Park Days

The park is probably Aidie's favorite place to go. We love playing outside and the park has all the fun slides, swings and sticks a kid could want.

She and Dan had a fantastic time playing hide and seek in a grove of trees. It was too funny. Dan would hide and Aidie would go looking for him only to see him pop out and hide behind another tree. Then she go sneaking toward him, and he'd run to another one and the whole thing would start all over again. Too cute!
She also loves this bridge. I think it's scary as heck walking across it with her, but she thinks it's the best thing ever! Dan and I each had to take our turns walking with her. She even got to go a little by herself with Dan and I on either side of the bridge. She thought she was so big!


Updates: Aidie NOT allergic to nutmeg! Yippee! So just cinnamon and cocoa that we know of for now. I actually will be going for allergy testing on the 23rd due to a couple different complications. So maybe that will help us figure out what to look out for with Aidie as well.
-Aidie said "butterfly" for the first time today or rather "buffwhy". It is just too cute when she talks. I could listen to her all day.
-Aidie loves kicking balls. I think it's about time to get her a soccer ball!

Aidie Shark

This is so adorable. We watched some shark week a couple of weeks back and Aiden loved it. Well, we may have taught her a little about sharks, too ;-). Please don't mind her lack of manners at this point. Daniel gave her a popsicle...

Busy, Busy

She is definitely on the go all the time! She absolutely loves be active and doing all the time. Lately, it's all about sword play, babies and being outside!


Here she is fencing the characters from her favorite movie- Lady and the Tramp. Aidie loves the "dog dogs"!She also loves wrestling with Daddy. Giddy Up Horsey!
My mom got out one of my old cabbage patch dolls the other day and Aidie has been toting around ever since. She won't go hardly anywhere without it. She pats it, hugs it, sings to it, feeds it. I'm pretty sure she likes the idea of being a mama :-)
We also love going to the playground! During this time, I caught Aidie showing off what one of my parenting sites called facial expression practice. I love the quizzical eyebrows. SO my child!
And here she is going down the slide all by herself for the first time! She went down three times and then climbed up the five rung chain ladder all by herself. She is getting too big too fast! I can't believe it!

On other notes:
-Aidie is baby talking for what I think is the first time in her life. It is too adorable. She sounds like a chipmunk, hyped up on caffeine. It's so cute! She still does her regular talking too, but she does this when I think she has a lot to say and she doesn't know how to get it all out. So she babbles expressively. I'm hoping to catch it on film!
-Not an Aidie note, but I had my gastroscopy performed and I'm eating better, but it is possibly allergy related. So I'll be starting on Zantac for 6months and going to see an allergist. Yippee...

16 Months

Progression. Mixing up the flour mixture in her adorable apron- THANKS MOM (and Aunt Jennie)!

Mixing up the liquids

Eating! No, not really. I didn't let her eat raw cookie dough... but from the other pictures, it TOTALLY looks that way. This was a pasta and cottage cheese night. Mmmm...

I can't believe she's 16months old already. She is a third of the way to her second birthday! How incredible is that!?! As for updates: We are in the middle of looking for childcare for Aidie. Somewhere between Spencer and Bloomington and need some suggestions! So we are looking. Tomorrow will be an insanely busy day...
Aidie is also, I just found out today, allergic to either cinnamon or nutmeg- or both for all I know. We had a sneaky suspicion after the stew incident, but I thought it was chickpeas. Nope! We had french toast this morning and out popped all of the nasty little hives!!! Beastly little allergies. I'm gonna get you beat one way or another!
Aidie has been having lots of fun toting around her little pull string doggy (thank you Jared and Faythe!). I think she loves it more than Caina! Which is saying a lot. I taught her a doggy song that she can play with it and she has been flipping his ears and wiggling his tail all day. Too cute!
We are also on the house hunt. Since I am finally taking a steady job, we are looking to settle into a permanent establishment. So we are also house hunting, which is fun, but also one more thing to do! Oh boy, are we a busy bunch!

SHE LOVES TO COOK!

Well, It's a big deal at our house these days. Our little girl thinks she is quite the chef. And believe you me, her make believe tea is pretty darn good ;-) She has been cooking up a storm every day and just gets more and more interested. It is adorable. The other day she wanted to play with the grocery sacks (we had some paper sacks) and I asked her if she wanted me to save things to let her play grocery store. To which she responded a very enthusiastic "YES!" So we are now saving up old grocery item containers to let her play store. She is in love with being "big".
Not only does she like to cook with her oven mitt, but she also likes to pet the puppy and poke momma in the belly with the glove.
She has these little red placemats that have a woven texture. She loves to look through them and play peek-a-boo. She probably did this 5min straight the other day. Too adorable.
Also, she loves spaghetti! In fact, she loves it so much that we think she might have been trying to spell it in noodles the other night... well, not really, but it kind of looks that way. I swear we didn't do it! If you look to the right you can see the S-P-A... beginnings. So funny!
And of course, everyone has to have tea every day, even Manny Bear who not only gets to drink from a tea cup, but even occasionally from the tea pot! Hehe!

I guess this post supports our loved ones in other countries?

I didn't even think about it, but all of the pictures in this post sport Aidie in her Canada and Brasil onesies! Too funny! Any way, we have been quite a little rascal lately. She is very interested in swords, lightsabers, pretty much anything pokey. Here she is running off with her sword. As you can tell, Daddy is rather proud of his little warrior princess. lol.But of course after a long day of sword play, even the greatest warriors get worn out. And boy has she been sleeping a lot lately: 12hrs at night and a 2+ hour nap during the day. She must be growth spurting or those teeth must really be doing a number on her. Either way, she has been grumpy in the morning like she hasn't slept well all night and once she's had her nap she does better.... completely opposite of usual. Can't wait til we make it over this growth bump!
On another note: This pic does capture how insanely adorable she is... and even a slight roll on her left leg! :-)
Also, For Steph: I was looking through her bigger girl clothes and found the little dress you got for her on your travels. Thank goodness I did, because I don't think it would have fit if I'd waited any longer! And I thought she'd never grow into it... I remember thinking the same thing when she was first born and we had bag after bag of bigger sized clothes. Now we're down to our last bag. How time flies!
Also: We went through a lot of my old toys, including my dress up clothes. While she loves to play with her own clothes, she wasn't interested in any of my old dress up clothes EXCEPT for the belt you see her sporting in this photo. She LOVES it! She keeps bringing it to me to put on her. She is too cute! There is also a suitcase full of dishes behind her that I found in my old closet. She has been having a constant tea party since we got them out. She definitely loves pretending to cook and eat.
And here are my efforts to take a pic of us together. She has been most uncooperative in regards to having her picture taken lately. She won't smile for anything- probably due to those darn teeth. So all the adorable pictures I've been trying to take, she keeps making very silly faces, such as this one that we will call the "annoyed Inara" face. Unmistakable from that lip curl and pout.