Discovering the audience

Tonight we spent time at home with Grandma Peggy and Tiamo Jill. Jill's friend gave Mia a little rocking chair, which Mia loves. Tonight Mia discovered the audience. She would do something cute then look at Leigh, Jill, Peggy and me to make sure we were all clapping. Here's a video:

Storybook Forest

Because a girl with no teeth needs to go trick-or-treating twice, we took Mia to Storybook Forest. It's a trick-or-treat event at Arcadia Lake up near Edmond. She dressed up again in her hilarious cow outfit and was super adorable. Here are photos from the outing.

Mia tries her luck at pulling the sword from the stone to become queen of England.

Mia is quite disappointed to find out she is not the queen of England.

Mia gets trick-or-treating by accepting a piece of candy that she cannot eat.

Mia covets a dum-dum.

Mia has had enough of this inflatable spider.

Mia accepts a Starburst, which she enjoyed as a toy.

Mia protects her Starburst, even as she gets sleepy.

We waited in line to take a hay ride, which was beautiful at sunset. We even saw a family of deer!

Three generations of fluffy cheeks. It's like a time machine. Look into the future, Mia.

Trick or Treat or Terror

Today I volunteered in what might have been the most terrifying event of all time: kindergartners go trick-or-treating.

My friend Megan Rolland Schrader and I volunteered to take a group of kids from the school across the street through our office. They brought the whole kindergarten and split the kiddos into groups. This is Megan and me with our group:

Adorable, yes? And terrifying. I think I might have said "Only take one!" about 16,000 times. This one precious little girl immediately doted on Megan. She wanted to hold her hand and stay by her side. That left me with the other 78 kids. Or maybe, like, 10. Either way, it was a lot of kids. They were so hilarious. Every time we rode the elevator, they screamed at the top of their lungs and just laughed and laughed when we got off. They were so excited about the candy that they could hardly contain themselves. They wanted us to check out their haul in their bags after every floor. There was plenty of running and yelling and going out of turn, and when I got back to my desk, I was absolutely sweating. But it was so much fun! And no one was lost or injured. Hooray!

Haunt the Zoo with moo

We went to the Haunt the Zoo and it was absolutely great! I wrote a blog about it here. Here are some adorable pictures of Mia being the best cow ever.

And now, I submit to you, the most hilarious videos ever:

Rice gone bad

In a surprising turn of events, I discovered while making dinner tonight that it's possible to burn boiling rice:

What is this "land line" business?

We visited Jill's house, where Mia used a land line for the first and likely only time in her life:

That's my chair!

So Mia has this blue chair. She loves this blue chair. In fact, she's beat up another kid at daycare thinking that he was stealing a blue chair that is unrelated to the blue chair she has at home. So it's not wonder that she wasn't to pleased that we packed her precious Bumbo up. I put it in a storage box along with her clothing that we'll keep for when we have a second child (some day far, far, far from now, grandparents - just cool your jets).

Anyway, I had this storage box on her bedroom floor. She popped the lid off, discovered her Bumbo buried under some clothing, cleared off the clothes, climbed into the box and sat in her chair.





I repacked it while she was distracted with something else, so the Bumbo has made its departure. But I'm sure if there's any blue chair that crosses Mia's path, she'll get it in. No matter what.

Opa!

This weekend we went to the annual Greek Festival and it was, as always, super fantastic! We ate lots of Greek food, watched dancers and (spoiler alert!) bought a Christmas present for my dad and stepmom.

Before we left, we tried out a bow to match Mia's cute shirt. This is how interested she was in that:

Turns out, Mia is a huge fan of gyros, just like her mom:

Mia was absolutely enthralled with the dancers. She watched them the whole time.

And one of those fantastic dancers was our friend Rachel!

The garage

Leigh is quite proud of himself for this hilarious feat. He's created a parking garage for Mia's push cars.

One amazing photo

I can't believe I forgot to post this! An amazing couple of friends - Kelli and Tre Dupuy - had to miss out on Mia's birthday party because they were in Egypt. You know, just off in Egypt - riding camels, looking inside pyramids, being jet-setters. They took the BEST picture EVER while they were there for Mia!

Tiny and healthy

Mia had her checkup today and we learned two very important things:

1. She is a wee tiny child.
2. She is totally healthy.


Mia has always been small. Whether it's logical or not, I've always worried that it's because I had to give up breastfeeding earlier than I wanted. (I had to take medicine when she was about six months old that wasn't OK for breastfeeding.) People often say, "Oh! She's so little!" I know people don't mean anything bad by it, but it's still hard to hear.

So I told the doctor at her appointment about my concerns. This was our conversation:

Me: "I just worry about her. When I look around the room at her daycare, she's the littlest one there."

Our doctor: "Carrie, when you look around the room at other adult women, are you the shortest one there?"

Me: "Oh, right."

So never mind about that concern. Turns out, she's just going to be a little person like her mom.

What do you think of these pants?

We bought Mia two pairs of little cotton pants because she's too small to fit into her cousin Natalie's 12-month clothes. (Her new pants are for 6 months. Holy moly.) So she wears one pair to school: poops in them. She wears the second pair to school: poops in them. We think it's pretty clear she does not like these new pants. The second pair were sent home in a rubber glove:

But what is so amazing about this particular round of pants rejection is the method. When we picked her up at school, her teacher said, "I don't know how she did it! I don't know! I have no idea!" Apparently Mia managed to poops in her pants but not her diaper. How does that even happen? That defies physics. Next time we'll let her pick out her own pants.

The guardian

Mia and I got home after running errands and she was out cold. I left her in the car seat and put her in the bedroom to finish her nap. Deter went in there to be next to her and stayed there until she woke up. He always sits on her rug, facing out, protecting her. It's so sweet. (By the way, he's dressed appropriately for Halloween. Thank you, Jill.)

Olive you!

We made an interesting discovery Sunday: Mia loves olives. Loves them. Black sliced olives are the best thing since wheat sliced bread. We had lunch at Sam's Club after picking up enough stuff to last Mia through graduation. Leigh pulled the olives off his pizza and set them aside. I gave Mia one of the slices and she popped it in her mouth. Then the olive frenzy was on. Eventually Leigh told me to stop giving her olives because she was stuffing them in her cheeks like a chipmunk. She couldn't eat them fast enough. I gave her time to swallow everything and then gave her the olives one a time. She had a more advanced pallet than either of us. Here's a picture of her enjoying one of the olives.

Back to the zoo

We went to the zoo today and ran into our friends Kelli and Tre Dupuy! Hooray! We all enjoyed the beautiful weather - except for Mia. She was unimpressed. Maybe as she gets older she'll feel better than neutral about trips to the zoo.

Reading together

Mia and I spent some time reading together this weekend. Our new bed that we built includes storage underneath. We saved one of the cubby holes as a floor-level bookshelf for Mia. We lined up her books there and she can pull them out. She really enjoys it. She pulled out every single book this Saturday and handed them to me.


We she ran out of books to pull out, she searched under the bed for more.

She finally settled down to read one of her favorites, "Icy Antics."

She loves to listen to the story and turn the pages.

Sip some happiness

Mia has really enjoyed drinking from a cup lately. She makes this loud smacking noise during mealtime whenever she's thirsty. She still has a bottle, but she loves drinking out of a cup and anything that looks like a cup, even if it's empty. She really likes using her sippy cup that Connie and Jimmy without the lid. And of course, Leigh has to harass her.

Not quite tall enough

My pumpkins are dead next year. As a side note, she's walking like crazy!

A bathroom ruckus

Mia has discovered a new way to make music. She can grab the bathroom cleaner wand and clang it against the metal trash can. Bliss.

Conald McDonald

Yesterday we went to my Aunt Connie and Jimmy's wedding and it was fantastic! Leigh is quite excited that Connie's new last name is McDonald, and he has dubbed her Conald McDonald.

Just to summarize: karaoke wedding at George's Majestic Lounge. George's is one of the most historic bars on Dickson. I have to admit, it was kind of crazy seeing my aunt get married on the same stage where my friends used to play all the time with Six Hung Sprung.

We had so much fun. Here are some photos from the big event

With my cousin Carly and her boyfriend, who normally doesn't look so scary:

With my fantastic Uncle Kelly, who is Mia's godfather:

Leigh and me with my dad and stepmom:

My Grandma Sue and my Uncle Kelly on their way to drink whiskey together (seriously):

My dad with his cousin, Uncle Norm's daughter:

The fabulous Del Colles, Josh and Zoe:

The sign outside, congratulating Jimmy, Connie and Tyrannosaurus Chicken:

I'm sorry I don't have ANY photos of Connie and Jimmy that turned out! I was so bummed! They're all crazy dark and blurry. Lame. I'll post some whenever they get their professional photos back.

Making the rounds

My Aunt Connie is getting married tomorrow, so we're in Fayetteville for the big extravaganza on 10.10.10. We spent game day at Uncle Kelly's house, meeting relatives we haven't seen before and spending time with everybody. As you can imagine, Coppernoll gatherings are loud and fun. Mia enjoyed evaluating Kelly's chair and sitting in the super-amazing, high-tech high-chair of the future he bought her for her birthday. She also got to meet the Del Colles for the first time! She spent lots of time looking at all four of them. She especially loved my cousin Zoe. She played with Zoe a bunch and let her hold her quite a bit. And Zoe was so good with her. I snapped this picture of Zoe helping Mia play with her new toy microphone.

Almost time to say goodbye

In a shocking development, Mia is turning into a big girl.

Her days in the infant room are numbered. This is a mixed bag for us. On the one hand, we're really excited that she'll be spending her days with big kids who do big kid stuff, like run, eat at the table and say lots of words. On the other hand, we're really sad that she won't have her amazing teachers any more. I snapped some photos of her with them. The first is of her main teacher, Miss Persephone. The second is of the assistant teacher, Miss Joanna.

Mia loves them both, and we'll be sad when she isn't in their room any more. Leaving your child in someone else's care is so difficult. You know nobody can love your kid like you can. But I feel like Persephone and Joanna have been her moms-away-from-home. They have taken such good care of it. It doesn't make going to work fabulous, but it makes it a lot easier knowing two women with such good hearts are taking care of her.