Alida

This little gal is not slowing up!  Even if she still likes to pretend she is our "tiny little baby," there is nothing very tiny or little about her, nor does she seem very baby-like.

It seems that all three of us bigger people in this house are quite smitten with her, and enjoy watching her, listening to her, talking about her, and in this instance writing about her when she is asleep (rather than scurrying around to make use of time while she is not underfoot or wanting to "help").  We need to get a book started to jot down all the cute stories because there are many and I seem to forget them as soon as they happen because the next cute thing is right around the corner.  But here are a few that Kali, Jason and I came up with last night.

She loves the Nursery rhymes.  Why?  So many of them are so horrible.  Well, we have been happy to note that she has memorized our modified version of Rock-A-Bye baby (which we think is particularly horrible to sing to your child while they are falling off to sleep...)



If you didn't catch it all, the last line, rather than singing, "and down will go cradle baby and all," you sing, "it's a good thing this trees only six inches tall." 

She is singing a lot - maybe thanks to Kali's music lessons?  But often she combines several songs. Last evening when we up visiting with our other household members she piped up, "Old MacDonald had a farm...and Bingo was his name oh."

She loves books and has many of them memorized.  And most times she wants to hold them herself while you read and knows them well enough to know if she skipped over a page.  She'll stop and say "missed a page" and go back to separate the pages carefully.  She'll often identify a book she wants to read by some line in the book.  When it is a book that only Jason has read to her, it takes awhile for me to catch on.  Yesterday she was saying to Kali, "all about me."  This sounded very cute but we weren't sure what she was talking about until she brought to me her "First Words" book and sure enough the page with body parts had the heading "All About Me."

When she isn't sitting reading books or putting puzzles together or sleeping, she is on the go!  She still drops down on her hands and knees occasionally and will say something like "crawl little bit" as if to just want to be assured that she hasn't lost that skill. But more often than not she uses her two feet - she'll stand at one end of the front room and say "ready, set, go" and take off for the other side of the room.

Some of the very cutest things she says right now:

"I want you Mommy" - When she wants to be with one of us she'll look at us from the counter or her high chair or from wherever she is and say it.  We about melt every time.  So sweet and nice to feel chosen in those moments to be the thing/person she most wants!

"Mommy play me" - normally this comes when I'm attempting to accomplish something around the house.  She'll be sitting with her spell-a-puzzle or some other toy/game.  How can one resist? 

"Whacha doin Mommy?" - This one cracks us up.  She sometimes just asks it out of curiosity when she can't see what we are doing.  But more often than not it is when she is a bit baffled by what we are doing.  So answering the question doesn't quite cut it.  So you'll answer and then she'll say "whacha doin Mommy" again and so on and so on.

She very much enjoys getting in on anything we are doing.  One of those things is the nighty routine, with her favorite part being tooth brushing and washing hands.  We are lucky if that doesn't require a shirt change following due to soggy sleeves.  Jason feels sure she would be happy to get all of her needed water for the day from sucking the water off her toothbrush or soaking it in through her skin through washing hands.