Chatterbox

Amelia is definitely proving to take after me when it comes to talking. The girl is quite a chatterbox. She chatters ALL.THE.TIME. It's great. A week or so ago Shaun and I counted all the words Amelia says...

1) Dada/Daddy
2) Mama
3) Baby
4) Bubba
5) Elmo
6) Up
7) Uh-oh
8) Thank you
9) Pretty
10) Kitty
11) Cheese
12) Shoe
13) Nana
14) Apple
15) Owie
16) Hi
17) Yup
18) No
19) Ready
20) Ni-Ni (for night-night)

That's A LOT of words for an almost 14-month old. Now, if she'd just learn "please"...

My Little Book Worm

Amelia LOVES LOVES LOVES to read.

This past weekend I put two books in Amelia's crib when I put her down for her nap. Each day she "read" for about 30 minutes and then passed out. When she woke-up she went back to "reading" for about 10 minutes. Since Sunday night I've been putting a book in her crib when she goes to bed. Every morning she has been waking up and "reading" until we go in and get her.

She then "reads" again in the car on the way to daycare while we listen to her cds and then again on the way home. At bedtime we read 3 or 4 books.

It makes me SO happy to see her loving her books. I absolutely LOVE to read and have been hoping she would get the bug too!

She WALKS!!!

We've been working on walking for awhile now. Amelia's confidence has been growing. Just this weekend alone I saw huge improvements in her attempts at walking.

On Friday she took three quick steps - practically running to the safety of my arms.


On Saturday she walked around the neighborhood insistent on holding both my hands. If I even tried to pull one of my hands away she'd sink to her knees and refuse to walk. It was both frustrating and funny.

Yesterday we cruised around the front yard, but this time she paraded around confidently only holding one of my hands. She did amazingly well at regaining her balance when she faltered and seemed so proud of herself.

Then today when I picked her up from daycare she greeted me the biggest grin ever. Who would have ever guessed that minutes later she'd close the gap between us by proudly staggering 8 steps to me. I shouted in pride and excitement while I fought back tears. I was SO happy for my little girl, but so sad that she's growing up so fast.

When we got home I subjected her to some videotaping...

I promise she's fine at the end. It looks, and sounds, worse than it was - she didn't even cry!

Amelia Goes to Australia

We had a FABULOUS trip to Australia to see Shaun's family. Amelia did SO well on the flight over and proved to be quite the adaptable little traveler. Our two weeks were filled with lots of family time and playtime with cousins. What more could we ask for!

I have a whole album of photos online at
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150150185070916.285117.671875915&l=2d544180e7 so I encourage you to go there to see all 140+ photos since it would take me AGES to post them here. Just click the link and you should be able to view them whether you have a Facebook account or not.

Coming home was definitely a lot harder. Amelia maybe slept for 6 of the 36 hours we were in transit. She was an angel given the situations we were in, but it was definitely more rough than the flight there. I think next time we'd consider an overnight in Los Angeles just to make things easier on ourselves. Food for thought.

While it is so nice to be home and back into our routines, we are sad not to be there. Watching Amelia play with her cousins Georgia and Jenson was awesome. The three of them were super cute together and I loved watching them all interact. I think she misses them too. We haven't been able to Skype with them since we've been home, but I'm curious to see how she reacts to seeing them online.