Avila Barn

We've been hearing about Avila Barn since last October. Apparently, they give hay rides and sell pumpkins and apples in the fall. We finally went a few weeks ago. The barn has goats, chickens, peacocks, and sheep. Mia and Trinity enjoyed feeding the animals lettuce. I was surprised at how quickly Mia got comfortable feeding the animals. She went right up to the fence and let them eat the lettuce out of her hand.

The barn is in the mountains just a few minutes away from the beach area. It was very pretty and the weather was perfect.

Troy with Trinity and Mia (cousins). Mia loves being with Grammy Lin. Whenever Linda walked away, Mia would follow her to see what she was doing and then point and make noises to tell her that she wanted her to come back and play. She was Linda's shadow the entire weekend!

I Love Hugs and Pats!

Mia has been sick this weekend, so there has been lots of nose wiping and grumpiness. She hasn't been real hungry and has been sleeping a lot. As yucky as it is to be sick, I have enjoyed it because when Mia is sick, she is VERY cuddly! She comes over to me at random times while she is playing and crawls into my lap to cuddle and suck her thumby. Today while she was resting on me and sucking her thumb, I felt her little fingers tapping on my shoulder rhythmically. She was patting my back! I just melt when she does that. Then when she was sitting on my lap looking at me, she spontaneously decided to give me a kiss. (As much as we try to teach her to kiss on the cheek, she prefers to kiss on the lips, and it's really cute!) Just a month ago, Mia started to get less cuddly, so when she's sick, I enjoy every minute of her snotty nose kisses and warm body snuggles.

Words

Mia is learning so much, so fast! I'm amazed every day when she says a new word or does something we haven't seen her do before. She has lots of energy and is very animated. Yesterday, she clearly said, "doggy" and "crackers". I wish I could get more of her talking on video, but she clams up the moment she sees the camera.

Musical

Troy's family is very musical in the sense that many of them play instruments and nearly all of them can sing well. Troy's dad was a worship leader back in the day, his cousin Allen sings and plays the piano, and I've heard rumors that when they used to get the whole family together for Christmas, they would sing Christmas songs in 4 part harmony.

My family also has a love of music. That does NOT mean that most of them can carry a tune. Each week when we play cards at Grandma's house, my mother gets kicked under the table many times for singing off key, singing when the stereo is not playing anything, or singing the piano or guitar solos. On Christmas Eve we get together to "sing" Christmas songs, but everyone just kind of picks their own key.

Mia is extremely musical. At only 5 or 6 months old, she was already bopping her head along to the music in the car. One of our favorite memories is when we were listening to one of those eclectic music stations on the radio and "Low Rider" came on. We looked back at Mia and saw her rockin' out! She sings when she's going to sleep and when she wakes up. And she loves to get up on the fireplace and sing and dance with her hands waving in the air.

Yesterday, while I was at MOPS for the evening, Troy went out to the garage and brought in our old keyboard for Mia to play with. When I got home from my night out, Troy showed me video after video on his phone (why he didn't pick up the "real" video camera, I'll never know) of Mia playing the keyboard and dancing to the prerecorded background music. He said she played on the keyboard for an entire hour!

It's obvious that Mia thoroughly enjoys music, but we'll have to wait and see which side of the family she takes after in that area. Hopefully, the Vasquez genes will prevail on this issue.

Old Friend, New Playmate

An old friend from college found me on Facebook a few months back. Although lots of people connect on Facebook, this connection was interesting because we had both gotten married and had a baby girl, within weeks of each other! The girls are now 15 months old and little Lizzy came over to play with Mia for the first time yesterday. They spent the day collecting all the dolls from around the house. At one point, Lizzy had two large dolls in her short little arms and started to fuss because she couldn't hold the third one she saw laying on the floor. So cute!

They took turns putting the dollies in the bed and the high chair and surprisingly, they shared everything! They were the perfect little playmates. Here they are putting Troy's Jamaican hat on each other.

We can't wait to have Lizzy over again!

I Love This Age!

Mia is at my absolute favorite age. She is learning so fast that I am constantly surprised by what she knows. The other day she brought me a scrap of paper from the floor. I told her to put it in the trash (not thinking that she knew what I was saying) and she walked straight to the trash can and put it in. Who knew?

She talks in gibberish all day long and Troy and I hear her say lots of words. We've heard "dinosaur", "alligator", "garbage truck", and "pop pop" as well as small phrases. The other day, she held up a book and said, "This a book". What's funny about her gibberish is the facial expression and intonation that go along with it. She truly feels that she is communicating clearly and expects that everyone understands. Fortunately for us, she is happy with comments such as, "Oh, is that right?" or "Yes, I agree." She just wants to feel like she's part of the conversation. Her seriousness cracks me up. She will point and say something that sounds like "sha ba sha ba ta da pall?" Her eyebrows go up and the inflection in her voice tells us she is asking a question, so we usually answer her "question" guessing at what she said. It makes for a fun conversation!

I've taught Mia some sign language and she has caught on quickly. She can sign "please", "thank you", "more", "milk", and "juice". Of course juice is just her pointer finger waving up and down and not exactly in a "j" motion, but we understand her. I just love that she can communicate. She gets excited about it too. Now, when she sees Troy and I get any drink with a straw, she signs "please", so I've started ordering a cup of water with a straw for her so she doesn't feel left out. I just hope that her good habit of saying thank you carries over when she really does start talking!

A Lobster Tail

Here's our little lobster all ready for some fun tonight. She loves her costume, especially the claws. She keeps looking at them and laughing!

What a fun time we had for Halloween! Petunia's Place put on a very cute storytime. I just love the lady who reads for the storytime. She does a great job keeping all of the kids engaged. Some people are just natural teachers. Mia loved eating a cookie out by the fountain afterward. I loved looking at all of the one year olds in their Halloween costumes dangling their feet over the side of the fountain.

After storytime, we had our picture taken at Walgreens for free. We hung out for quite some time in that store waiting to take the picture and then waiting for it to be printed. Although the quality of the picture was not "professional", I can say it was worth the wait because the Mommies finally got to all be in a picture together!

While Mia was napping, I spent time working on Troy's costume, carving pumpkins (since we totally forgot last night!), and then threw my costume together. I think everything turned out great.

At the Pumpkin Patch, lots of people laughed at our costumes, so I think that counts as a success. Since we've never been to the Pumpkin Patch at church, we didn't know what to expect. There were a lot of games that Mia couldn't play because she was too little, but she didn't need much to have fun. We found a game where she could pull the rubber ducks out of the water and another one where she could dig in the sand. She thought it was fun when the game was over and the workers would let her choose candy from the buckets. She didn't know that the candy was something to eat. I'm sure she just liked the shiny wrappers. My favorite moment was when one of the workers had already given her two pieces of candy, one for each hand, and then offered her a third. She thought for a moment, and then put one piece of candy on the floor so she could take the third piece. It's fun to see how she problem solves.

One of my favorite costumes was Brandy's daughter who was dressed as a laundry basket. Very clever! We also ran into a weiner dog dressed as a lobster, a monkey and a banana, an Autumn fairy, a mad scientist, and my favorite, Sarah Palin herself. I even managed to get a picture with the Vice Presidential candidate and her secret service agent!

We trick or treated Matt and Heather's house and then Stefanie and James' house. Mia was falling alseep on the way to Stefanie's house, but once we were there, she warmed up quickly. I really enjoyed spending time with them, as well as Tinker Bell and the dog. Mia loves going to Auntie Stefanie's house because there's lots of room to run around and Auntie Stefanie always makes her laugh.

I'll post more pictures later. I need to be more diligent about burning photos to DVD so that I have space on the drive for new pictures. Good thing I have a 4GB photo card! I still have space for 600 pictures on the camera!