The Many Faces of Baby Girl

19 Months

Baby Boy.

Today you are 19 months old.

In honor of this special day, here is a list of a few of your favorite things:

Lollipops (otherwise known as "like-its")

Doors (which provide endless opportunity for you to practice "open/coshe")

Climbing (especially if there are snacks involved)

Outside

Balls

Baths (I have never seen a kid get so excited about taking a bath)

Counting. You really, really love to count. We don't know how you figured it out, probably from hearing your sister count (or, maybe, just your inherited genius coming through).

Here's a little video of you and your counting skills at work.

Just so you know...you are one of our favorite things.

Snow and Stuff

I truly can't believe how much snow we have. I think the entire month of February and most of January has been coated in snow.

It's snowing even as I type this.

There have been a few benefits to this...

The birds are all over our feeders and it's a nice show. We have so many cardinals...it is almost shocking how red they are in all the white.

We have TOTALLY gotten our money's worth out of the snow blower Dr. Dad picked up at a garage sale and finally got working.

We have some very good pictures of the kids in the snow.

Otherwise, I am pretty over the snow by now. I miss the sun. I miss just getting some shoes on the kids and walking out the door without coats/hats/scarves/mittens/boots/shovels.

In other news, I joined a gym. Strange but true.

The last time I regularly went to any type of exercise facility was when I was in college. But, to be honest, the Rec Center was more for socializing than sweating. I mean, they had air hockey. Who wants to run when you can play air hockey?

So far I have been going 3 times a week. I had a few sessions with a personal trainer, who made me do weights. So, I have been doing the weights and feeling the "burn" and the "pain" and "working through it". They use a lot of quotation marks at the gym.

This, of course, is all in preparation for my sister's upcoming wedding. I have been crowned Matron-of-Honor (which just makes me sound old and semi-important).

Aren't they cute?

All I can say is, thank GOD for our Mom. She pretty much took care of my entire wedding, and she is executive wedding planner for my sister. Both of us planned our weddings "long distance" (ok, mine was 3 hours away, and my sister is more like 7 STATES away but even so...) and I know it never would have happened without her. If I actually had to fulfill any of the traditional "Matron-of-Honor" duties it would not be pretty.

So, while I contemplate heading out to the gym in all this snow, I leave you with a picture to brighten your day.

Dance, Ballerina, Dance

For whatever reason, I have not been very motivated to blog lately.

I promised to do a post just about Baby Girl, but I really couldn't come up with one that wasn't a whole lot of "wow my kid is so awesome, here is a list of why I think that way."

Part of me wants to capture what life is like for this 7 and a half year old girl. The drama, the attitude, the little girl antics still evident, but becoming less so.

So I am going to try and do some little "snapshots" of her life.

Starting with dance.

She is a dancing queen. Always she is dancing and singing and prancing around. We started her in dance class when she was 3 years old. She will be in her 4th recital this summer and she is still really focused on ballet.

I played "professional photographer" at her dance class a few weeks ago.

It took a lot to get pictures of her in action, because every time she would see the camera, she would stop and do a crazy glam pose and totally disrupt the class. So I lurked in the doorway and held the camera down and snuck a few shots.

Of course I love it that she loves to dance. I did tap for years and always secretly wished I could do ballet. Let's just say I wasn't exactly ballerina material.

I hope she continues to enjoy this for years to come. Mostly I hope she has this kind of joy and love for everything she decides to do in her life.