What In the World Have We Been Doing?

We have been reading "The Poky Little Puppy". And playing in the snow (three times since Christmas!)! And using the potty (all of us). And running! And trying to jump up and down (this mostly involves bending of the knees and raising of the arms, but there is always much excitement). Julia is a full-fledged toddler now...just look at the pictures for proof. I cut her hair (or at least gave her some very stylish pixie bangs). She tolerates the barettes and ponies much better now, but there are some days when she refuses to have anything in her hair. Her independent streak is really starting to come out now too. Luckily her tantrums are not too bad and she is still easily distracted. But I do have to laugh at her sometimes when she gets upset. She can still put up a good fight at bedtime, but those are getting less traumatic too. I am sure it will start all over again when she moves to a regular bed.
Her latest accomplishment? Talking in little sentences. Mostly these are either demands ("Mommy sit!, Daddy play! Ju-ju eat cheese!"), but sometimes they are descriptions of what is going on in her life ("Cat chase!, Ju-ju sleeping, Daddy airplane Tuesday."). It is so amazing to hear her try out new words and immediately pick up on new language. She has her colors down pat and has moved on to days of the week and the alaphabet. I catch her trying to sing the alaphabet song to herself (only H through L..then it is a blur until you get to P and W). She is also fascinated with babies...we've seen some new babies in the past few weeks and a couple of her daycare friends are expecting little siblings. So she always asks to pray for the babies at night. Very cute, although I am sure this solicitous concern would not extend to any future sibling she may have.
We've all been very busy around here. Dan has been interviewing with different universities (only one more to go and then the potential second interviews start). I was away earlier this week at a meeting in California and spent a lot of time in the previous week working late to prepapre for the meeting. We travel to Baltimore next week for a short meeting and a short visit with the Klein/Beusch families. So there has been a lot of airplane travel (hence the Daddy airplane references) going on for us. I am teaching for two weeks once we get back from Baltimore and then we were hoping for a short break. Maybe take a long weekend to visit the coast or the mountains. But I am afraid that work will intrude very quickly.
In other good news, Dan got his grant! Which means he is smart! But I new that already. It is good news though and hopefully give us some more options in going forward from here. We will get some more pictures up soon....