Double Happiness

Gwen's Baby Dolls

Earlier this year, I started looking for baby dolls for Gwen. I wasn't sure if she'd like dolls so I knew the few I picked out might be the only dolls she'd ever have.

I found three Corolle dolls that I really liked. They're made very well, have soft bodies, smell of vanilla, and (best of all) they're machine washable. I thought the Asian ones were absolutely precious too and I was happy that her first dolls would have brown hair and eyes like her!

All three dolls lived on a shelf in Gwen's room during the wait for referral. After referral, I took the smallest off of the shelf and mailed it to her SWI in China. The other two waited here at home. Today was their first face to face meeting! It was a supervised 'visitation' since, at 17 months, Gwen is too young to have nice dolls to play with.

She's been admiring them up on the shelf ever since she came home in mid September. A few times, I carried her to them and let her touch their tiny toes but she seemed nervous -- as if they might be real babies. Lately, she's been more interested and she often points at them and makes her favorite baby noise which means "May I please see that, Mommy?" but sounds something like Uhhhhhhnn!

In anticipation of this special meeting,I grabbed the camera, pointed it at her, then took the dolls and handed them over. The picture above is her first reaction. Then she looked down at the larger doll and said "Hi!" about 100 times! Here she is (below) doing that. It was very cute!

She seemed to really liked them and lovingly carried both of them around for about ten minutes. Then she plopped them on the floor and ran out into the hall and banged on her big brother's door so he'd open it and she could listen to him practice his electric guitar. She really loves music - any type of music! Raffi, Andrea Bocelli, or AFI. She loves it all!

The jury is still out on whether she really liked the dolls. They're back up on the shelf for now. We'll try this again in a few months.

More Christmas Portraits...

The many faces of Gwendolyn!

The Many Faces of Gwendolyn Claire!

	This would be the happy face! We're lucky that this face (or a close variation) is the one we see most of the time.
	This is Gwen's Monkey Face! We first saw this face in China. It really stood out as one of her very unique expressions! We call this her monkey face because she makes monkey sounds when she wears this expression!
	This would be the NOT so happy face! . In this instance, she's unhappy because I'm holding the camera instead of her! This face I can resist but her super dooper unhappy face is so heart-melting that I can't bring myself to take a picture of it. That quivering lower lip is just too much!
	Here's Gwen's smug expression! She whips this out out pretty often! It's her way of saying "Keep amusing me!"
	This is Gwen's Giggle Face! She has the most adorable giggle! Usually brought on by something ridiculous Daddy is doing!
	Gwen's Ah Ha face! If you ask her where the kitty is (or anything else), she'll look around until she finds it and then she'll turn to you with this face. This face means: Wow! Here's the super amazing thing you asked me to find!
	The Hiccup Face! . This level of enthusiasm almost always results in a serious case of the hiccups! She's just hysterically happy and can't put a lid on her joy!
	The super rare "Messy Face". Mommy and Daddy really need to see this face more often! This is just the 2nd time we've let our little cutie feed herself. She's a really neat/tidy eater so it's hard to hand over the spoon and and let her make a giant mess of everything. But that's how she'll learn to feed herself so we plan to let this face show itself much more often! .

There are so many other faces of our Dear Gwenny but these are the most common.

Four reasons why Gwen is smiling

1. We live in one of the most beautiful places in the whole world and this is the view from our front door!

2. Today is the 17 month anniversary of her birth!

3. It's exactly one month until Christmas!

4. She's loved!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What's this ouchie thing in my mouth?

Gwen's is 17 months old tomorrow and two more teeth are coming in. I guess I'd also have trouble keeping my hands out of my mouth if this was happening to me!

She, currently, has 8 teeth: four on the top and four on the bottom. These new additions will bring the total to 10 but they've still got a long way to go! I can barely see them but, apparently, Gwen has no trouble feeling them!

We cooked Thanksgiving dinner a day early so we could all enjoy the day off work and eat leftovers. Tomorrow, Uncle David and Aunt Barbara will fly back to Idaho. It'll be a very sad day for us since we don't know when we'll see them again and it's almost certain that Gwen won't remember how much she adored both of them. I wish Idaho was closer!

Here's a picture of Uncle D and Aunt B watching the football game (with kitty). You can see Gwen at the bottom of the picture trying to ham it up for Daddy. I love this picture because it shows our 'space' so well. It's our family room with our comfy Pottery Barn sofa and our piano and our kitchen table and the baby gate that keeps our kitchen off limits to Gwen's little fingers! This is the space we live in every day and we love it! Seemingly, so does Gwendolyn!