend and made the most of her time in Lexington.
Here are Callie and Gret at the water station in the Explorium in downtown Lexington. We bought a membership for the Explorium and it has been great, especially since all of the bad weather has made the outdoors less inviting. We enjoy it and were particularly pleased when even Gretchen gave it her stamp of approval. Gretchen is the director of education at the California Science Center, so she knows what she is talking about.It was so wonderful to see Gretchen and Callie spend time together. We are excited that in just a couple of weeks, Callie will not only get to hang out with Auntie Gret again, but also with Uncle Scotty and Josh.
Knowing how great a job Gret and Scotty have done raising Josh, we can only hope that their parenting rubs off on us. It certainly seemed like Callie enjoyed having Gretchen read to her. Perhaps it just felt right because she instinctively knew that Gretchen was her first out of town visitor when she was born.
We have already been to the Explorium about a half a dozen times this year, and the slide is always one of Callie's favorite stops. She loves to make sure everyone is watching before she heads down the slope. Now before any of you make judgments about the length of this particular slide, I (John) would like to point out that Callie loves all slides - and that includes going down slides at outdoor parks that should frighten a girl her age. I (John once again) am both scared and delighted that Callie appears to have inherited the fearlessness of her mother. It's a good thing most of my hair is already gray.So, apparently Callie is growing up and becoming a little person. We should not be surprised by this. And yet, every new development amazes us. She has been using some very basic sign language for quite some time now, so we have been communicating. But lately she has expanded her sign language and has thrown in some vocal work as well. It makes us happy to see her sign "thank you" to a kid who has given her a toy or "please" when she would like milk. But when she makes the sign for please and also says "please," we start to giggle. Is this really happening?
One of Callie's latest words is "baby". Auntie Gret brought Callie the baby in the picture to the left. And one day, Callie just started saying "baby" and going to get this little doll. What has been even crazier is that she keeps trying to feed the baby and give her milk. This picture was taken in the morning, and Callie had to have her baby sitting next to her for breakfast. Before we talk about the last picture and end this post, we need to tell a story that captures Sarah's most frightening parenting moment yet. John was out of town and Sarah was cleaning the bathroom while Callie was playing in the hallway. As Sarah was finishing up she left the bathroom to grab some paper towels. In the moments she was gone, Callie entered the bathroom, shut the door, and managed to lock the deadbolt. When Sarah returned she noticed the shut door, went to open it, and realized it was locked. At this point her heart jumped into her throat and panic set in.
Her first instinct was to dial 911 but she wasn't sure what anyone could really do. So she tried to be as calm as possible and asked Callie to unlock the door. Then she ran to get a screwdriver to take the doorknob off. However this wasn't quite possible on a door in an eighty-year old house. The knob wasn't going anywhere. After a bit more panic, Callie continued to play with the doorknob and the deadbolt and happened to unlock the door. At this time Sarah opened the door, hugged Callie, and tried not to cry. There is now tape over the deadbolt to eliminate the need for future panic. The great thing is Callie never knew there was anything wrong. There's that fearless streak again.
This last picture was taken at the scene of the crime above, the downstairs bathroom. As you can see, Callie laughs in the face of the dangers presented by the aforementioned bathroom.
Callie truly does enjoy life, as this picture illustrates. We feel blessed everyday that she is our daughter. Even her current phase of screaming when you take her winter jacket off cannot take away from the fact that she is a wonderful little girl who constantly makes our days better.
We are looking forward to the spring and hope to see you all soon!
