Goodbye 2009, Welcome 2010!

2009 was a wonderful year. Some highlights include:

• Watching Dexter go from this:
  
  
  
  To this:
  
  
  wow, what a difference a year makes when you start the year at 6 months old! Dexter learned to walk, feed himself table food, and say a few words in 2009. He also learned how to dance, clap his hands, and jump!
• Watching Frankie go from this:
  
  
  To this:
  
  
  That's Frankie, using the hand dryer at the library after she used the potty. In 2009, Frankie learned to use the toilet, discovered a love of dress-ups and make-believe, and increased her vocabulary. She discovered she really liked carrots with white sauce (ranch dressing), and still hates cabbage. Or really anything green.
  
• 2009 also marked a new beginning for us as I went back to work at MIT, 30 hours a week plus one graduate class per semester. Rachel joined our "family" in January of 2009 and helped make all this possible: we have loved having her as part of our lives!
  
  
  
  Rachel will be leaving at the end of this week to go back to Brazil, which we are very sad about. We have a new au pair, Grazi, that we will be welcoming into our family on January 14th! We are so excited to meet her. She is also Brazilian. We wanted the children to continue learning Portuguese:
  
  
  
  
• In 2009, Chris' robot project got approved! He will be heading up a project at work that involves robots, and really, what engineer doesn't want to head up a project that involves robots? Some dreams really do come true.
  

As 2010 rolls in, we do have a few resolutions:

• Dexter has given up the paci. Meaning more that we have thrown them all away since I personally had no self-control, and would break down and give him one, even if he could probably have done without it. So maybe it's really a resolution for me, but either way we are now a paci-less house.
• Frankie has (mostly) given up her naps. She started about a month ago, not napping a few days a week, and I found that on the days she did nap, she didn't fall asleep until 9:30 or 10pm. So we shortened the nap from 2-4, and then moved recently to a rest time from 2-3. Following the Ashe family model, she has "rest time" on the bed in the playroom where she can read books, work on her lacing, etc, and then can watch a show for 30 minutes.
• Jenny has joined a gym! I'm now a proud member of the Downtown Crossing Boston Sports Club, where I have resolved to be at from 7-8:30 M-Th. I'm leaving the house at 6:30, and work out and shower there before continuing on to work.
• Jenny also will not be signing up for any more graduate classes. For now. I'm hoping I can figure out how to get this degree in the future (I've been working on my master's in IT at Harvard Extension School), but for now, I need a little more time with my family.
• Chris has resolved to not let the robots take over the world. As long as he still gets a say. Which you know, may not be for much longer...