For the last few years we’ve not sent any Christmas cards and have posted a Christmas message on this blog instead. Reasons included laziness, the environment and northern tightness. In keeping with our tradition, you’ll notice that you’ve not received a card from us again! However, this year we’ve donated the money we would have spent on cards and posting to Cancer Research UK.

We’re having a busy Christmas weekend with grandparents, uncles, aunties and cousins visiting. This is the first Christmas that we have ever spent in our own house since we moved in together 9 years ago.

We hope that all our family and friends have the most wonderful Christmas and a very healthy and happy new year and leave you with Eilidh’s rendition of Jingle Bells…

With the impending arrival of Christmas, the Cowes have been getting into the Christmas spirit. Kaelyn has broken out her Christmas hat…

… and we spent Saturday decorating the Christmas tree (a full size 6 footer this year!). Eilidh did most of the decorating and sang us some lovely Christmas songs in the process. This is her rendition of the Christmas Pudding Song:

In case you want to sing along, these are the words (we’ve only ever heard Eilidh sing this, so any mistakes can be credited solely to her):

Christmas Pudding, Christmas pudding,
Steaming hot, steaming hot,
Sprinkle on da sugar, sprinkle on da sugar, (sprinkle on da sugar)
Eat all up, eat all up.

Father Christmas, Father Christmas,
He got stuck, he got stuck,
Coming down da chimley, coming down da chimley,
What bad luck, what bad luck.

Kaelyn managed her first 180 degree roll yesterday whilst we were decorating the Christmas tree. She successfully got herself from her back to her front, propped herself up on her elbows and gurgled away very pleased with herself. We’ve not managed to capture this on video yet, but we’ve got some great footage of her working on it with her personal trainer:

Kaelyn has had her beady eye on everyone else’s food for some time now and certainly seemed keen to sample something other than milk and fingers. Her first time eating anything solid was yesterday and she got the idea straight away, gobbling it all down with enthusiasm. Eilidh, of course, was on hand to help her little sister out:

If Kaelyn is this excited about baby rice, wait until she she samples masala dosai! Maybe one step at a time, though…

It’s about time Kaelyn had her own blog entry. She’s a very happy and contented little baby and chatters away throughout the day. Here are some of her babblings…

As you can see, we’re not the most efficient at posting news since Eilidh’s birthday was over 3 weeks ago, but thought it was a milestone that should be documented.
Eilidh had a lovely day and got lots of smashing presents. We spent the day at Kids Play, Kettering:

and had a small tea party in the evening with a few of her friends. Mummy’s awesome hedgehog cake also made an appearance:

The following weekend the four of us ventured north to the Geordie grandparents whilst the Teuchter grandparents headed south to meet us there. We had a lovely time together:

The girls with all four grandparents

Eilidh has moved into her new big room with her new big bed that she can climb in and out of.

By popular demand, Eilidh has decided to mark the occasion by releasing her latest music video. This one’s dedicated to you, Emilia! Watch out for Kaelyn busting out some crazy dance moves in the background…

Eilidh sang this little nursery rhyme to Kaelyn tonight. To clear up any confusion, she initially yells “biscuits” to the camera (she always does this when she sees a camera).

Eilidh has been potty training for about a week now and she’s doing really well. She’s been wearing big girl pants this weekend with no accidents and is really keen to use the toilet or potty. We’ve still to gauge the true urgency after a desparate cry of “WEE WEE COMING!” or “POO POO!” but things are definitely progressing.

We didn’t really want to post a picture of Eilidh in her big girl pants but we thought that this illustrated how grown up she’s becoming:

Given what she has to put up with, Kaelyn is a pretty contented baby. She’s been sleeping through the night (7.30pm-7am ish) since she was approximately 6 weeks old. Over the last few weeks Kaelyn has started to smile more and more. Here are some of our favourites: