As requested... new pics

Here are some new pics of my little girl. We hope she's heading into a growth spurt because she's an eating machine. She's chunking up so much! Those cute little chubby cheeks are back.

Here she is last weekend playing the piano with Grandpa.



Here she is taking apart Dada's robot he built with mega blocks. The little stinker stands up to do everything and is constantly on her feet and cruising around, but refuses to walk.




The mohawk hair during bath time! (This goes into the Boyfriend album - to be shown to any boy who wants to take her out! Hee, hee. So evil!)



Brushing her teeth like a big girl after bath time!


Every kid needs one of these - the spaghetti face picture. She LOVES whole wheat rotini with meat sauce. I swear this kid would eat it for every meal if she could.

Jana's 13 months old

I can't believe my baby girl is already 13 months old.

She's such an amazing joy to be around!

We're starting to see some toddler fits and we're not doing a good job of managing them. J and I find ourselves working very hard to keep from laughing hysterically! She even has the lie on the ground and flail her arms and legs. Where do they learn that?

She's like a little parrot! She mimics everything, unless she has an audience of course. On her own, she'll say: mama, dada, baby, doggie (but loves to do the baby sign more), hi, bye bye, and yes. The words she'll repeat after you all the time are: Tigger, banana, please, thank you, moo, baa, roar, up, sheep, Maiya (the dog), and somtimes even Maiya no (oops, we must say that way too often!).

She is definitely a fine-motor kid! She seems to develop by reaching the fine motor milestones before the works on the gross motor skills. She loves to take things apart and put them back together. Her favorite toys at my in laws are their candles. My mother in law has these little tea light seasonal candles (for all seasons) and then the tea lights in the plastic containers. Jana loves to take the tea light out of the holder and then take the candle out of the plastic. Then she puts them back together so she can do it again. She also loves mega blocks where she can put them together and take them apart.

However, we're not really making any big movements toward walking. She cruises everywhere and now that we brought the coffee table back in, she's always standing at it, playing with her toys. She freaks out if she can't reach something and will drop down to crawl to it.

She's doing so much better on food these days. She still loves toast, banana bread and grilled cheese sandwiches, but is expanding her tastes. She still loves all fruit, but is now trying all kinds of vegetables successfully. She now eats peas, carrots, corn, green beans, and lima beans. She LOVES baked potatoes and pasta. She loved lasagna last week when I made it. We actually discovered that she loves plain chicken. I just cook up some plain chicken tenders and she loves them.

She's actually off bottles too! She was a champ switching from formula to milk. We had one day that she was grumpy about getting her milk in a sippy cup instead of a bottle before bed, but after that she was awesome. We gave up the morning bottle this morning with no problem. (Knock on wood! I'll keep my fingers crossed that it stays this way.)

Here are some new pics of Jana

Here's her last bath in the bath seat.

Here she's being a big girl and pulling out all of her toys. This was moments before she up ended herself into the basket.

Smiley girl!


Jana's first attempt at coloring. I LOVE the color wonders, by the way. She couldn't believe we were actually giving her a pen and taking the lid off.

Unfortunately, she also likes to shove as much food in her mouth as she can fit. This was after she shoved in three pieces of her toast and couldn't close her mouth to chew.

Boo boos

Jana took a big spill last night. She was done eating and wanted out of her booster seat, so we set her on the floor. She crawled around, so she was sitting on the floor between J and my chairs, with her feet underneath her. Out of no where, she flopped forward and hit her head on the leg of my chair. She managed to somehow hit it two spots.

You can see the beginning of her bruises: one above her left eyebrow and the other is on her right cheek.


They definitely look worse today, but haven't gotten pics yet today.

Learning Everyday

I wish it was just Jana that was learning everyday, but she seems to be teaching us plenty... about how we are so incredibly not prepared for an active, inquisitive, and some times devious toddler.


Lesson #1:

First, she decided that she wanted to do laps around the futon. Three out of the four sides are not a problem; it's that last side that told us we need to either block it off completely or make it passable by the squirt.


This is looking down at her. The arm of the futon is in front of her and the sliding glass door is behind her. And yes, she is kneeling in the basket full of dog towels


Now she's trying to get out of the basket on the other side by using her music table.



Lesson #2

Look very, very carefully to the side of her head by her eye and just below her eye. Yup, that's right. We learned how to take the lid off pens today!

Here are the close ups!



Lesson #3: No pics.

J has been getting on my case about being sure to close drawers. Well, after getting a knife out of the drawer, he forgot to close it and Jana closed her finger in it, slicing it open. Poor little thing has her first band-aid.

Another day, another set of lessons the mama and dada are learning!