Author: Carrie Spritzer

Mama: What does a dog say?
Miss Leyba: (pause) Woof woof!
Mama: What does a sheep say?
Miss Leyba: (pause) Baa baa!
Mama: What does a cat say?
Miss Leyba: (extra long pause) Meama mama!

(We laugh)

Mama: What does a cow say?
Miss Leyba: Booooooooooo oooooooooo!

She also loves singing her ABCs — she joins me for “A, B, C, D, E” and then hums along through the rest, with occasional bursts of “I” or “P” in the right spot! As far as we can tell, she just thinks it’s a pretty song she sings with Mama every day. I think she has no idea what it means. She gets all excited when we start singing it together though. The girl loves her music! We’re all for using music as a teaching tool.

Here are some other fun verbal Miss Leyba-isms:

All plants are called “trees.”

She uses the word “apple” for both apple and pear. I can understand the confusion: all she sees are yummy fruit wedges cut up the same way.

Miss Leyba now makes “mmmmm” (“mwah!”) noises when she kisses. SO CUTE!

She’s learning new things every day and it’s such fun to watch!

Someone loves playing dress up.

This has been the new activity: putting clothing on herself.

In this case she was trying on mom’s shirt and underwear while I was folding laundry.

Totally cracks us up.

She was a little peanut sleeping on our walk.

Today she’s running around, chatting up a storm, and forever cracking us up. Here she is piling books and toys up on Daddy. I think there may even be a few clean socks from the laundry in there.

Can you tell she has us wrapped around her little finger?

Here’s a bonus photo from the weekend before I get back to packing up the house.

She’s suddenly very into wearing hats (instead of pulling them off at every opportunity). You can tell she put this one on herself.

Here we are at the end of March and I have so many photos to post! We’ve been so busy enjoying the beautiful weather, hosting family and friends, having play dates, and going to parties, we’ve been neglecting the blog a bit lately. Hope this monster photo post makes up for it. ENJOY!

Finally, the birthday post you have all been waiting for. It’s only taken me two months to post it. Hopefully we won’t disappoint you: we kept it simple!

First up: check out our beautiful party decorations!

Do you recognize them?! Our friend Brenda, who you may know better as  a Stealth Secret Agent, lent us streamers of birthday flags from her daughter’s party the week before. Aren’t they cheerful and creative?! They changed the whole atmosphere of our house — they went up and suddenly it was party time! We are so thankful. Thank you Brenda and Bug! xoxo

And party we did!

On the day of Miss Leyba’s birthday we did a joint dinner party for her and I with our closest friends in town. (Yep, our bithdays are less than a week apart!) You recognize these boys. They are practically Miss Leyba’s big brothers and wow does she love them. We ate delicious food and sang songs and played games and hung out. It was low key and perfect. They supplied party hats, stickers and matching napkins — check out the dog theme (perfect for our girl!). (The hats were such a hit, Miss Leyba still wears them around the house!) And the grownups partook of a bottle of Fumé Blanc from Chateau St. Jean that we had been saving for a special occasion. Yep, a glass of wine made the evening extra special for mama. YUM!

The next day we had planned a birthday play date for Miss Leyba with some of her closer friends. Unfortunately, two of the mommies came down with bad colds, another two mams had to go into work at the last minute, so it ended up just being super small: just one friend! Luckily it was one of her favorite kiddos and she was in heaven that he came over to play! (Thank you, Eveline, for saving the day!) Miss Leyba kept hugging and touching him too. She was so thrilled to have him over. It was ADORABLE!

Next year, when she’ll really understand what’s going on, we’ll go all out. In fact, I am already planning it. So get excited and start making your travel arrangements. ;P

Edited to add: I am just kidding! (My mom thought I was serious.) We won’t have room for you! But I promise to post lots and lots of pictures.