Arts Festival Oklahoma

We went to Arts Festival Oklahoma to watch our friend's daughter perform. (Both of her girls have babysat for Mia.) The weather was beautiful and it was fun to see Jaeson sing. That's here second from the left, performing with some other local acoustic artists.


Mia enjoyed the music. She spent her time dancing and running around like a crazy lady.

Princess Blah Blah Blah

Mia's babysitters, Jaeson and Caele, gave her the best nickname ever: Princess Blah Blah Blah. They dubbed her that a few months ago when she really started jabbering away. It's hilarious and accurate.

Well her blah blah blah has really started turning into words. The other night we had the TV on mute, and she noticed her favorite animal out of the corner of her eye. She spun around, pointed and said, "Cow!" Since when could she say cow?

Today she shared a bunch of other words she's been secretly hoarding. At my grandparents' house, she pointed to and correctly identified bird, cat and Grandpa.

Also this morning, we were disappointed to hear a sentence: "Wake up."

She woke up crazy early, and we tried the oldest trick in the book. We put her in bed between us and tried to go back to sleep. Maybe if we sleep, she'll sleep, too, right? This use to work. Now? Not so much. Immediately after we put her down, she stood up, pointed and demanded, "Wake up."

Were we excited about her using more words?

A child of the 80s

Leigh's birthday is Saturday, but scheduling a party for him has been pretty much impossible. The city's big film festial is this weekend, and friends have scheduled events for next week. We were busy last weekend. It just wasn't going to work out, and Leigh was getting pretty bummed out about it. So I planned him a surprise party, even though he asks for a surprise party every single year. The theme: 1980s. Leigh was born in 1981, so we had a tribute to that child of the 80s.

Our friend invited us over for dinner as a decoy, and we showed up in regular clothes. I'd been to the thrift store to buy some amazing outfits for all three of us, so they were waiting in the trunk. Our friends Stacy and Andy opened the door, and Stacy was dressed completely 80s. She had a fabulous side ponytail and old Lemondheads shirt. Stacy is one of the most stylish people I know. She's always dressed to the nines, and I have literally never seen her in anything but a dress or skirt. I knew the surprise was blown as soon as I saw her.

Turns out, Leigh just thought Stacy was drunk.

Surprise still on!

We walked across their living room - where Leigh's presents were - and toward the kitchen, where our friends all shouted surprise. Leigh was, sadly, actually surprised. He will not be taking up a job as a detective any time soon.

Sadly, Mia was also surprised. She was not as excited.

I dashed out to the car and got our hilarious outfits. Here are some of the folks who dressed up:

And more party pictures:

This is my favorite picture. I'm guessing that Stacy labeled these drinks. "Sangria" and "Boring Juice."

More from the Dean wedding

I snagged some photos from Deaner from his wedding day. Hooray!

The smash cake that wasn't smashed

Mia had her first birthday party Sunday and it was absolutely fantastic! It was pretty small - just with a few close friends and family. But it was so fun! She wore her dress that I made her. :) We had cupcakes, and I made a great big one for her. (Apparently mini-cakes for kids to demolish are called "smash cakes." Just FYI in case you're confronted by a super-hip mom who gives you a vocabulary quiz. I would fail.)

Here are the pictures. Get ready, people. There are a million.

Mia is the daintiest cake eater of all time. This was the height of the craziness. Everyone watched her as she sort of pinched off teeny tiny bits of frosting. She didn't even really try the cake part. Oh, well. I ate it for her in the car.

Great-Grandma Sue tries to show her how to do it.

Mia is adorable in her little dress and shoes! These photos document the 2.4 seconds she was actually wearing her cute little Mary Janes.

Escape!

I specifically told everyone no presents. And then everyone got angry with me. Mia received some very, very nice gifts. :) Thank you to everyone!

Our family with my grandparents.

My Grandpa Dean arrives after an extensive tour of Oklahoma City.

Playing with leaves with Aunt Kay.

Mia inspects her hilarious witch hat, which we expect her to wear into adulthood.

Mia checks out her monkey toy. I like this picture because it looks like she has a mullet. Never fear. It's just the hair of the girl holding her. :) 

Falling in love with the Grouchy Ladybug from the Petersons.

Mia started playing with he rtoys within 3.2 seconds of getting home.

If you have any pictures from the party, I'd love to have them. Thanks! :)

The spring of things

So I had this great idea: take a cute spring picture of Mia and send out happy spring cards. I shared this plan with Leigh and told him I would be in charge of snapping the shot while he could be in charge of posing Mia. This is the adult equivalent of shouting "Not it!" before a game of tag.

I put Mia in an uber cute outfit, courtesy the Pemberton family, and a ridiculously adorable headband that made her look like a flower. Or the Statue of Liberty. Whatever.

We took her out to the front yard where we have a random patch of extremely tall grass. It's like 8 inches tall and in the rest of the front yard we have no grass at all. I'm hoping to style it like a comb-over later in the summer so that people think we actually have grass. I don't have the heart to mow it yet. So Leigh put Mia down in this little patch of grass. And this is what she thought of it:

Then Leigh realized that Mia has never felt grass before because it's been too cold to really play outside much until now. So we spent lots of time letter her get used to the grass. She really just wanted to cling to us for a while until she got comfortable.

Well then she got really comfortable and tried to eat the grass. We weren't so sure that was a good idea, so we then spent the next 20 minutes or so trying to keep her from eating the lawn.

When she was comfortable with the mini-jungle, it was time to take the photo. Mia can sit up for a few seconds on her own, so Leigh's job was to prop her up, count down and then release her. I'd snap the picture just in time for him to put his hands back around to keep her from falling. Our timing was off at first.

Then, because I wasn't the one trying to keep our kid from disappearing into our front yard, I suggested that we incorporate a cute little bunny Mia has. Leigh was super excited about this idea because his half of this task wasn't hard enough. Adding the bunny to the mix was more complicated than I thought. Mia was using her hands to pull the bunny to her mouth instead of hold herself up. We ended up with lots of pictures like this.

But we took lots of pictures and ended up with some nice ones. These are the runners-up.

This one is my favorite. To me it is just the sweetest picture of her. You can see her little smile and her bright eyes, and she is just loving that bunny! Our daughter is such a good sport.

So, long story short, happy Easter from the Jacobs family!