Happy 2nd Birthday Mia!

I cannot believe Mia turned two last Thursday! Oh, this precious little girl lights up our world every single day. To celebrate her big day, we went to Disney World last Wednesday to Sunday and had a blast! She did a great job of telling all the characters that she is "TWO!" while holding up two fingers. I have tons of pictures and details, but that is for another post that will be completed soon. For now, let me tell you about sweet Mia...

We had her two year old check-up today which went very well. She weighs 26 pounds, 6 ounces which is the 40th percentile. At 34 inches she is in the 50th percentile for height. Her head is 18.5 inches which puts her in the 40th percentile for head circumference. She did not have to have any shots today because she received her flu shot a few weeks ago. She had her toe pricked to test her iron level though (it came back normal). Mia just looked at the nurse like "What in the world? Are you crazy?" She didn't cry, but she kept pointing to her band aide and saying "Boo boo toe." Mia talked throughout almost the entire appointment. She played with my cell phone a lot; she would open it up, put it to her ear and say "Hi Daddy. (Pause) Bye-bye!" multiple times. She pointed out all her body parts to Dr. White and followed Dr. White's directions very well. At one point, Dr. White said "I can see she is very bright. Most two years old cannot talk this much or this well." Her verbal development over the last couple of months has really been astonishing. Dr. White gave her a thorough check up and declared she is doing well.

We are so madly in love with our little Amelia. She cracks us up often. Here are a few miscellaneous facts about her right now that I want to remember. She loves her songs (when she says "songs" she scrunches up her nose and it's really cute to see) which are the Cedarmont Kids DVD's and CD's that we listen to. She can actually sing along to several of the shorter lines, and she can finish the last word of almost every line. She really enjoys brushing her teeth throughout the day; she goes running into the bathroom yelling "teeth! teeth!" Her favorite words right now are "Did it!" For instance, she will put the lid back on a jar or put her shoes on. Then she looks up triumphantly and proclaims "Did it!" I love how proud of herself she is. She is also a big fan of the word "Mine!" We are working on learning to share which is not something that comes naturally. She is not a fan of the word "no" and she can get quite upset when you say that to her; she has a good bit of drama in her. She loves to play with balls, play dough and craft items. She has fun playing in the pretend kitchen. She has a great time when she sits in the baby doll stroller and Lily pushes it around. Really, she loves to play just about any game with Lily; Mia adores her. She loves to imitate everyone, but especially Lily. If she sees Lily doing somersaults across the floor, you can believe that Mia will start doing them too! In fact, she uses the word "too" a lot. We often hear "gummies too!" or "milk too!" or "book too!" She is good at making funny faces; she does a great gorilla that you'll have to see for yourself! It's really fun to simply watch her play. You can see the wheels turning in her head, and she is fascinating to watch.

She is still a very good eater. Some of her favorites foods right now: gummy snacks, mandarin oranges, bananas, mango, watermelon, waffles, yogurt (we hear "go-gurt" almost every morning as she runs to get a spoon from the drawer), noodle soup, Meme's vegetable soup, goldfish (or "Feesh" as she calls them), burritos with black beans, salsa, sour cream, cheese and rice on it from Moes and spinach ravioli with wild mushroom sauce from Figo. It's really pretty amazing to me what she can put down at a meal. I'm a little surprised she doesn't weigh more, but then again, she is constantly on the go, so she burns a lot of calories. She also enjoys milk, juice and water to drink.

One of my favorite things is to say a prayer with her each evening before bed. She folds her little hands together, and I'll say "Dear Jesus, thank you" and then Mia says "Daddy. Mommy. Lily. Mia. Bama." Oh it's precious to hear. She also likes to wave to the shadows her nightlight makes and tell them goodnight. We usually read a couple of books together too. Her current favorite seems to be "Brown Bear, Brown Bear." When it gets to the part that says "Black sheep, black sheep, what do you see?" she joyfully replies "Mia!"

She is very attached to her Glow Worm Doll. "Glo" as we call her is constantly with her at the house and often in the car. In fact, we have three of them and Mia typically sleeps with at least two of them. None of them play music anymore. Every morning when she wakes up, Mia likes to throw them out of her crib; they stop playing music after only a week or so of this. She likes to play with other dolls and toys, but she finds great comfort in Glo and asks for her whenever she is tired or upset.

Something she recently started that cracks me up is knock-knock jokes. Lily loves to tell knock-knock jokes with us, and Mia has picked up on that. So here's how that goes with her:
Mia: Knock knock.
Me: Who's there?
Mia: Nana (which means banana)
Me: Banana who?
Mia starts laughing. She has heard Lily's version which uses an orange and says "orange you glad I didn't say banana?" so this is Mia's take on that joke. She's going to be a jokester one day!

Mia is such an adventurous, playful, super smart, funny, happy and all-around adorable little girl. These past two years have absolutely flown by. We are so blessed to have her in our lives, and we cannot wait to see what her future holds!

Family Pictures

When we went to Birmingham a few weeks ago, an old sorority sister of mine named Ann Wade Parrish met us at Samford to take our annual family photos. I like to have them made between the girls' birthdays each year. I think they turned out fantastic! Following are some of my favorites. Wow, it was difficult to narrow it down!

Our funny girls make us laugh!

Such sweethearts!

This is in front of Divinity Chapel which is where Ryan proposed to me.

 

 I love my family so much!

New Words

Mia says new words all the time now which is so much fun to hear.  Yesterday, she said two things that absolutely melted my heart though.  First, Ryan was leading her through our little routine where we say "Daddy loves..." and Mia throws her hands in the air and happily proclaims "ME!"  We then do this with Mommy loves, Lily loves, etc.  So, Ryan asked Mia "who else loves Mia?" and she replied "Baby Jesus."  We had her say it over and over because it was sweet.  Second, after church last night, we picked Mia up from the nursery.  When the teacher brought her to the door, she said "Mia, tell Mommy and Daddy what you are thankful for."  She beamed and said "Bible!"  Oh my goodness, I want to eat this little girl up she is so precious!  I can't get enough of her!

Getting Married

Ryan and Lily were watching a cartoon together yesterday morning, and at one point Ryan said "I love you Lily."  She replied "I love you too Daddy.  Can I marry you?"  We think this stems from her asking me why people get married, and I say it's because they love each other very much.  Ryan said "I'm already married to Mommy" to which Lily asked "But when I get older can I marry you?"  Ryan reiterated that he's already married to me, and Lily seemed okay with that.  I can only pray that someday Lily and Mia are blessed to find men as wonderful as their Daddy.

Our Birmingham Weekend

We had such a great long weekend in Birmingham!  On Thursday afternoon, the four of us headed over and arrived just before dinnertime.  Ryan and I love to eat at our old favorites each time we go back, so we visited Gianos.  It's a little deli in Vestavia where we ate probably twice a week while at Samford.  The funny thing is, every time we go back, the owner asks how we've been and has said he misses us!  It was just as good as we remembered.  Afterwards, we visited a new place called The Yogurt Tap which was neat.  They have a dozen different flavors of yogurt plus many, many toppings to choose from.  We all enjoyed it.

On Friday morning, we met a sorority sister of mine named Ann Wade Parrish at Samford.  Ann Wade is an excellent photographer.  She took lots of pictures of the girls and our family all over Samford's campus.  I can't wait to see them!  I'll be sure to post some once she sends them to us.  After the pictures, we went to Milos for their famous burgers and sweet tea; yum!  After Milos, we stopped by a local playground that is awesome.  Lily describes it as looking like a castle which is true.  They had a great time climbing and sliding until a hail storm came out of nowhere and we scampered back to the car.  From here we went home to put the girls down for their naps.  Once they were down, Ryan and I went to a new bookstore called 2nd and Charles.  It's a concept store by Books A Million that basically buys books, DVDs, CDs, and games from individuals and resells them.  It was great!  We found tons of good items for the girls which is always fun.  From here we went to Lifeway Christian and found a few things too; I love Christmas shopping!  After shopping we went to the movie theatre and watched "Red."  It was a pretty good movie, and we really enjoyed going out to a movie; it's been way too long.  By this point, we were hungry and we couldn't resist the call of Dreamland.  As they say "Ain't nothing like 'em nowhere" and that is so true!  To finish the evening, we headed to Brookwood Mall to walk around and enjoy a Great American Cookie.  We ran into an old friend named Sam Duffy while we were there, so it was nice to catch up with him.  What a fun day!

On Saturday morning, we visited Ranch House for breakfast; this is always a favorite with us.  After breakfast, we went out to Patton Creek and looked around for awhile, then we went back to Liz's to watch some of the Florida game.  A little after noon we headed back up to Samford for Homecoming.  We walked around a bit until we came across Daniel and Courtney Cox.  Daniel and Ryan were fraternity brothers and Ryan and Courtney had grown up together.  We always have a lot of fun visiting with them, and they also had their precious son, Clayton, with them.  It was great to catch up with them.  While we were there, we also caught up with Amy Doblestein and a few other old acquaintances.  We hung out with Daniel through the first half of the Samford game and decided to head on out; it was really pretty chilly, and we wanted to see the Alabama versus LSU game.  We enjoyed hanging out with family while watching the game.  Towards the end of the game, Ryan and I went to Jackson's for dinner.  The best part of any meal there is always dessert; tonight we had s'mores which were awesome.  We did a little more Christmas shopping at The Summit afterwards and decided to call it a night.

This morning we enjoyed another relaxing morning, and then went to Shades Mountain Baptist for church.  Ryan grew up here, and we both attended during college, so it's always nice to go back here.  We were able to visit with our friend Emily for a bit afterwards which was great.  The girls had lots of fun in their Sunday School classes; Lily told me later she made a new friend in her class.  She couldn't remember her name, but she said she wore a pink dress and they played with the balls on the playground together.  After church we went to lunch at Baha Burgers which was a delicious treat (seriously, we ate our way through Birmingham this weekend!).  With the time change this weekend and going into Central time, the girls were really off schedule by this point, so we headed on back to Atlanta.  Both girls were asleep before we hit I-20, and they slept for about 2 hours of the 2.5 hour trip.

This was such a wonderful and fun weekend.  We really appreciate all the babysitting Liz did so Ryan and I could relax and enjoy time together as relived lots of fun memories.  I know the girls had a blast hanging out with Bama!  They went to parks, ponds, playgrounds, restaurants and shops together.  The girls love getting to see and try new things, so this was great for them.  We look forward to going back soon!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to you!  Here are a couple of pictures of our Halloween fun with Tinkerbell and Mia Monkey.  

Our Halloween fun started on Wednesday morning because it was costume day at school.  Both girls were so excited to wear their costumes.  Lily is all about Tinkerbell these days, so she was thrilled with her costume.  We are constantly saying "Monkey see, Monkey do" with Mia, so that was the perfect choice for her.  They had a great time showing off their costumes and seeing what the other kids dressed up as too.  Of course, they were excited about the little bags of candy they brought home too!

The fun continued on Friday as we all went to The Little Gym for their Halloween party.  There were lots of kids there all dressed up which was so cute to see.  They had their inflatable jump track up and all the equipment was available for use.  They also had lots of good snacks available (Halloween pretzels, blueberry lemon muffins, brownies, veggies and dips, apples and apple juice) which we all enjoyed.  We also signed Lily up for the next semester of gymnastics; she loved it so much last year, and I think she'll enjoy it again this spring.

On Saturday we got all dressed up and headed to Boo at the Zoo.  This is such a fun time!  The zoo has great, fun (nothing scary) decorations up which I like to see.  They also have several booths set up where vendors are handing out candy for the kids.  It was a beautiful day, so all the animals were out moving around which is always fun to watch.  A lot of them were munching on pumpkins too which was pretty funny to see.  The sun bear would completely stick his head inside to pull the insides out.  They also have a big tent set up to visit.  Inside, they have arts and crafts to do, characters to meet, a corn maze to walk through and a stage where the kids can walk across and show off their costumes.  Both girls were so excited to see Curious George, Cat in the Hat and Clifford available to meet.  Lily refused to go up to them (I think she was hungry and getting tired), but Mia was happy to.  After this tent, we went to the petting zoo where the girls were happy to get brushes to use on the animals.  We ran into our friend Laura and her oldest son, Nate, in this area.  Nate looked adorable dressed up as Woody from Toy Story.  By this point, we could see the girls were fading quickly, so we decided to head on out.  It was pretty crowded and since we have season passes, we can come back another time.  We let the girls eat their lollipops on the way to lunch at Five Guys so they wouldn't fall asleep.  After lunch we came home and got ready for naps.  Here are lots of pictures from our time at Boo at the Zoo.

After nap time, the girls couldn't wait to open their Halloween presents from Grandpops and Grandma Jan which had arrived in adorable bags.  There were all sorts of goodies inside including adorable outfits for both girls!  Mia loved her new lift-the-flap book and band aides; she couldn't wait to put one on.  Lily loved her candy corn jewelry, window stickers, butterfly wand, stickers, magnets to color, growing sponges (you put capsules in water and they grow into little sponges!) and coloring book.  She and Ryan made the sponges grow, and then we colored the magnets together.  These bags were definitely a big hit!

After this, we got the girls dressed again and headed to the Hendersons house.  We all headed over to Mt. Bethel church (where Parker attends PMO) for their Trunk or Treat event.  If you're not familiar with this, cars fill up the parking lot, decorate their trunks and hand out candy from them.  Brian and Ryan handed out candy from the trunk of their minivan while Jill and I took the kids around to gather treats.  The kids loved it!  We also enjoyed hot dogs and chili for dinner and playing on the jumpy.  This was a great event!

We had lots of fun all before Halloween!  Since today was actually Halloween Day, we let the girls wear their adorable outfits from Grandpops and Grandma Jan to church.  They looked so cute!  We didn't go trick or treating tonight since we went last night.  What a fun celebration we have had!

What a fun Halloween!