Happy New Year!!!

Finally an update :)

I can't believe that it is already a new year... this past one has been pretty great, but it flew by. I can't believe we have had our baby girl for almost 9 months already. I can't believe how grown up she is. I can't believe that she will be turning a year old so soon, and that any day now she will be walking and will start talking.

Every day Mr. Beaver and I marvel over how much personality she has, how happy she is, and how smart she seems to be. She copies almost everything she sees us do (which has been great for getting her to eat!), and she loves when people copy her or react to her actions. Her favorite things to do are waving, clapping/patty cake, and playing peek-a-boo with anything big enough to hide her face. She is so cute- she does it so fast sometimes when she is excited that we don't even have time to play along :) Sometimes she will find ways to play even if she doesn't have a blanket or something to hold up- she will hide behind something, like my shoulder if I'm holding her.

Other things she does all the time is clapping- she is able to make noise- and she shakes her head "no" because it usually gets some laughs. She has started standing on her own once she gets her balance, and she is really good at "cruising", or walking while holding on to stuff. She can walk forward and backward pretty quickly when just holding onto our fingers, and she gets so excited. She babbles a lot now, finally making "mama" sounds! She loves to watch us dance, and tries dancing along or drumming her hands on things to the music. Her favorite thing to play with is the dog (lili), especially her tags and her feet, and she loves to give her kisses, which makes it hard to keep lili from kissing her back. I could go on and on about her, but I think this is enough for now! We just can't get over how amazing she is, and how much she seems to learn and do every day.

Even though I am sad that 2010 is over and seemed to go by so fast, I know that this is going to be such an exciting year for our family! I will hopefully be graduating and getting a job, Mr. Beaver will be transferring full-time to a more challenging position within his company, as I mentioned before- our baby girl will be 1!!, and many other fun family happenings. I just hope that we can find a way to make time go a little slower :)

I don't usually do resolutions, but I do have a few goals for this year: improve my work habits so that I can finish my dissertation and move on with my career, get better about doing all of the things I'd always planned to do with our baby (sign language, play groups, etc.), learn to use the new camera I got for Christmas(!), and get more organized in all areas of my life. There are tons of other things I could list, like posting here more often!, but I think this list is pretty ambitious already.

I hope that everyone else had great holidays and a wonderful start to the new year!