Thursday, April 24, 2008

ada loves daddy

Every day when I drive Ada home she sits, looking bored, in her car seat, waiting. Waiting for the time when we pull into the driveway and she knows that she is just moments away from seeing her DADDY. When she sees the house she immediately starts shouting, "DADDY! DADDY! DAAAAADDDDDYYYYY!!!!" And some days she is lucky enough that Elliot hears us pulling into the driveway and he comes out to help me unload the car, in those cases, she gets to see DADDY right away. She loves those nights.

So last night as we were driving home Ada was looking particularly bored so I started going through her list of words. Recently she was able to say a version of the word "love". Doesn't surprise me she hears it about 600,000 times a day thanks to her over obsessive mommy. Anyway, as we were going through all of Ada's words she said "love" really well, so I thought I'd try out a "I love you" which she got pretty good, so we then tried "I love Daddy" which was again a success. When we got to "I love Mommy" she had grown bored of the exercise and said something like "yellow". I'm trying not to take it personally.

We moved on to some other words and did some car dancing, forgetting all about Ada's love fest. Until we got home of course and she started her "DADDY" demanding. This was Ada's lucky night. Elliot heard us pull in and came out to help out. So when he picked Ada up, I asked her if she could say "I love Daddy" and of course she did, loud and clear.

I think I saw Elliot's heart melt as his body simultaneously twisted so that it was wrapped around her pinkie finger.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

what I did on my vacation..

We are back from Boston. One ankle hobbled, and two whole bodies a little more sore than when we left. We had a great time on our little parents only vacation, and the marathon was an unbelievable experience. But, after 4 days away from our little Adabeta - Elliot and I were anxious to get our hands on Ada and smother her with kisses and tickles and hugs. But Ada, at her young age, was not quite ready for that. So last night she slowly warmed up to us, went through all of her new tricks, and then started showing off her new favorite word. "No."

She was using this with more regularity before we left, but last night and this morning she was down right determined to use it. Over and over and over and over again. I think this might be like the word "Up". She only knows "Up" not "Down" so when she is up and she wants down she says "Up". Right now she doesn't really know how to say "Yes". She says "ssssss" really really quietly, but that is about it. Since she doesn't know how to say "Yes" and really really really knows how to say "No", I'm hoping that she is just confused and says "No" when she means "Yes", well some of the time at least. So now I counter her chorus of "No. no. no. no..... no" with a chorus of "Yes. yes. yes. yes.... YES" and hopefully she'll pick it up.

If not, we are shipping her off to Auntie Katie's house permanently. Because obviously she picked it up from Katie, we never use words like "No" in our house. :)

Friday, April 18, 2008

baby gifts

Elliot and I are preparing to leave on our first non-Ada travel EVER. We are going all the way to Boston to run the marathon on Monday and Ada gets to stay in San Diego with her Auntie Katie. So all week I've been trying to prepare Ada for what is to come this weekend. Telling her that mommy and daddy are going on an airplane - which is followed by 5 minutes of Ada pointing to the sky or the ceiling saying airpane, airpane, AIRPANE... next we tell her that she will get to go to soccer and hockey with Katie and that she will probably also get to hang out with Thea, Katie's dog - followed by a chorus of doggie, doggie, DOGGIE!! I'm not sure how much she understands, and how much she thinks I'm just trying to get her to work on her vocabulary, but this morning, after polishing off her milk she snuggled in for a little cuddle time, and I thought, well maybe she knows we are going to be gone soon and she is giving us a little going away gift. Then she kicked Elliot in the chest, and elbowed me in the face and I realized she was just suckering us in so she could REALLY let us know how she feels about this trip.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

a little slice of heaven

I have talked in length in the past about shoes. My love of shoes, Ada's love of shoes, and of course the large number of pairs of shoes Ada owns as a 1 year old. Well, Ada has recently moved up a size in her shoes and now is missing one or two of the essential shoe types (girly sneakers, and girly sandals). So last night we took a family trip to Target to pick up a few things including some new shoes for Ada. This is the first time that Ada has been really actively mobile while we did shoe shopping and when we turned our cart down the little girl shoe aisle you could see her mind jumping all over itself because, the shoes.. oh the shoes, there are soo many shoes, so many pretty shoes. In Ada's version of heaven, there is an endless supply of shoes in all sizes and colors for her to try on all day long if she wants.

As Elliot and I searched for practical choices to fill out Ada's size 6 shoe collection, Ada pulled glittery shoe after glittery shoe out of the boxes. She had her current shoes off faster than I have ever seen her remove any article of clothing and spent the next 20 minutes trying on shoe after shoe. It was amazing to watch her study the shoes, position them so she can get them on her little feet, and then gently place first her left, then her right foot into the shoes. Over time she figured out it was easier to put the shoes on if they were a few sizes to big which just added to the cuteness. Most of her choices were impractical - think pink jelly shoes, silver ballerina slippers, and glittery flats - but to Ada these are really the only kind of shoes you need.

I suspect that Ada's Auntie Julie had been holding little fashionista workshops while she babysits. How else can you explain a one year old with better fashion sense than her Mom?