The Christmas Season

Well, not even a month since the last post! I think it's because Laelia is saying the most adorable things and I want to share them. :) So here goes:

While cooking dinner with Laelia and Rekawae around:
Me: Rekawae, out of the kitchen!
Laelia: Does Rekawae like to be in the kitchen?
Me: Yes, but I don't like her underfoot when I'm cooking.
...and a few minutes later when Rekawae came back in...
Me: Rekawae, OUT!
Laelia: Does Rekawae like to be under your foot, Mom?

Laelia, while on the changing table, after putting with a diaper (clean) over her eyes. "I'm covering my eyes so the lights don't bright me."

"I ate all of my chicken, I ate all of my corn and I ate all of my sweet potatoes. Now I can have some blueberries!"

Laelia is walking around the Christmas tree with a little stuffed lamb making the lamb kiss all the ornaments. :)

Laelia's best quote of the day: "The angel told God not to touch the poop." I love this girl. :)

Out of the mouths of babes: "Never turn bacon down, Daddy!

Christmas morning on the chairlift Jeremy asked, "Have you had a fun morning, Laelia?"
Laelia's response? "It's the best I ever had!"

My girl is full of the greatest one-liners these days. Upon waking this morning (12/26) and coming out into the living room and seeing the aftermath of yesterday, "We had a good time opening the presents!""

Laelia wanted her water at lunch today but wasn't asking nicely, so Jeremy told her that if she does not ask politely she would not get it, but if she asked politely she would. She thought for a minute, and said, "Politely may I please have some water?"

Some of her favorite things are riding the Snowbus and going skiing.  That's my girl!  She rides on the Magic Carpet 'Ride' and the chairlift, and loves to go fast!  A big part of the skiing day is snacks, of course.  She pretty much never stops eating, but it's probably because she never stops moving!  Her favorites right now are almonds, dates, steak, coconut, and anything that we will put cinnamon and curry on.  She loves to sing, and is able to sing songs that are recognizable, which is really nice.  You can never go wrong in this house if you burst into "The Wheels on the bus," "Old MacDonald," "ABCs," "Jesus Loves Me," Twinkle, Twinkle," and recently Christmas songs of course.  She loves "Jingle Bells," "Frosty," and the gloria part of "Angels we had heard on high."

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

It's been a very long time since I have actually written a blog post.  I am not going to try and catch up on everything, but here are a few recent snippets of life with Laelia:

"I want to eat some more because I have some more eating in my belly."
"Is this my's?"
"Is Grampa your father, Mommy?"
"Mommy, stop!"  When she wants me to stop talking.
"I'm not a monkey, Mommy, I'm a girl!"  (Which sounds like 'gou-wul.')
"Are those piano kids coming now, Mommy?"
"I want to ski with Mommy and Daddy and Mia.  That will be so fun!" (I'm not kidding you.  She really said this.  Yes, I love it!)
"Is there snow, Mommy? Should we go out in it and make snow angels?"
"Bye Mom.  I'm going to work with Daddy.  I'll be back in a little bit."
"We should stay for 2 more minutes."

Laelia was a mountain goat for Halloween, completely her choice.  She loves them ever since seeing them in Glacier over the summer.  She was pretty darn cute, if I don't say so myself.

For her 2nd Birthday party we made Discovery Bottles.  (Discovery-a Bottles to Laelia!)  All her friends were able to make one by filling up a little water bottle with buttons, beads, sequins, ribbons, etc, and then adding water and food coloring.  It was pretty fun!  She figured out how to hold up 2 fingers about a week after her birthday, and is pretty proud of herself!

I'm proud to say that with the exception of sleeping, Laelia is diaper free!!  She's looking more and more like a big girl especially without the diaper, and is very excited each day to when we put on her undies!  Fun times. :)

She's very into building things, since she knows that Jeremy is building the new part of the house for us.  Last night at dinner she was using her sweet potato and chicken to build a house with doors, a bench, and owl and a penguin.

Well, a brief update.  Watch the videos of older posts to see her in action!

In Which Laelia Entertains Daddy With An Elaborate Story About A Mountai...

In Which Laelia Sings Her ABCs

In Which Great Northern Guitars Takes The Spotlight

A quick video of Jeremy's fine guitar craftsmanship.  Enjoy!

In Which Laelia Laughs

In Which Laelia Helps Daddy With The Tree

In Which Laelia Mimics Rekawae

In Which Laelia Twirls For Maga!

In Which Laelia Folds Daddy's Socks

In Which Laelia Wears Mommy's Flipflops

In Which Laelia Skis At Logan Pass 3

In Which Laelia Skis At Logan Pass 2

In Which Laelia Skis At Logan Pass

In Which Laelia Reads "The Noisy Counting Book."

In Which Laelia Spreads A Towel...Belly-Flop Style!

Other Laelia-isms...

When she entered my room the other morning to wake me up, this is how the conversation went.

Laelia: "Hi Mommy.  Hi Yay-yee-ah.  Hi Mommy."  (Yay-yee-ah = Laelia, in case you didn't realize.)

Apparently I'm not needed for conversations any more.

In Which Laelia Dances For Emily

In Which Laelia Plays The Harmonica.

So it's been a while since I actually wrote anything.  Here are some recent snippets of life with Laelia...

5:00am early morning conversation with the girl.
Laelia: "Tablets?"  (regarding teething tablets, which we were out of, and had been for a few days.  She knew this)
Mom: "They are all gone,  Laelia."
Laelia: "Buy more?"
Mom: "Yes, Laelia, we will have to buy more."
Laelia: "Store?"
Mom: "Yes, Laelia, we will go to the store to buy more."
Laelia: "Desdemona?"  (the name of our VW bus)
Mom: "Yes, Laelia, we will go in Desdemona to the store to buy more."
...........
Yesterday Jeremy took Laelia outside to get the trailer attached to the bike while I got ready inside.  He also showed her his motorcycle, which he was working on, as it was broken.  When she was in the trailer, under the rain cover she kept saying something over and over, which I had difficulty understanding.  When I finally figured it out, I realized she was saying "Daddy's motorcycle broken."
...........
She really likes "whole piles" of things.  Food, books, grass, flowers, dirt, it doesn't really matter.  She just says "whole pile" and looks for confirmation that she's right.  And she is.
...........
She understands the concept of possession, and is often making sure we know the difference between "your mouth"  (she calls herself 'you', so the 'your' refers to herself) and "mommy's mouth" or "your stroller" and "Zoe's stroller" (one of her friends).  She recognizes places she goes to regularly, such as "Zoe's house" and "Weston's house" and "Mia's house."  In the case of Mia's house (my mom), she recognizes the turn of the highway and says, "Almost there!"
..........
She's getting into dolls and other toys more as playthings now. Her cabbage patch doll from the 80's is dressed in a diaper, with two different shoes on, and Laelia often takes her out of her play stroller and puts her on the potty.  Sometimes head-first, but we'll get there.
........
Ok, that's all for now!

In Which Laelia Learns Her First Verse.

In Which Bill Plays The Harmonica For Laelia

In Which Laelia And Amelia Jump And Bounce

In Which Laelia Skis Part 4

Sunny Skiing Turns!

Happy Easter!

In Which Laelia Eats...

Yep, she ate everything on the list TODAY!

In Which Laelia Skis! (Part 3-Yes, She Wants To Do It Again)

The Magic Carpet!

In Which Laelia Skis! (Part 1)

In Which Laelia And Rekawae Play.

My Budding Pianist

In Which Jeremy Skis!

And now a non-Laelia video...we love winter!!

15 Months and going, going, going....

Yep, Laelia basically never stops moving. She's very confident on her feet, and in the past few days have been experimenting with going backwards too. Today she backed into a stool in the kitchen and was completely shocked!

Her favorite thing to do is dress up; it's limited at this point in time because she can't really put clothes on by herself, but you will almost always find a trail of hats that she has been wearing on and off and on again. She even puts on two hats sometimes. Today she took one of Jeremy's baseball hats and put it on her head and started walking around with it on when it slipped down over her eyes. True to form, she didn't stop walking, but kept going, saying, "Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh," until I took it off for her. She also likes to carry things around; plastic buckets, bags, etc, and wear anything as a necklace; actual necklaces, random pieces of our clothing (anything that fits over her head), bags. I think she's all girl. Hopefully she's going to hold off on wanting make up for a LONG time!

Let's see...she's talking more and more everyday, and still is learning signs for words she can't say yet. She says, 'peas' for Please, 'Up,' 'yeshs' for yes, 'rice,' boh-key,' for broccoli, 'Ba,' for banana, 'baby,' and lots of other B-sounds with appropriate-ish vowel sounds (ball, book, balloon).

Laelia eats like food is going out of style. She LOVES chicken and hamburger, eggs, bananas, rice, broccoli, sweet potatoes, kiwi, oranges, avocado, and so on...you get the picture. She never seems to stop eating, and is finally growing a bit, although her weight hasn't changed much for a while. It's just that her rolls of fat are shrinking. Seriously, her leg rolls are wrinkly because of all the extra skin that used to go around all the fat!

Click here for some recent pictures and I'll post some videos soon.

In Which Laelia And Amelia Make Animal Sounds

I let Laelia watch Amelia's video of animal sounds and she started making them too, so I decided to video it...she doesn't know all the same sounds (no camel or donkey) and she gets distracted by pausing the video to finish strong with bear and fish, but it's pretty cute nonetheless.

In Which Laelia Bows

Laelia learned to bow watching my piano students practice for their upcoming recital. As they bowed, so would she. And now she gets a kick out of it when we clap for her!

In Which Laelia Keeps Busy

In Which Laelia Rides A Horse...A Rocking Horse, That Is.

Laelia rides her rocking horse from Maga. She's very tired in this video (can you tell by the dazed look??) but she loves it very much! Thanks, Maga!

In Which Laelia Runs Around In The Buff

Showing off her running skills and the fact that she escaped from the changing

room without many clothes on!

In Which Laelia Thanks You For Her Christmas Gifts

These were the last gifts Laelia opened (it took us 3 days to get through them all) and she said, "Wow!" for everything she opened. Her hand going up to her mouth and coming back down is how you sign, 'thank you.'

In Which Laelia and Daddy Stick Our Their Tongues

Jeremy spent his Christmas Vacation teaching Laelia a new trick or two...

Growling Girls

Laelia and Vanora spent the better part of our walk growling back and forth at each other. It was mostly Laelia copying Vanora, and it was great! I'm sure their communication skills will mature as they grow!

She's a reader!

Laelia can't get enough of her books these days. She hasn't really been playing with toys, but there's always a book nearby. She reads on the couch, on the floor, in our lap, just about anywhere. And of course she has a few favorites that we read over and over. Right now they are Goodnight Moon (mostly because of the mice in the pictures with color...can you find one on every page? Laelia can!), Peek-a-Who, Are you my Mother?, and generally any books with animals. The one she's reading in this picture is about mountain animals and has flaps and textures and is just great! Thanks, Maga, for the wonderful book! In other big-girl news, we've decided to start limiting her pacifier use to naps and traveling...it's a transition to be sure, but we think she's up to the task. So hopefully future pictures will show her cute little mouth instead of the pacifier!

2012, Here We Come!

I'm not making any promises about blogging with increased frequency this year, but we'll see. Laelia continues to amaze us and bring more and more joy into our lives every day. For example, she's finally taking a decent nap today, and that brings me a lot of joy! ;) But seriously, she's awesome. She's walking, practically running, and refusing to crawl anymore, even to get something from under the table that she can't walk under. She's signing lots and lots, the big thing now is animal signs. We ticked her belly and armpits while saying, "ho0 hoo hee hee hee," for a monkey, and she doesn't say the sounds, but will mimic the motions when she sees a monkey. She raises her arms for an elephant's trunk, and slaps her leg for the alligator's snap-snap-snap-ing mouth. Animal sounds are fun to make too; snake, dog, cat, gerbils/hamster, bear, fish, sheep, penguin, cow, owl, train (yeah, not an animal, but it's in a zoo book we have, so we say it anyways) horse, and I'm sure there's others I can't remember right now.

Laelia has really enjoyed this last week with Jeremy being off work...she toddles down the hallway saying, "Dada" trying to get to his shop, and can open the door leading down the stairs. Today he's back at work, and I had to put up the baby gate to keep her away from looking for him. The concept of him being gone isn't quite there yet!

She enjoyed opening presents...all 3 days of it because she was so slow and deliberate with every one that she opened. She loves her baby doll and her books and her ball-track toy best. She's taken to reading books on her own, and today I told her she should read baby, so I helped her hold baby on her lap, and then set a book on the floor in front of her. She looked at baby, and the book, and then picked up baby and tossed her aside before reading her book! It's totally fine with me that she prefers books!

I'll post more soon, there are some cute videos to see!