Driving that Car

We're back from our Christmas vacation. We had a great time at JT's cousin's house - lots of game playing, good food - even a turducken - and, of course, lots of presents. It was a long drive there. Due to traffic (and a couple of bad short cuts) the usual 7 hour drive to San Jose took 12. On the way home we took the scenic route and ended up spending the night in Santa Barbara.
At the moment we are busy packing, cleaning and moving. We blew our Christmas money at Ikea getting a new table and chairs and we still need bookshelves,a dresser, and some other things. Moving out of our apartment is a bit traumatic. It has such great storage that we keep finding things put away that we don't really need. (The garage sale pile is steadily growing.) Plus, a move means a new neighborhood to get to know, new friends and babysitters to find, maybe a car for me so I can get to campus occasionally, learning the bus routes, finding stores, etc. At the same time we are excited to live somewhere different.

Happy New Year! JT starts the new year with 4 teeth, 4 words (ball, kitty, tree, and "lichty" = light in baby German - he just says "tee"), and 2 signs ("eat" - pretty consistently now and "all done"; those are besides pointing and waving). He likes to point at things (especially the trash truck and airplanes), wave bye-bye, walk around with his push toy that he can now steer well, take a bath, stack the cups into and onto each other, take blocks into and out of a box, and pull at the computer when I am typing. He also copies what we do - one day I spoke into a cardboard tube and then he tried it, too. I can't believe he is almost 1!