She's Ready for Mt. Everest

Marea's new thing is climbing. She's getting really good at climbing up on chairs and the couch but she enjoys balancing between the barstools and hanging on the coffee table more. It makes me crazy because i'm so scared she's going to fall but I know she needs to climb! The big question is...when will she master the final frontier...making it out of the crib?




The biggest challenge I am facing right now is keeping her busy. She is so busy. And this means that I am busy. Busy trying to keep her busy. If she's interested in something, her attention span is about 20 minutes. If not, it's about 3 seconds. I can see her interests and abilities changing a lot right now. She's definitely able to DO a lot more. This is making it really fun for me to buy stuff for her because I love watching her explore things. Thank goodness Christmas is coming, i'm looking forward to having new toys for her and I to play with!



Sleep has been improving. We rarely get woken up at night and naps are improving. Now if I could just get her to sleep in until at least 6, every day, i'd be a super happy camper. I just struggle with the early wake up, even though it's Gary who usually gets up with her!

Friends

It is so wonderful to see Marea and Jackie becoming such great friends! At the beginning of summer, when we first moved, Jackie wasn't too interested in playing with Marea. But over the course of the past few months, as Marea has grown up a bit, and become more interested in Jackie, the two of them have starting developing a relationship that is sure to become great friendship.


Marea can say Jackie's name, and will often talk about her. When we pull into their neighborhood, or up to grandma and grandpa's house, Marea knows and starts chattering about Jackie. If I mention that we are going to go see Jackie, she will often run for the front door and start pounding on it, like...arn't we going right now, mom?


"C'mon, Baby 'Rea!" That is the adorable way Jackie will entice Marea into playing one of her games. Thankfully, Jackie is mostly interested in running around with Marea, playing some sort of chase game. Marea certainly isn't interested in sitting down and focusing on anything right now. She wants to run around! They will run around, and poke at each other or bump into each other and squeal or let out a dual scream. It's very cute.


In a very short time, Emily will be part of the mix too! Now that is going to be fun...the three of them, this summer, at the beach.

Other fun stuff:
MMMMMMmmmmm-ma! Marea's version of a kiss. The cutest and sweetest kiss! Besides when she blows a kiss. How adorable is that?

Favorite song: She loves to sing "happy and ya know no-no-no-no-it". But she also loves dancing to her new cd from auntie sam. And when listening to her music in the car, she will often declare "dance!" and then gary and i must start groovin!

Could we possibly be close to potty training? For the past few days, Marea has been announcing her poops. Sometimes its before and sometimes it's after, but she definitely is understanding what is going on. It didnt' take long at all her to figure it out. Now Gary and I must get diligent about running her up to the potty! Stay tuned on this one!

Words, Words, and more Words

I can't believe how many words Marea has. Her vocabulary is exploding right now. She will often try to repeat just about anything I say. Pretty soon my little baby will be having a conversation with me. I'm going to miss all the baby babble.

What she doesn't have words for, she communicates in other hilarious ways. Such as, dragging her high chair across the room and running over to the refrigerator, pounding on it, stomping her foot and screeching....hmmm....think she's hungry?

The other monster we've created is her love for 'melmo'. So I let her watch Sesame Street in the mornings....what else am I supposed to do at 5:30 am when I can't even see yet? I let Elmo do the work! I can't believe it but I actually think Elmo is pretty cute. And Marea adores him too. She can spot that little red monster anywhere. It's suprising how much junk is out there in the world with Elmo on it. Right at her eye level. The cutest thing she does is sing the theme song. I hope I can get that on video.

Current Obsessions

There are a lot of fishies to point out at grandma and grandpa's house. Marea sees all of them and i'm seeing many of them for the first time myself. It's a pretty fun game. Marea says 'fishie', and I try to find it. The fishie pajamas are also a hit right now. Two mornings now have begun with a cheerful 'fishie' coming from the crib.
And who doesn't want their shoes on at 6 a.m.? Marea's other obsession right now is shoes. She loves putting on her own shoes and walking around the house, looking at her feet. But she's equally happy finding my shoes, or Gary's shoes, and bringing them over to us so we can put them on. "Mama shoe" and "Daddy shoe" can be heard several times throughout the day as she finds our shoes laying around the house.
Some other words she just loves repeating...cheese (favorite food), keys, car, NO, (actually it's 'no no no no no no') more (she's still signing it too, she does it over and over and over again repeating more more more!) down, pool (anytime she finds something pool related, such as our suits or towels, she'll say pool), jackie...she'll try to say just about anything these days. Hearing the little words come our of her mouth is just downright adorable. But then again, everything about her is absolutely adorable!
Pics....

Ball!

Marea is currently obsessed with anything round. She will happily point it out and exuberantly say, 'BALL'!

Some hilarious examples:

While investigating a roly poly bug in the backyard at grandma's house, she touches it and it rolled up into a 'BALL'!

While running like a manaic around the grocery store, she sees a pack of blueberries and happily (and longingly) exclaims 'BALL'!

While driving down the street, from the backseat we hear, 'BALL BALL BALL', and then the search is on for mommy and daddy...where is the ball? On this particular occasion i'm thinking of, it was the balloons in front of the car dealership.

And Grandma Craig has a whole tree of 'BALLS' in the back yard. Finding one on the ground is a guaranteed 'BALLLLLLLL!'

Here's some pictures from another fun day where the word of the day was 'FISHIE'!

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Marea's favorite thing to say is 'Beeeeeeeee'. Over and over again. I think she says it when she's content and in a good mood, just playing around. It's something she just says to herself when she's being a busy beeeeeeeee.

The past few days she's really started babbling a lot. As if she's having a full conversation with us. She'll string long 'sentences' together. She's also getting really good at repeating words, or at least trying to. Sometimes they come out so clear it's unreal. The other day in the bathtub she put (what sounded like) three words together...gary and i can't remember what they were but it was so clear....and for a second i just looked at her and thought, oh my god...pretty soon my baby is going to be talking and she's going to have all these things to say! We'll be having two-sided conversations! It was almost like a wierd glimpse into the future...just to keep me on my toes. So i'm making a point to teach her more words now. I've always talked to her a ton throughout the day...mostly to save my own sanity...but now i'm picking easy words and associating them with objects and repeating. It's just a matter of time.

She still does the babbling into our cell phones all the time. It's definitely still a favorite activity. Her babbling actually resembles how we must sound when we're on the phone. It's not sing-songy, more like brief little statements with pauses and everything.

Yesterday while hanging outside by her pool, she repeatedly got out, walked over to her sunscreen bottle, touched it and then pretended to rub it all over herself. It was really funny.

Yum...a lemon!

Little Miss MORE

Well I'm happy to report that the sign language class was a success...if I continue to use it on a regular basis I know the Little Miss would pick it up really easily. Unfortunately, I haven't been using it too much so her 'vocabulary' isn't very big. But she does use one sign CONSTANTLY...and it's MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE! Not only does she sign MORE, but she also says MORE when she's signing it. And whatever it is....mostly food, but also anything she wants, she signs and says more over and over again. It's absolutely hilarious.


What Marea always wants the most of is blueberries. The child absolutely loves them. It's practically an obsession.