Malia's Milestones

Our little girl is amazing us every day! We're especially proud when perfect strangers stop us on the street to point out her beautiful eyes or her curly hair. Older women especially love her, commenting that she is just like "a little doll." Admittedly, we're proud... probably to a fault... but we just can't help ourselves. She is accomplishing so many things!

Some of her many, many words are:

"Mommy" & "Daddy"
"eese" = please
"doo doot" = thank you
"side" = slide
"gaykie" = blankie
"nah nite" = good night
"skak" = snack
"geenk" = drink
"puppy"
"sky"
"fries"
"ba-gah" = Grandma
"Sa-sehs" = Jesus & glasses
"buck" = truck
"cars"
"eat"
"no"
"yes"
"shash" = bath
"Lala" = water
& any word she can imitate, without knowing what it means

She also knows the names of some of her favorite toys/characters:

"Gickee" - Mickey
"Pooh"
"Buzz" (Lightyear)
"Dowa" = Dora
"Fee-fee" = Goofy
"Ga-Guck" = Donald Duck
"Ninnee" = Minnie
"E-yoh" - Eyore
etc.

She knows the animal noises for a cow, pig, dog, cat, monkey, bear/lion, horse, duck, sheep... and our personal favorite, is the elephant (we make her do it for strangers... "dance, Monkey, dance!") She can also basically read the book "Moo, Baa, La La La" entirely on her own (she has it memorized). It's pretty adorable. She also can point out and correctly name the majority of her external body parts. Our favorite is when she smacks her backside and says, "bum."

She knows the difference between letters and numbers. Although almost ALL letters are "B" and ALL numbers are "3"s. However, she can point out and name the letters "O" & "Y." WHen I wear my BYU shirt, she points to the letters (correctly) over and over "B. Y. B. Y." And when she counts, she points to items after lining them up and says :"2, 3, 2, 3, etc."

She likes to dance to music and she likes to sing with Mommy when I belt or when we sing in Church. She folds her arms for prayers and ends them with an entusiastic "A-MET!" (she ends a lot of words with the letter "T"). She loves nursery at Church and Sister Tawny tells us every week that she's incredibly well-behaved and never fusses.... unless an aggressive child pushes her down.

There are so many things she can do and we're constantly amazed at the things she learns, especially the things she picks up that we don't teach her. She definitely is a sponge. And children are a wonderful way to learn to censor yourself.

She is an amazing little spirit and gift from God and we thank the Lord every day for our little angel... especially our "post-colic" angel. People comment on how obedient she is and she actually sleeps more then the maximum average amount of hours for a child her age! Noone believes me when I tell them she screamed for 6 months. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Memorial Day

So, this year, as I was talking to David about how we should spend his day off from work, I expressed an interest in doing something in respect to the actual meaning of the day, as opposed to BBQs and a trip to the beach. I thought maybe we could go to a Forest Lawn or possibly find some sort of a memorial for veterans, seeing as how La Mirada is a community especially proud of its veterans. The Sunday night before, as we were discussing it, I could sense he was less then enthusiastic about doing anything.... i.e. I see holidays as a time to go out and do things until we wear ourselves out silly; he sees them as the opposite (wearing ourselves out by doing absolutely nothing). This is an unattainable compromise that we've struggled with for our almost 5 years of marriage. I finally ran across a webpage advertising the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival. It obviously had absolutely nothing to do with "memorializing" anybody, persay.... but the strawberry seemed like a pretty yummy 2nd choice.

Malia with Daddy on the Animal Train

Malia loves Carousels! Although this one made Mommy nervous, because, from my perspective, it seemed to be circulating at an alarmingly fast pace.... too fast for a carnival ride that looked as if it could crumble if the wind blew.

Malia has a problem understanding that taking a bite doesn't mean you will lose the rest of it... hence the mouthful of strawberry.

We had a bowl FULL of strawberries which were topped by whipped cream.... have you ever been full from strawberries? It's not as wonderful as you might anticipate. When we got home, both Malia and Daddy took wonderful naps, so I'd say it was a fairly successful day. Although, admittedly, I still felt less then appeased and somewhat guilty for not celebrating the holiday for its true purpose. So, in the words of a great teacher and orator, Joseph Campbell:

"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."

In Memoriam...

The Bandwagon

So, I'm going to have to do it. I had sworn that a blog would be the one thing I would never fall prey to .... well, that and text-messaging. I guess one out of two ain't so bad. So, here it is folks! Our "blog." Ok. I'll wait for you to take a giddy moment to jump up and down over the sheer exhiliration of it all.

*waiting... waiting.......

I know. Exciting.

Now you will be able to take a small peek into the impelling world that we, the Nutters, call, simply... "life." (Truth be told, all I do is change diapers, kiss owies, and sing ridiculously silly songs that are truly a far cry from the melodramatic belting of my musical theatre pursuits of yesteryear.... and don't even TRY to ask me what it is David does).

So, hold onto yer hats n' glasses, folks. 'Cuz this here's the WILDEST RIDE IN THE WILDERNESS! (*mega-high-five to anyone who knows what ride I just quoted).