little miss: just another monday.

{mornings are daddytime!}

abby just turned 13 months, and (taking after her momma) already knows everything. she's fiercely independent, smart, loving, and so curious.

mornings are her daddy time and this morning was no exception... despite getting in around 4am this morning he sprang up when she called at 6:30. (don't worry i'm not an awful wife, i took over and let him sleep!) when it was time for daddy to wake up she was so excited to jump in the bed... we always play this ridiculous game where she & i bang on the wall at the head of the bed and say 'help! help! i'm stuck in the wall! how did i get in here?' she cracks up. we crack up. perfect way to wake up!

{always in her book corner}

in between meals & snacks (the most important parts of the day) little miss has lots of work to do. she pulls out her toys and puts them back again... takes her blocks out of the drawer to taste, throw, and put back again... watches a couple of shows or baby einstein dvds... takes apart the stereo. yup. she's gotten so good at taking things out and putting them away. she hands things to me and is giddy when i say thank you or give them back.

her reading time is very important to her. it's not my job to read any book she's currently interested in. i can read a book that she's not interested in out loud and show her occasionally... but her special stack of books that she pulls out is off-limits. period. don't touch mom, in fact, stay a few feet away.

abby is constantly learning new things and showing me. it's so amazing to watch her when she 'gets' something new a about a toy or an object. she lights up, gets so ecstatic, claps, waves, yells, babbles. it's phenomenal to watch and you can't help but laugh and be excited with her.

she loves learning about color & music... lots of baby dancing! today we pulled out the crayons for the second or third time...

{picking her own colors}

we didn't have to talk to much about eating them this time... she has decided i'm correct and they are not something she considers edible. she did want to pick out her own colors from the box instead of the ones i picked to show her how to draw on the paper.

{all ready! so excited! where to start!?!}

{figuring it out}

she did so good this time and was really working on figuring these skinny little things out! she actually made some marks on the paper and stayed near the paper instead of losing interest or trying to use the crayons in another way (i know i'll find them stuck in her train or something at some point, ha). as she does when she's trying to learn anything she did lots of yelling at the crayons to make them work...

{!!!!}

and at the paper!

we had fun and when she got bored of the paper she spent another 10 minutes taking crayons out of the box and putting them back in.

little miss is not quite a walker but definitely pushing herself out of the crawler stage very quickly. she's a perimeter cruiser and furniture mover... if she encounters an obstacle she will literally throw all of her effort and strength into getting around it. sometimes that means moving a dining room chair or using her bouncer (which i move everyday but still think is heavy) as a walker.

until about 4pm we were having a super typical, chase the baby from one room to the next, work on 'no please' (as in no please don't play with mommy's typewriter)... monday. and then tragedy struck!

in an attempt to stand up using the small tub we keep her 'little people' in little miss fell face first and scored herself a bloody lip. oh she was not pleased. not at all. but we survived.

she recovered from the incident & cleanup a lot faster than she recovered from the swelling she woke up to after a tiny sleep. she had rolled into her 'downward sleeping dog' pose and i think the rush of blood exacerbated her condition. not happy, but again we survived.

and so we come to the end of our monday. bedtime was really quite normal this evening... little miss stayed up a bit later than usual so we could take our time with dinner and still blow off a little steam before bed. she told grandma + grandpa about her day and performed a couple tricks before letting me know it was time to call it a night...

cuddles... a song or two... and another monday, all done.

love.