Christmas miracle (times two)!

Merry Christmas family and friends. We feel very blessed to have you all in our lives. We spent Lucia's second Christmas at home, enjoying opening presents and time with Yoma and then celebrating with Jon's brothers that evening. We missed seeing Heidi's family and the NJ James family but were able to at least talk by video to them. Now that Lucia is 18 months old we expected her to be more excited about Christmas than she was last year and she was, with lots of presents to open, family to play with. We delighted in watching her enjoy the day.

Lucia decided that she would give us her own present, the one that we weren't expecting but were thrilled to have. What was it, you ask? Lucia went on the potty all by herself without a diaper. Woohoo! It was totally unexpected. We got her a potty a couple of months ago without any expectation that she would use it anytime soon and kept it in the bathroom for when she was ready. She would occasionally go over and sit on it or point and say peepee or poopoo (love the baby words), but never really acted like she wanted to use it for real. Well, on Christmas evening, infused with the spirit of the holidays (and probably some off-gassed booze from her partying uncles), Lucia got out of the bath and went over and sat down on her potty. And ... sparing everyone the gory details, the rest is history! We know it is a long road towards potty training but it was a good start.

So, on to Christmas miracle #2. We're happy to tell you all that Heidi is pregnant and we are expecting our second child in June of 2010. We're thrilled that Lucia will have a little brother or sister (and we don't think we're going to find out early). We were a little surprised that the due date is almost exactly on Lucia's birthday, I guess June babies are what this James family orders up. The first trimester has been less than fun but if the end result is a baby even half as wonderful as Lucia (and we know he/she will be just as wonderful) than we are truly lucky. We'll keep you posted in the coming months with the progress and look forward to having you meet our newest James baby this summer. We've been calling the baby Reggie because Jon had a dream (he swears it was a premonition) that we had a boy and I insisted on naming it Reginald. Just a quick note to say that we WILL NOT be naming the baby that. We have some other names in mind. :)

Love to you all and Merry Christmas.