January

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in Seattle in January, but it’s pretty cold and we spend most of it inside reading books. We welcomed the new year in style with our traditional New Year’s Day party (which involves pajamas, board games, and making a dish you’re afraid of) and a blind champagne tasting (pictured).

And Beatrice? She pulled up on furniture a lot and started standing up in her crib more often. We would often walk her room after her nap to find her hopping up and down on her mattress, holding on to her crib rail for support and grinning like she’d just figured out a magic trick.

February

We celebrated Valentine’s Day with a traditional fondue dinner. Kelly took a cake decorating class (see impressive results pictured), and I made a quesamandilla (it’s like a quesadilla… but for a man). We tried to decide what to get our girl for her first birthday. I secured the bookshelf to the wall so Beatrice wouldn’t pull it down on herself and replaced the faucet in the kitchen sink.

March

Our little girl turned one! We spent a lot of time wondering exactly how she had managed to become a year old already. Seriously, wasn’t it just a few weeks ago we were taking her tiny, warm body from the bassinet and letting her sleep on us because she wouldn’t sleep anywhere else? I’m pretty sure that was just a few weeks ago. We bought her a doll, which she loved and held closely for days. She calls it “dolly”.

Another March highlight was getting the fence on the side of our house (which was rotting and falling down) replaced with a much sturdier fence and a retaining wall.

April

April’s big event was visting my brother Rusty in Washington DC. For those of you who aren’t acquainted with my family, I’m the oldest of 7 children, and Rusty is the next oldest. He works for the National Guard in DC and we stayed with him for a few days, catching up and visiting the sights of the capitol. Beatrice loved the sights and she also loved Uncle Rusty, on whom she fell asleep repeatedly.

The weather finally starts thawing out in April, and we started spending time outside. Beatrice loved to go outside and pick dandelions with me, and she would gather them carefully in her fingers, one at a time, and then want to come inside and give them to Kelly as a gift: she would say “For Momma? For Momma?” and then throw them onto the floor (or onto Kelly’s shirt).

May

Spring arrived at last! Seriously, it was the coldest and wettest spring on record in Washington. Kelly would go running and come back with actual ice formed on her hair. We still found time to visit the farmer’s market in Redmond (which opens in May), cook out with friends, and enjoy the sun when it decided it was time for a little visit.

June

And this is the month when it actually became warm, warm enough to put fans in the windows and mow the lawn. We ate a lot of vegetables from the nearby farm (The Root Connection–check it out!) and from our backyard. Kelly grows all kinds of things in our planting beds and Beatrice and I would often go there before dinner and pick peas, blueberries, and cherry tomatoes to eat together.

The photo above is from Kelly’s grandfather’s 90th birthday. Beatrice loves him and calls him “Papa Roy”. She often asks him where his pipe is.

July

July = camping month. We actually camped twice this month, once at Alta Lake and once with Kelly’s family on their annual family retreat. This picture is from the latter event, in which Beatrice was introduced to the joy of life near the water’s edge (in other words, we flipped over rocks and she got to see the little crabs scurry away). Camping as a family is a little tougher than camping as a couple, but it went surprisingly well both times, and we hope to spend some more time sleeping outside in 2012.

August

In August, my mom came to Seattle to visit us and my sister’s family (my sister lives in Kirkland and also has a child, a son born in December of last year). Beatrice loves her “Gamma Barbara”, as she calls her. Later in the month, Beatrice ate popsicles and Kelly and I went to an outdoor concert. August was also the month I started commuting on my bike: I would often come home from work and find my girls waiting on the front porch and smiling. There’s nothing like coming home to a happy family!

September

Did I mention that we’re expecting another child? We are! The Lord has blessed us with another life and little “2.0″ (as we call him for now) is due in early February of 2012. In September, he was about the size of a banana. He is now much larger and is quite the little mover. He and our daughter have a strange affinity: she insisted that she was having a brother (not a sister!) far before we knew the sex ourselves, and he kicks and squirms whenever he hears Beatrice’s voice. She likes to “hold Brother” (put her hands under Kelly’s stomach) and will occasionally give him stickers. It’s hard to say how she’ll react to the reality of having a sibling but for now they’re really good friends!

October

In October, we attended our friend DJ’s wedding in Chico, California. This is a photo of us from that event. It’s great seeing our friends so happy and Beatrice was a trooper in the car! Later in the month, we dressed her up as a dinosaur (her choice) for Halloween. Since she doesn’t really know what candy is, she was mostly uninterested in trick-or-treating. Instead, she wanted to find all the spiders (she loves spiders) that were put up as decorations, and she also wanted to splash in ALL the puddles while wearing her dinosaur costume.

November

We had our kitchen floor replaced in November, hosted Thanksgiving at our house the next day, and then attended the Day After Thanksgiving festivities in downtown Seattle. Beatrice was sort of afraid of some of the teddy bears in the Teddy Bear Suite, but she did love twirling in the hotel hall!

December

And here’s our family on Christmas Eve this year.

2011 will go down as a year of trips, adventures with family, and seeing our baby turn into a walking, talking little girl in front of our very eyes. We love being married and knowing that the memories we’re building now are really just the first couple of pages in the story of our family. Here’s to 2012, in which we will become a family of a newborn, a toddler, and two occasionally bewildered but always blessed adults! Happy New Year!