A New Year, and Our Baby is Growing Up!

Miss Poppy pulls herself up to everything now! Her favorite spot? The entertainment center, where she can get the best view, of course!

Like father, like daughter!

Giving kisses to her baby doll

Just chillin' on Christmas Day

Brrrr!! Snow and wind doesn't stop us from taking our walks!

6 choppers!

Meal time is our favorite time (after all, she is Paul's daughter)!

The end of the year flew by, and it's hard to believe, but our little Popsicle will be turning 1 next week! The last few weeks we've started to slowly realize that Poppy is looking less like a baby and more like a little girl. Which is exciting and sad at the same time. She's learning new things constantly and amazes us daily. The separation anxiety seems to have worsened recently, with Mummy and Daddy both frustrated because Daddy wants to hold Poppy and she won't let him, and Mummy wants to rest her arms at the grocery store but Poppy doesn't want to be put in the cart or stroller. The irony to all this dependence on Mummy is that she is also beginning to be quite the stubborn, defiant and independent little girl in other ways: she doesn't want anyone else putting the spoon in her mouth, brushing her teeth, putting the binki in her mouth, etc...
Poppy's favorite things of late: letting Daddy tickle her, pulling herself up on the recently installed baby gate and shaking it as loudly as she possibly can, playing and laughing with her cousins, throwing her food down to Georgie, playing the bedtime game with Mummy where Mummy throws the blanket down to Poppy and Poppy grabs it and laughs uncontrollably, kissing her dollies, and grapes. Yes, grapes. That one is added to the list because even if she sees the grapes (i.e. the fridge is opened; walking by the grapes in the produce section at the store), she will start to cry if she is not immediately offered one. Her favorite toys are her baby dolls, a set of drum sticks in her play music band set, and a play plastic banana that she carries around with her nonstop. I guess that's appropriate because of her love of bananas.
As for Mummy and Daddy, nothing much is happening out of the ordinary. In October, Paul was made the Associate Director at work. We are really proud of him, and happy that he travels less during tax season. He's probably excited to not be driving to all of the po-dunk areas of Utah as well. Mummy turns 30 this year and is feeling really old (but not too old)! We are looking forward to celebrating Poppy's 1st birthday, and upcoming visits from Paul's parents.

Merry Christmas!!!

We wish all of our wonderful friends and family a happy and peaceful Christmas, and best wishes for a successful and blessed new year 2010!
As 2009 comes to a close, we can honestly say that this year has been our most "successful" and happiest yet - because we were finally blessed with our beautiful, sweet little girl. And while there are many measures of success, having Poppy trumps any material achievement we've ever accomplished! The Lord has truly blessed us.
Here we are, on Christmas Eve, enjoying the warm fire and reading stories about Jesus. We just finished a particularly lovely book called "God Bless Your Way" about an old man named Micah who traveled to Bethlehem the same time as Mary and Joseph - also weary with no place to stay. After some kind strangers bestow bread and a blanket upon him, Micah finds Mary and Joseph in the stable, after Mary has given birth, and he decides to give his bread and blanket to the new family, and wishes them "Good luck on your journey and God bless your way".
May each of us do all we can to follow Christ's example - and no matter the obstacles we may face, with sacrifice comes blessings. Merry Christmas 2009 and may 2010 bring even greater blessings for you and your families. Good luck on your journey and God bless your way.

Poppy wearing her Christmas dress last Sunday

Our little present

Poppy the expert crawler

It's the Most Wonderful (and Poopy) Time of the Year!

I thought we'd try to break our habit of waiting a whole month to update the blog again! So here we are, getting excited for Poppy to experience her first Christmas. Admittedly, Poppy has no idea what's happening, and we're way more excited about it than she is, but no matter! Paul hung my old childhood stocking up in Poppy's bedroom, and it's her favorite thing to look at. She waves at it every morning when she gets out of bed!
We'll be posting lots of pictures of Poppy opening presents, visiting the lights at temple square, and maybe even opening a cracker at new year's so that Paul can start teaching her to keep to her British traditions. I can already picture her in my head, in elementary school, trying to explain to the other children about boxing day, and Christmas pudding & mince pies, pantomimes, etc...
Here's a brief explanation of what Poppy's been doing: her favorite toys these days are her toothbrush and hair brush. A few times we've made the mistake of taking them away, which we immediately regretted!
She got some fun toys recently from Nannie Sue, which she loves. And the most exciting news of all - drumroll - she crawls! She still doesn't seem to care much for it; she kind of just does it randomly. I thought once she figured it out, she wouldn't be able to get enough of it. Now I'm thinking that she kind of knew how to do it before, but couldn't be bothered. Paul says that sounds like me. See what I have to put up with! (He's right, though.) Also, she pulls herself up to stuff now, mostly her leapfrog activity table, which she also loves. One day Paul and I looked over and she was just standing there, staring down at the table. It was pretty funny.
And last but not least - another poo story! The last couple of pictures features one of Poppy's worst blowouts ever. Paul and I were heading out the door to go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, and were delayed 15 minutes because Poopy Poppy had to go in the bath. Warning: these pictures are not for the faint of heart!
Anyway, have a great Christmas, boxing day, and new year!!

Paul's favorite photo - she loves her Mummy! (and still cries when I leave the room. It gets old, but I have to say, I love that she loves me so much!)

Note the annoying RC Willey ad on the TV behind us!

How in the world does this even happen!?!?!

Cheeky Monkey!

Happy Thanksgiving

Just another little update, since we have been awful at posting anything for the last month! Poppy just celebrated her first Thanksgiving - we had a huge extended-family get-together for Grandpa VanDenBerghe's 80th birthday, so it was great to see all the cousins, aunts and uncles. Poppy seemed to enjoy the mashed potatoes and stuffing, and I know Paul did, so all in all it was a successful day of eating and giving thanks!
As you can see, Poppy is quite the smiler (well, for the cameras, at least!), but believe me, she can really turn on you fast if you are either a) getting her out of the bath, b) changing her clothes, or c) putting her in the car seat. Those are definitely her least favorite things.
Poppy had her 9-month appointment on the 13th of this month, and not much has changed: 35th percentile for weight, 50th percentile for height, and 95th percentile for head circumference (wow!), and she is a very healthy little girl. Still just has the two teeth, but she seems to be getting better at chewing, so she has been eating lots more big person food as of late. She has also learned how to wave, points at things, can say "mama" and "dada" (but we don't know if she actually knows what she's saying...), and has not quite figured out crawling yet, but she is so close that we've already purchased a baby gate and some other baby-proofing items.
The Christmas decorations are all up, and we are excited to partake in Poppy's first ever Christmas, although to be honest, she doesn't seem that concerned with the Christmas tree. I suppose that will change when she learns how to crawl-- maybe if we're lucky that will start after Christmas and the decorations are all put away!
The only semi-horrific story to share happened last week. Poppy was sitting in the bathroom while I finished bathing Georgie, and I proceeded to clean out the tub after Georgie was done after she'd gotten out. I'd finished cleaning the tub out and turned around only to realize Georgie had pooed all over our bath mat. Which she never does, so I don't know what her problem was, and how I failed to realize this is a mystery since it was literally right behind me. Well, Poppy noticed the poo before I did, and as you can imagine, she had already picked some of it up and smeared it around by the time I noticed it. Therefore Poppy also went into the bath straightaway. We're not sure how much of it got into her mouth, but I don't really want to think about that. Ick!
In more exciting news, Tracy and Eduardo found out they are going to be having a little girl in April. Congrats, guys!

Happy Halloweeen and other fun stories!

Here we are, it's November 1st and, even though we tried to explain it to her, Poppy has failed to see the purpose behind 'fall back' (i.e. sleeping in), so I decided to use this time productively and get some blogging in. It's been a while since I posted anything (this is Paul by the way) but I think Anna has done a jolly good job of sharing what's been going on here at the Leggett's.

Things seem to have been super busy for use the past few weeks, it feels as though since my Mum went home - about 3 weeks ago - things just haven't stopped. It was so much fun having my Mum here with us. Poppy just loves her (I thing that may have had something to do with the two suitcases full of toys, clothes and books that Nannie Sue brought over for her...) and seemed to remember her from last time she was here. Even with all the busyness going on we've still had some holiday themed fun.

We went to two Halloween parties this weekend, we had the ward party on Friday and then a family party on Saturday, both were really fun - although I have to say that I was a little disappointed that at the family party only Darren, Anna's Mom and us dressed up - the rest of the family will have to do better next year! With that being said it was stilll a great deal of fun and Poppy looked cuter than cute as a little Gypsy (we were Quasimodo and Esmerelda(s) - see below for photo!). I also won a $1 McDonalds gift certificate - so double cheeseburger here I come!

Poppy at the Trunk or Treat - we scored quite the candy bounty - it was all for her you know.

Anna and Poppy both had fun with my Quasimodo wig (of which Georgie was deathly afraid)

In other news Poppy is cute (again see below for photo) and is just such a delightful little baby. She is still not crawling, although we think she is close, and we are just LOVING people telling us all the time that it is SO important she crawl (we get it, just tell us how to make here crawl please). She is also progressing to regular food and spent a good 3 minutes yesterday trying to figure out what she should do with the grape in her mouth - in the end, as Anna says, she gummed it. Poppy also had her first experience not sharing last night, at Vicki and Joey's party (thanks for hosting!), she was hanging out with Serena (her cousin's cousin) and they were both really wanting to hold the Rainbow Brite plate (I mean who wouldn't) and proceeded to spend the next five minutes taking it out of each others hand. Neither cried so I just sat beside them and took some pictures - it was quite cute.

Poppy was one happy little camper when she finally got to hold the plates!

Poppy + Georgie = Best Friends (although you can't tell that from Georgie's expression in these pics)