This past week, we kept finding footprints in the snow trekking back and forth across our backyard. We don't have a fence up, so we expect we will wind up with trespassers every now and then, but the snow on the ground has recorded an increasing amount of traffic!

At the same time, our cats - especially Tigger - has displayed some unusually anxious behavior sitting by our back door.


Luckily, we have since discovered who our little trespasser is and we can expect to find him somewhere in our yard several times a day.


I do not suspect he will do any harm in our yard and we welcome his visits!

It has been a few years since we have been able to celebrate the year-end holidays without needing to travel. Paul and I are very thankful to be back in Colorado with both sets of parents.

This year, we spent the night in Colorado Springs with Paul's parents and brother's family on Christmas Eve so that Abby and her cousin, Annette, could open presents together Christmas morning. Although the girls had a lot of fun decorating cookies and playing together, sadly, the Newell Christmas tradition of someone getting sick and generously sharing with the rest of the family continued.

Nonetheless, the family time was special and is what celebrating the holidays is all about, right?

One thing I tried this year was crafting some of the gifts myself - making clay figurines and sweet munchies. I started small and made only stocking stuffers, but I had so much fun doing it I may consider continuing this effort for the years to come....if time and patience permit.

As expected, Abby received a TON of stuff, leaving Paul and me to wonder where we can possibly store everything. Our living room currently looks like the Walmart toy aisles - toys strewn all over the floor with no visible ground to maneuver!

Enjoy a few of our Christmas photos below. I hear Abby whimpering over the monitor and I should go check on her. She has been wheezing, coughing, and running a high temperature and we're keeping a close eye on her, especially at night. Her symptoms started Christmas day - a virus she most likely contracted from Annette - and although she has stopped wheezing, her breathing is still shallow, requiring her to take Albuterol with a nebulizer twice a day. Last night, the fevers started and it turns out she has developed a sinus infection as well.

When Abby was 10 months old, she tested positive to being allergic to eggs and wheat.

Well, wheat turned out to be a non-issue, thankfully, but eggs were a problem. Abby broke out with fairly severe rashes when ingesting products that contained even small amounts of egg, so no cake, no waffles, no pastas of certain kinds and we became food-label-reading dependent.

When we first moved to Colorado, Abby and I stayed with my parents for about 9 months. During this time, my mom discovered that Abby could tolerate organic eggs, but not regular ones.

My mom used a method called pendulum dowsing to discover this. A part of pendulum dowsing is "a therapy used to locate the underlying cause of bodily or emotional imbalance that leads to ailments and physical reactions such as allergies or disease." The more the method is practiced, the more accurate it is. My mom had been practicing dowsing for several years and have successfully helped members of our family with various ailments. She has a friend who's baby had a hopeless number of allergies and doctors were at a loss for what to do. My mom managed to identify all of his triggers and the child is now able to manage his allergies and lead a normal life. The key is that she is able to identify very specific triggers rather than the generic categories which the traditional allergy blood tests or skin-prick tests reveal.

So, we bought some organic eggs. Abby tried a few bites of egg whites and had no reaction. A few days later, we tried the whole egg. Again, no reaction! The experimenting continued and we carefully monitored Abby every time she ate eggs, but she never had a reaction at home.

Yet, Abby was still unable to handle regular eggs. Sometime during that winter, Abby was accidentally given regular egg noodles at daycare and she broke out in such a bad rash her teachers had to call me.

We talked to her pediatricians who couldn't understand why she could eat organic eggs but not regular ones. We did some online research and read that egg allergies can be outgrown and many kids do. So, we became determined to keep exposing Abby to organic eggs in hopes that her body will learn to eventually tolerate all types of eggs.

By the time we moved out of my parents house (Abby was almost 2 years old at this point), Abby could eat two whole organic eggs (probably more if we would let her) without any reaction AND was able to eat regular eggs straight up! What this meant was that she can handle regular eggs found in other products without a problem.

She now eats egg noodles regularly and is the biggest fan of pancakes. We still buy organic eggs and dairy at our house, but we have not had an egg-related allergy incident for almost a year and we let her eat eggs whenever we do.

38 acres of lights, plus animal exhibits, made for a fun family visit to the Denver zoo during its Zoo Lights holiday event. We went tonight with the Fisher family (aka Abby's good friend Gwen's family) and their neighbors.

It was a tad chilly in Denver, hovering just around freezing by the time we arrived around 6PM, but hot chocolate and warm hats and gloves were all that were required to stay comfortable.

The kids had a great time. Besides all the really cool light exhibits, Abby's favorite was seeing the elephants. However, the hippo and rhinoceros freaked her out.

Paul, Abby, and I just returned from a 5-day vacation to DC to visit many of our friends back in Maryland/Virginia. No matter how much time we had planned, it certainly did not seem like it was enough and there were still others we never got a chance to visit. Still, it was a great trip and we had a wonderful time.

Since we moved to Colorado in October 2008 (February 2009 for Paul) several new babies have arrived into the world - or in the case of the Legler family, returned back to DC - so we had many young, new faces to meet!

Abby, as usual, was a fantastic traveler and really enjoyed visiting new people and revisiting places such as our houses in Germantown and Clarksburg, while hearing us tell her what she does not remember from her first year and a half there.

A special treat for me was meeting Holly Kim and her family. They drove from Virginia Beach to meet us for brunch in Georgetown on Sunday. Holly and I have been corresponding over email for about a year now and have become "old friends," but have never met! She has a 13 year old son, Tristan, whom Abby now idolizes, and a charismatic 1.5 year old daughter, Leilani. Holly and I started corresponding when Abby was gifted a pair of beautifully crafted hairclips last Christmas, made by Holly and her mom, and I was so impressed by them that I felt compelled to write and express my sentiments. Mutual interests were discovered and we became regular correspondents.

The following link will take you to our photo album for the DC visit.
http://public.fotki.com/newells/2009/dc-visit/?cmd=fs_slideshow

On December 9th, Abby's daycare performed their Holiday Program at Heritage High School. From young toddlers roughly a year and a half years old to the Kindergarten classes, the kids put on a really delightful show and all of them were cute as buttons!

Abby's early pre-school class (ages 2.5 to 3 years) performed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It is hard to tell in the video (we really, really need to get a quality camcorder at some point - certainly before Abby enters college!) but Abby stayed focused and actually sang the song during all three repeats. She is the one wearing a brown shirt and khaki pants, standing 3rd from the left. Abby's good friend, Gwen, is 2nd from the right, wearing a sleaveless dress.

If the picture slideshow does not appear below, you can also view photos via this link: http://public.fotki.com/newells/2009/primrose-holiday-program/

EPS2 Sings Rudolph from Cecilia Newell on Vimeo.

This is a cute little song that Abby has learned in daycare. Each week, the toddlers focus on a particular shape and every few weeks they start over to reinforce the learning. Now, most of these kids have known their shapes for well over a year, but they still get a kick out of recognizing them everywhere they go.

This particular song is Abby's favorite. When she sees objects shaped as a square, circle, triangle, or rectangle she'll burst out singing the corresponding verse from this song. It's only Tuesday, but already the things that have triggered the singing of this song are: smiley faces, cheerios, pancakes, and the letter "O".... so, obviously the focus shape of this week is the circle! Last week, when studying the rectangle, seeing napkins, envelopes, and her blankie spurred the song.

How Can You Tell (tune "Frere Jacques" aka "Brother John")

This is a square, this is a square, How can you tell? How can you tell?
It has four sides, All the same size.
It's a Square, It's a Square.

This is a circle, this is a circle. How can you tell? How can you tell?
It goes round and round, No end can be found.
It's a circle, It's a circle.

This is a triangle, this is a triangle. How can you tell? How can you tell?
It only has three sides, That join to make three points.
It's a Triangle, It's a triangle.

This is a rectangle, this is a rectangle. How can you tell? How can you tell?
It has two short sides And it has two long sides.
It's a rectangle, It's a rectangle.

I hope everyone's enjoyed a great Thanksgiving. We were invited for Thanksgiving dinner with Paul's Uncle Jim and his fiancee, Val. Val and her family are great and we're very happy for Uncle Jim.

Thursday night, the Castle Rock outlet stores opened at 10:00 PM for Black Friday. As Paul and I were brushing our teeth, getting ready for bed at 11:00, we looked out our back window, which overlooks a good chunk of the town, and saw the crazy mess of vehicle lights clustered around the outlet shops and at a standstill along I-25 as far North as we were able to see. Of course, we avoided the outlet shops this whole weekend.

At home, we started a few - and completed some - projects.

First of all, Abby is FINALLY interested again in potty training now that she's moved up to the next class in daycare. Most of her friends are in this class and they are all trained, so all of a sudden, she's eager to try again as well. We've been taking a very laid-back approach to the potty and if she isn't willing, we aren't going to make it a big deal.

This weekend, Abby spent about 50% of the time in training pants on her request. She'll get a tiny bit wet and announce it, then go sit on the potty. No results were achieved on the potty, but this was a HUGE leap from the complete lack of interest over the past few weeks. Thanks to BumWear training pants, we had absolutely no spills, no messes, no fears, no need for extra changes of clothing. Great stuff!

The second project we tackled was a picture wall above our family room sofa. I've been trying to do something with this space ever since we moved the entertainment unit/tv down to the basement. The blank wall was so dull to look at and I couldn't stand it anymore.

Luckily, Michael's was having a huge after-Thanksgiving sale on picture frames, so we ended up completing this project for just around $50. This is still a work in progress and I think the intermediate result feels a bit "heavy." Perhaps it is the dark, dark frames or maybe the way the pictures are clustered. I'm still tweaking it. Also, I have found some wall decals that might look good with the photos and allow me to space things out a bit to reduce the heaviness I feel with this arrangement. Still, I'm just glad to be doing something with that wall!

Our third project was to remodel our master bedroom closet. As with all new construction homes, we were given the obnoxiously impractical wire shelves, which is a pain for organization. We went to our local hardware/home improvement store and have purchased several modules of the ClosetMaid system and are nearly complete with the remodel. When done - hopefully in the next couple of days - I'll post pictures.

Our fourth and last project was to get out the Christmas decorations and put them up. (Sorry about the photo - I didn't have the patience to play with camera settings tonight.) All interior decorations are up, but we are still missing a tree skirt and some strands of light to go with the garlands looped around banisters, but for the most part, we're done! Exterior decorations may not happen this year as our hardware only support standard wood roof shingles, but this house has concrete, so we're not sure how to attach things without spending a lot more money.

We got to spend time with my family last night where my mom whipped together (we were supposed to have gone over for "leftovers") a spectacular dinner surpassing the extravagance of any Thanksgiving feast. As with every holiday meal at my parents' house, Paul happily took on a small side-project. He replaced my parents' doorbell chime, where the performance has degraded to practically unusable, and added an extender to allow my parents to better hear the doorbell when in the back of the house or in the basement.

Overall, a very busy, productive, and fun long weekend for the Newells in Castle Rock.

If you haven't seen them in the news already, you should look them up on the internet. Lara and Lucy are emperor tamarin orphans born at the Denver zoo back in July. Their father died before they were born and their mother died a few weeks after they were born due to cancer. The zoo staff are doing their best to step in and raise these cuties.

Can't wait to take Abby to the zoo to meet them.

Abby spent at least a couple of hours this weekend on our drive to Oklahoma reading "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" I read it to her a couple of times, but for the most part, she tried reading it herself.

When she reads the book, it's a mash-up of the actual words with those of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

Notice also that she flips her pronouns and says, "What do I see?" and "What do I hear?" because when we read it to her, these questions are seemingly directed at her.

For those of you unfamiliar with "Polar Bear, Polar Bear..." the repetitious words follow the pattern [animal], [animal], what do you hear? I hear a(n) [animal] [action verb] in my ear. For example, "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear? I hear a lion roaring in my ear." The order of animals are:
= The Polar Bear
= The lion who roars
= The hippopotamus who snorts
= The flamingo who flutes
= The zebra who brays
= The boa constrictor who hisses
= The elephant who trumpets
= The leopard who snarls
= The peacock who yelps
= The walrus who bellows
= The zookeeper who whistles
Finally, the zookeeper hears all the children acting and making sounds like all the previously named animals.

The following video was shot during the second reading. As the trip moved along, Abby got all the animals right on the first try, used "hear" rather than "see" consistently, and tried to add the sounds each animal made.

It was so much fun to watch and listen to her progress.

Storytime with Abby from Cecilia Newell on Vimeo.

This year, we spent a wonderful Halloween weekend with Peter, Nicole, and Annette. Abby has been wanting to see her cousin since we visited for Annette's 3rd birthday in May.

We were worried when Denver was hit by a big snow storm on Wednesday, dumping 1-2 feet of snow on the ground by Thursday afternoon and closing I-70. Fortunately, I-70 Eastbound opened up Friday morning around 10:00 and we were able to hit the road.

The girls had a great time and played well together.

They baked cookies, decorated them, went trick-or-treating, hopped on the Dads, and chased each other around.

On Sunday, Aunt Gert and Uncle John took us all out to dinner. They stopped over in Oklahoma following Uncle John's annual Ship's Reunion and on their way back to Ohio.

Below is a slideshow of pictures taken this weekend. To view or download the originals, go to http://public.fotki.com/newells/2009/halloween-in-ok/

Our community had a pumpkin fest on Saturday. Free pumpkins for all residents, hayrides, rock climbing walls, bake sales, crafts, kettlecorn, barbeques, HawkQuest's eagles and owls, boutiques for pets, games for adults and kids, and lots of treats.

While Paul attended a party with his dad in Colorado Springs, Abby and I spent a couple of hours at the festival.

She wanted to wear her Halloween costume - a fairy. However, she was frightened of the costume's huge wings, so we did without.


Abby testing out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch, choosing her pumpkin based on how "sit-on-able" it was.


This was the pumpkin she finally chose; Hugging the chosen squash for a picture in front of a haystack.


HawkQuest brought several birds to educate the audience; Sage and Belle were the horses who took us on a bumpy ride through our neighborhood, to Abby's great delight.


After we ventured through all the booths and activity centers, Abby wanted to hit the playground and grab a drink.

At the end of the day, the one thing Abby remembered the most fondly about the pumpkin fest was the BIG puddle in the pumpkin patch where she got to "splash, splash, splash and got ALLLLL wet!"

In our household very, very friendly, clingy cats reside. Below are examples of what you may experience if you were to, say, come over for dinner.

Just kidding!

We would never subject any of our welcomed house guests to this sort of behavior from our kitties. They are cats after all and tend to be shy around visitors. I only thought it would be fun to share the sort of inconvenience Paul has to endure every now and then at the dinner table.

When I learned the nursery rhyme/song many, many years ago, it was "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

Today, I am hearing my 2-year old sing, "Mary Had a Little Man..."

This morning, after arriving at daycare, I told Abigail to say goodbye to her Hello Kitty and that she'll see her later. She gave the doll a big hug, kissed her on the top of her head, and said, "I love you! I'll be coming back, ok?"

I thought, "Awww, she's mimicking us when we drop her off at daycare!"

Every night when we put Abigail to bed, we say, "Goodnight, I love you." Sometimes she'll respond with, "Night-night," but usually we don't get any response. She gives me a kiss and a hug-squeeze then does the same with Paul before we tuck her in.

Tonight, though, we got an extra special surprise at bedtime. When I picked her up, she whispered, "I love you!" right before she gave me the kiss/hug-squeeze combo. Jumping into Paul's arms, she said, "I love you too!"

I have a giant grin on my face right now and it won't be going away anytime soon...

On Friday, we took our eldest cat, Tigger, to the vet for a check-up. He recently had a urinary tract infection that did not clear up immediately after a round of antibiotics.

Last week, we started having incidents where he would urinate in front of us, almost as a message to us. He was still using the litter boxes and it wasn't as if he couldn't make it to the litter box - he was deliberately doing his business in front of us.

When we told the vet, he immediately said he was keeping Tigger for x-rays, MRIs, and other tests. We got a call later that morning to say that they found a BOULDER in his bladder and that because he was already sedated, they wanted to go in and get it out.

By mid-afternoon, they had extracted an almost 1/2-inch wide stone!

Tigger came home on Saturday and has been recovering well. He has been super affectionate and appears to be suffering no pain.

It feels awful to think that he had been suffering with the stone for months, possibly years, but it wasn't until recently that he actually showed any urinary symptoms that pointed to the real issue. Poor little guy, but he is feeling so much better now.

There is a place in Morrison, Colorado, nestled in the canyons, called Tiny Town. It is a one-sixth size miniatures museum where most of the structures are replicas of historic landmarks, many uniquely from Colorado.

I was searching on the internet for recommended outdoors family places to take advantage of the warmer weather. Tiny Town was well-recommended by parents, but I think the target audience is for younger kids - maybe 5 and under.

Surrounding Tiny Town is a 5/8-mile railroad track that carries passengers on small trains pulled by either a gas or steam engine.

Abby had a grand old time peeking into all the little houses with fully decorated interiors and running around inside a few of the larger structures. The highlight for her was the train ride, though. She has been fascinated by trains since we see several a week during our commute to and from daycare.

Price of admission was fairly easy on the wallet - $5/adult and $3/kid ages 2-12. $1/person for the train ride.