Babies & Birthdays

Miah loves her little cousin, and enjoyed holding her.  But Mommy holding her is another thing entirely.  After my turn holding Natalie, Miah quietly told me, “Mommy’s arms are only for holding Miah.”  To clarify, I asked her, “So you don’t want me to hold baby Natalie?”  ”No, only Miah . . . and my baby sister.”  I thought that was very sweet, and I hope she continues to feel that way once Ami is home!

Happy (really) belated Birthday, Warren!  I’m glad you enjoyed your quiet family birthday (Daddy turned 40!)

Miah thought celebrating birthdays two days in a row was pretty fun (Seleah turned four).

But she wasn’t sure about inviting dogs (Sulivan was hoping for handouts).

Bandaids

Talk about a sympathetic heart!  Or maybe just a silly girl.  We have Southern Yellow Pine floors.  They’re full of knots and marks that give them character.  If we happen to drop something heavy or sharp, it adds to the character.  Miah takes notice of these “owies” and remembers the details.  Yesterday she was finding some of these owies on the floor and putting “bandaids” (stickers, actually) over them “to help them get better.”

We were excited to have snowfall again a couple nights ago after too long without.  It has since melted quite a bit, but not before we sculpted a few sentries along the driveway.

“Child Lock”

So does “Child lock” mean that it keeps the child out?  Or, more likely, does it mean the child locks the parents out?  I didn’t even realize that our microwave had this feature until I couldn’t start it.  No matter what button I pushed, including “clear/off”, it just blinked “LOCKED” back at me.  Thankfully, I found written directions inside the door as to how to unlock the child lock, (which also explained how Miah had locked it to begin with).

Miah likes to keep busy.  Books, puzzles, drawing & writing, ‘cooking’, ’sewing’, and games keep her (and me) occupied during these cold winter months.  And we can’t forget hopping. Miah jumps all over the house.  She says she’s a bunny.

Pictured are a few of her Christmas presents being put to good use.

Hide & Seek

Miah is really getting into counting lately.  She counts all kinds of things.  Today during “nap” time I overheard her counting all the people in her life:  ”. . . Grandma, 12, Nana, 13, Papa, 14 . . . “, etc. I didn’t hear the first part, but I think she started by counting all the stuffed animals in her bed.

When we play Hide-n-Seek we only count to 10.  Her favorite place to hide is under the dining room table.  Over and over again.  Not always, though.  The other day she counted to 10, said, “ready or not, here I come.”  Then proceeded to look for me.  When she didn’t find me, I heard her return to the couch, hide her face, and count again.  After another unsuccessful attempt at locating me, she started counting a third time!  About this time Daddy gave her a hint.  I’m surprised she didn’t hear me laughing.

“Sumthin must have ate ‘em!”

Another incident to humble me and humor me.  I have a special calendar, a gift from a student a few years ago, with wooden numbers for the days that you change around each month.  I knew that Miah had been playing with it, and when I finally got around to putting it back in order, I found thought that two numbers were missing.  When questioned about the missing numbers, Miah’s immediate response was, “They must have gone down the heater!” So we looked under the vent, but they had evidently slid down the tube into oblivion.  (We did find something else there, though, that Miah had previously slid between the slots.)  We had a little talk.  One must be careful here; I wanted to show my disappointment, yet I didn’t want to be too harsh (it’s not like she was being naughty, I don’t think we’d ever told her not to put anything down the heater vents).  Miah is quite sensitive, and discussions like this can easily bring tears.  This time they did not, and I explained not to ever again put anything down the vents.  (By the way, please do not mention this to Miah.  I don’t want to draw attention to an incident and possibly encourage it to happen again.) When we looked under the vent cover, she said, “Sumthin must have ate ‘em!” So I asked her what? and she replied, “Bugs!” And I said something about, no, they had gone down into the ducts.  She retorted, “We better go to the pond and get them out of the ducks’ mouths!” So I explained that these were ducts, like tunnels under the floor, not “animal ducks”.  She informed me that Daddy would be able to get them back out.  Well, a couple days later, upon closer inspection, I realized that there were no calendar days missing, they were just hiding.  Can you find them all?