Happy Holidays!

December 2025

Hello!

We've made it to the point where we can call this an "annual" happening. Hooray! People seemed to like our inaugural holiday note from last year. Some say a sequel isn't as good as the original, but we'll give it a go. So without further ado, here's the 2nd Annual Bleiweis Family Holiday Note.

2025 in Review

2025 has been amazing, hard, fun, sleep depriving, inspiring, challenging and enlightening, all because of the arrival of our girls. Daisy Brynn (4 lb. 9 oz.) and Ruth Jean (3 lb. 14 oz.) made their debut late in the night on Wednesday, March 5. After a nearly three-week stay at the NICU where they continued to grow and learned how to eat, they came home and have thrived ever since.

If there's been one piece of wisdom that has stuck with us since the girls were born, it's been from my brother-in-law, Alex, who said once the girls were born, you won't remember life before it. He couldn't have been more right. January and February happened. We vaguely remember the baby shower. Friends came over to help put together cribs and car seats, Emily Tabachuk visited and helped us finally finish refinishing our dining room table, Sue and Lee made a trip to do what ended up being a few last things around the house. I think we put up a pegboard but I don't remember what else we did. There were lots of trips to the hospital and before we knew it, one of those trips happened and we ultimately found out Emily wasn't coming home until the babies were born.

With the girls finally home, much of our time in the spring was devoted to feeding the girls every three hours and many things took a backseat. The garden went on hiatus for 2025, but we're hoping to plant a bunch and maybe make some infrastructure improvements in 2026. We’ve also been very much in a cultural bubble since March. For example, if you ask “Have you watched…” we’ll cut you off there. We haven’t watched it. We did take the girls to Mimi and Pops' house for the first time around Memorial Day, and a few weeks later (technically in the summer) they made their New York debut at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

The summer was a little less of a blur. As we all began to sleep longer through the night, we enjoyed spending time at the Delaware beaches with the Chappells and the Outer Banks with the Bleiweises. Fortunately, the girls are great travelers and we've embraced minivan life. The girls survived the two 9+ hour drives to and from North Carolina. We also took the girls to the Baltimore farmers' markets a few times. Our nanny came on board in August and she's been awesome.

The fall flew by, but a lot happened. The girls started eating and enjoying solid foods. Daisy started moving and is army crawling wherever she can, while Ruth is generally content in what Emily has deemed her potted plant era. We started getting out of the house a little bit more, taking the girls apple picking and they made their first trip to the diner at the end of our street. New niece Zoey arrived in October, and we were happy to become chopped liver and no longer in the spotlight. With the help of friends, we built a breakfast bar in our back kitchen that the girls can hang out at in their clip-on high chairs. We made a trip to Durham in October and in November we did another year of "Marathon Thanksgiving," driving to see our families and friends in Pennsylvania and New York within eight days.

Cat Corner

Stella and the girls quickly became best friends and Stella has been interested in the girls pretty much from the beginning. Each morning she stands by the nursery door hoping to get in after the girls wake up. The girls love aggressively grabbing her. Stella hasn't fought back. Win-win?

Gracie enjoys occasional pets from the girls but doesn't go out of her way to seek attention. For those wondering, Gracie’s Box of the Year was from of one of our many takeout trips to the aforementioned diner at the end of our street and was used primarily in the spring and early summer.

In closing...

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. And thank you for all of your love, support and help over the last year. We wouldn't be here without you. We're excited for what's to come in 2026... walking? Talking? I guess we'll all find out together.

With love,
Jon (old), Emily (old), Stella (10), Gracie (9), Daisy (9 months) and Ruth (9 months) ❤️