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!