Andi’s exciting life.

Attention, everyone: Today, at exactly 13 months, my son took his first steps. We were reading a book together when he pushed himself up to standing and took two controlled steps and sat down. I was so surprised and excited! I called Matt in, and he took one clumsy step again, but after that he did get to a standing position without pulling up on anything a few times, which he had never done before and only just started trying last night. Up until now, he has only been able to stand up if he pulls up on something, sometimes letting go and standing on his own for a few seconds, but he has never tried to take a single step. We are very excited and can’t wait to see if he will try again tomorrow!

We had a pretty fun day today. Falco wore his grinch shirt and eyed
his presents.

In the afternoon, he had a couple friends over and gave them rides on
his train.

An inevitable consequence of having almost exclusively girlfriends is
having to try on their clothes.

After dinner, we walked through the neighborhood to see Christmas
lights. (It was a brisk walk because it was cold!)

After our walk, Falco had his bath and got into his Christmas Eve
jammies (a tradition my mom did with me that I always loved).

After our dinner, we had our inaugural Christmas-Eve toy assembly
when we put together Falco’s new wagon. We had to step outside for
the hammering, and we managed to get it together relatively easily.
Hopefully the wheels won’t fall off on our test ride tomorrow morning!

Mom and Mark sent us the yummy gift of cookie of the month club, and
we received sugar cookies this week. I think Falco loves this gift
the most of all of us, as seen here.

This week we went down to visit Lynne and Ruby in San Jose, and we
all went together to an enormous mall to see Santa. Falco wore his
Grinch shirt to make for a funny photo, but unfortunately Santa
covered it up.

Here we are in the l-o-n-g line, and this was on a weekday! I can’t
imagine the horror show it must be to see Santa on the weekend before
Christmas. (That’s Ruby in the sweet car behind Falco.)

Here we are at the front of the line finally. Santa is in sight!

It’s usually impossible to take a picture of Falco NOT staring at the
camera with a huge grin, but there was no smiling for Santa. He
didn’t cry or get upset, but he looked very confused through the
whole thing. I think the photo of him looking shocked is very cute!

Falco’s party was a big success. We had 25-ish people including
babies, and he seemed to enjoy the crowd and all the attention.
Check out the gallery for party pictures.