Florida Summer = Stay Indoors

There's a reason why most of these pictures are mostly inside buildings: because it's million humid degrees outside, and we don't have any summer vacation plans. So our July was mostly me & the babe at home, and Dave going to work; here's a snapshot of our lives, nonetheless.

Jessica loves practicing dressing herself--from underwear on her head, rolls of masking tape around her arm, swim diapers on one leg, and cow puppets on her feet. Now that's a moon boot.

She is improving her pretending:

And a friend gave us her kids' old "baby" grand toy piano, which is adorable next to my piano! So far Jessica can play loud, soft, black keys, white keys, and how to sit on the stool without falling off.

She loves to escape the house and play in the grass and the parking lot. (I am really looking forward to a fenced yard.)

We learned how to properly eat olives and sing "Yo-ee-oh" from the wicked witch soldiers on The Wizard of Oz:

Jessica goes over to play with her buddy Will Shurtz every week when I teach his older brother Fuller a free piano lesson. Fuller is making some of the faster progress of all my students, thanks at least partly to his mom's tutelage. In exchange they watch her for a few hours while I exercise or do errands. We've been doing it since Jessica was a few months old, and we love the Shurtz family.

The Deboskey boys, Jake and Drew, get in on the babysitting action too. These are my most energetic students (and great performers, as I saw them in the Honk! musical last week) and she loves their wild play. Just this week she learned to ask for "Dwew."

Some days we bike to the new neighborhood playground Eco-Island, and to the Busch Wildlife Sanctuary to look at the deer, foxes, armadillos, alligators, panther, snakes, racoons, etc. We've been to library storytime,  free summer movies and frozen yogurt (excuse the bad cell phone picture--I'm getting a smartphone soon),

tried PlayMobile (European LEGO-like Plasticland play place),

and Loxahatchee River Center storytime, below. She loves the nearby lighthouse so much, she pointed to our wall picture everyday for two weeks, until she learned to say "house!" (But she calls it the "blue house" because that's the only color she can say.)

Her lighthouse love probably started when my Texas friend Shannon came to visit me with 2 of her girls.

I liked the new banyan pavilion and the pioneer houses they've installed.

We also hit the turtle rehab center, which has new tanks and great kid programs:

Shannon and I were in the church women's Relief Society presidency in Austin, TX for 2 years. She and I love science, were learning Spanish, and I visit taught her, so we became good friends. Thanks for the visit Shannon!

This summer, Dave has been making the most delectable homemade ice cream in our new counter top ice cream maker (no ice, no salt, done in 15 minutes, yes!). Apparently, he let Jessica lick the spoon for the chocolate batch.

Time to wash off. (Note her Water Babies tanline. She never burns--she only gets pink brown and then fades to tan.)

Jessica suddenly one weekend started yelling at bedtime and bath time. I think it was partly sickness, and partly fear peeing/pooping in the tub. So I took a week persuading her to enjoy bathing again. It took new toys, getting in with her, and a few baths with swim diapers, but she likes it again.

Well, that's all we have pictures of. Dave is out of town this week, and we'll sure be glad when he's back. Thanks for your updates, and have a great summer.

March Stuff We've Been Up To

(I know it's May. This post is my attempt to catch up.)

Jessica charms us everyday, but March 31 almost made me cry I was so pleased. We were sitting at the dinner table, all eating hot buttery carrots out of the same bowl. I told Jessica: "These are carrots. Bunny Foo Foo eats carrots" and in the next second I thought 'I'm wasting my breath--she won't remember that connection.' 

And all of the sudden she hummed 6 perfect notes in a high voice: "huh, hu-huh, hu-huuuh, huuuh" and Dave and I both looked at each other shocked and said "Did she just sing 'Little Bunny Foo Foo'?" It was the first time I heard her sing, without help, a recognizable song, and the happy glow of that memory is going to last me a long time.

She is also learning to climb into the tub and up the furniture,

learned to crawl out the cat door (which she only accomplished once, not being a skinny minnie):

opens the cabinet to her toys, takes the lids off markers just to put them back on, pinches her nose, puts anything on her wrists like bracelets, including my sandals, and puts things on her head. She made Dave laugh really hard one day when she put a kitchen towel over her head, and started crawling blind, smack into our wooden chest.

And about the time she turned one she started eating all her meals with a fork:

 I saw the last launch of the space shuttle Discovery from my front porch, being only a 3-hour drive south of Cape Canaveral. The picture only shows the smoke trail, but I could also see the bright fire of the rockets.

I have about a dozen piano students, and this spring is busy with concerts and progress tests. I'm bribing them with music CDs for extra practice, but made them buy CDs from me if they didn't practice enough. I teach Tuesday and Wednesday nights, thanks to Dave who is glad to have a mac and cheese night.

I also entered a local tennis tournament and enjoyed seeing this second place finish in the next newsletter:

Palm Tennis Singles Winter 2011 Winners

North Palm Beach County Ladies Night 3.5

Champion: Mary Donovan * Lake Park Tennis Center

Finalist: Elizabeth Robertson * Carlin Park

Dave has been woodworking on our porch making storage cubes for our DVDs. He likes his new clerking job, and spent hours with the other clerks cleaning out enough old records to make a good bonfire.

We watched some BYU basketball, impressed by Jimmer Fredette. Smokey has needed a lot of medical attention, but I think he's better now. Dave chose Arsenic and Old Lace to watch thinking I would like the love story, but I have to warn you: I think it's better for Halloween, FYI. I rearranged all the pictures in our front room, and hung our newly framed, first family picture on the wall. I just listened to a fabulous book on tape: The Help, and started another funny book about adoption and family: No Biking in the House Without a Helmet.


That's mostly all. April 20-30, we're flying to Utah for the BYU graduation of Dave's siblings, Easter, and I'm going to attend BYU Women's Conference.

Jabber-Walky

Instead of taking 10 minutes to read a blog, I thought I'd show you in 10 minutes what Jessica has been up to. My favorite line in the video below is "Goood Joooooob!" (biology). Dave's favorite part is "Supersweet Publix corn" (lunch).

She's been babbling for several months now. But recently she's been doing it conversationally. And sometimes it sounds like she's saying words in context; [pointing to ice cream: "Was dat?", repeating words: "dots", "tis" (cheese), "done!", "ooo" (moo), "doddee" (doggie), "purse", "sots" (socks) and random surprises like "daddy sleepeeng" when he really was.]

Jessica's also walking along furniture, but not walking alone yet. She tries to put on socks and shoes on her feet and clothes, jewelry, and hair decorations on her head. She also understands "put it on your head" "cover your ears" "put 'x' in the box/drop it" "let's go outside!/take a bath/go see daddy!" etc.

The Food Network has inspired me to practice baking cakes for Jessica's first birthday party. (We'll have it after we get back from our Arizona trip Mar 2-8.) My archery classes were a great except for that I lost some feeling in the tip of my middle finger. I'm halfway through a tough singles tennis tournament. My new piano practice CD-earning incentive program is working well, and I'm enjoying some new piano students. Dave is getting busier at work, and really likes his new position at church as head clerk. He L-O-V-E-S playing with Jessica, except the part about cleaning poop out of the bathtub.

Too too fun

Jessica and Smokey have discovered each other. Here Smokey is purring up a storm, and Jessica giggled while she pet him, but I just couldn't get a video of it. Smokey loves licking Jessica's oatmeal off the floor, and she'll watch him walk around now.

Baby Milestones

For the people we love who are far away, and want see Jessica's progress, here are some of the little things we notice she's learned lately:

• watching us while we make her bottle
• pull her legs up when we change her diaper, or just for fun
• smiling at people
• cooing a lot more, more vowels and "talking"
• holding her own hands
• holding her hands or arm in her mouth and licking it (she still can't keep a pacifier in)
• kicking hard, and straigtening her legs to "stand" (finally! the doctor called her lack of standing "lazy" 2 appointments in a row)
• licking everything
• reading the warning label on her car seat
• rolling to her left side, or from her side to her back
• starting the night sleeping one way and waking up sleeping another
• sleeping from 7pm to 7am
• she's getting so fat she's losing the crease in the middle of her forearm
• she's grown out of her newborn clothes, dresses, and socks
• I think her hair is longer, but her head is bigger, so it looks the same
• holding a rattle and shaking it a while before dropping it