Chatterbox

We have ourselves a little chatterbox!  Her language skills have exploded lately, and we’ve run a gamut of new words and phrases. At times she seems to be carrying on a conversation entirely by herself (or her little friend, Brobee).

Words thus far (in English/ in Mia):
doggie (same)
cat (at)
balloon (bahhloo)
elephant (elfant)
ball (same)
tiger (rawr)
fish (sshhhhh)
banana (nana)
milk (yeche)
water (agua)
bubble (baaabulls)
giraffe (jaaafff)
and of course… ELMO! Sigh.

Twinkle Toes

$10 DIY Sandbox

Spring is in the air and the weather has certainly warmed up around here.  Despite the insane amount of pollen, we have been hanging out on the deck at home and enjoying stretching out our toes and wearing short sleeves.

We don’t have much in the way of “outdoor toys” for the little one since she was immobile this time last year, but this post from Prudent Mama seemed ingenious.

So off we went and got some play sand from Lowe’s and a plastic storage bin from Target. Add a couple of plastic beach toys and buckets from CVS and we spent a total of just about $10 for infinite fun.

She loves the texture of the sand and picking it up and tossing it. Then I turned around for a second and found this:

Little stinker hopped right in!  Whee!  And when all is done, we just pop the lid back on and wait for another sunny day.  Can’t beat that!

Baby hates furries

I noticed an ad on PBK’s site regarding live appearances with Peter Rabbit with story time, activities, etc.  I thought this would be a nice excursion for us this weekend.  We were actually the first ones to arrive, even before the store opened, and waited patiently with some coffee and Mia finding random open electrical outlets on the mall’s floor.

Apparently she loathes such photo ops.  CASE IN POINT:

I guess I really ought to stop trying these things with her.  My sweet baby is more likely to run up to a ferocious pit bull and gleefully say “doggy!” than deal with any costumed children’s character.  At least this keeps us from having to go to Disney any time soon!

Mia’s First Christmas

First Halloween

Or nerdoween if you will… and with two costumes!

Inside Out Day

Yesterday was Inside Out Day for the little one. She turned 9 months old – as long as she baked inside of me (plus a few more days, but who’s being nitpicky).

I am constantly amazed at how awesome every single day is with her. She has grown so much: 17 pounds, 7 ounces, plus 6 teeth and counting! She’s crawling and standing, and she just babbles away constantly. It’s almost impossible to believe that she was so tiny and helpless that very cold night we brought her home.

Happy Inside Out Day, pumpkin!

The Cutest 2 Minutes EVER

Zipping around from mingaling on Vimeo.

Little Swimmer

We introduced Mia to swimming right when she turned 6 months.  We’re lucky to have a great neighborhood pool close to the house, plus a membership to the indoor one at Tech.  Being from Florida, swim skills are extremely important to me and I want to make sure she is comfortable around water and is able to swim at an early age.

We started swimming classes at Agnes Scott College a couple of weeks ago and she is doing great!  She seems to enjoy being in the water.  She definitely likes to kick and wade and chase after toys in the water, but she certainly takes swimming very seriously as you can tell by the look on her face.

Look at that determination!

This past week we did a little more back-floating, which she tends not to like so much. And we took our first underwater plunge – thankfully no crying!

Jumperoo

Miss Short Stuff is finally tall enough to touch the floor and jump in her jumperoo!