Just celebrated a 2nd Birthday for M! Seems like yesterday that I held my tiny little baby in my arms for the first time in the hospital with her dark hair and her squishy daddy W face. I can't believe I just celebrated her 2nd birthday. Her birthday party was fun- Florida Keys with cousins galore and a tasty underwater themed cake- but the real surprise was how grown up my little baby seemed already the next day. Her vocabulary has exploded and her ability to do and say and express things for herself is exciting to experience. Right now she is infatuated with stickers and tattoos, with "da-da-da-da-Dora" and "go-go-go-Diego" and with her big cousin E. She loves taking photos with her elmo camera and with mommy's camera too. Her favorite food is "monkey cheese and hotdogs".. big surprise, right? She is starting to use the potty everyday and started pre-school this week. Yikes! What a grown-up!!

I love being her mom and I love every minute I get to spend with her. I only hope time slows down just a little bit so I can savor every moment with my baby.

Milena is a complete chatterbox these days and her new favorite work is "AWESOME!!" as in picking strawberries is.... AWESOME!! or hanging out with dad is... AWESOME!!! She also like to point out colors, shapes, things that are dirty, wet or icky. She loves being in "Nena's house" most of the time and insists on doing everything herself. Watermelon and tortillas are the favorite menu items right now.. not necessarily together :-). She has a blast picking strawberries this last weekend and picked and ate, picked and ate for about an hour non-stop. I was worried we were going to have a massive stomach ache on our hands but she was just fine.. stems and all! You can see the evidence all over her happy, juicy red face!

Blood Root Tattoos

One of my favorite memories from childhood is skipping through Hixon forest in the spring, picking blood root and making bright orange streaks on my hand. M had her first ritual "marking" today at Perrot State Park on the Brady's Bluff trail from Mimi. Along with her new word "oriole", her worn path through the garden trail, and her new habit of hugging and kissing trees, I think little M is turning out just like her Mimi :-)

Spent a great weekend in The Dells at an indoor waterpark...crowded? check. noisy? check. overstimulating? check. The kids loved it! ...and so I did too :-) M loved playing with her cousins and her pawpaw K. To top it off, M and K hunted for Easter eggs with about 50 other toddlers at MagiQuest, an indoor interactive video game environment.. this will be an Easter to remember- dragons, fairies and giant trees, oh my!

M is mastering the stairs- up, down, up, down, up, down. Scares me half to death!

Milena woke up this morning with the giggles. After bringing her to bed with me around 6:30 am she proceeded to sit up in bed and start doing... the chicken dance! How cute is that?! She, of course, insisted that I join in :-)

I'm Baaaack!!

I'm baaaaack!! I decided to start blogging to document M's super cute fun little things she does everyday. 19 months is sooo cute!!

Good week so far:
1) M started her new bilingual daycare, loves her teachers, and said her first Spanish words "aqua" (water) and "negro" (black)- yeah!

2) M's new favorite word is "soup" and this week she helped daddy make and slurp up potato leak soup and.. much to our wide-eyed surprise tonight... red curry soup with edamame. With every bite she says "soup, soup, yum, yum"











3) She's talking alot and says mama, dada, baby, bye-bye, hi, thank you, wow, soup, cheese, ice, milk, more, this, eat, eye, ear, hair, beep-beep (to get me out of the way), ewwwww (for diapers and gross stuff in general), uh-oh, nuh-uh, puppy, woof-woof, moo, mimi, yah-yah, much more, I can't remember and of course the ever popular.. MINE! She said her first phrase "Bye-Bye Baby."

4) M started pointing to herself and saying her own name but instead of M she says, Nina, which W and I kind of like as a nickname!