In Flight stories

Sophie and I send greetings to wherever you are in cyberspace or real life - from the cold and slushy, cloudy and friendly Northern land of St. Paul, Minnesota. Where 6:30 a.m. still looks like the middle of the night, and feels a bit like the end of a long day. Where everything is backward and familiar, strange and home at the same time.

I don't really have time to be writing yet, I should be in bed now. But I wanted a chance to say hello and share a quick story or two for anyone who might be wondering "how did the flight go? how did Sophie go?" The short answer is it was long and exhausting and she did surprisingly well. She did sleep, and she did play, and she did eat well and smile at lots of people (and stare in disbelief at most of them.) She absolutely loved looking out the windows at airports - telling me about all the vehicles and the people - pointing them all out and even using gestures and sound effects to tell me about what they were doing. The up close view of planes landing on the runway at Brisbane was a real hit!

The hardest parts were waiting in long slow lines, being delayed on the ground, and take offs and landings (because she had to sit still in a seatbelt on my lap and couldn't sleep, play, eat or any of her favourite things). All the other times she was fantastic. We even got through LAX in a peaceful and relatively painless daze.

And she is adjusting really well to the time difference too. She's already back on her normal schedule. She's sleeping well and adjusting to all the new people and environments really well. She's been far less jet-lagged than me, from the very beginning.

It's been a really lovely trip so far. Just catching up with family and a few old friends at home. Here are a few photos....it is really the mutual admiration society around here with the Grandparents!

Her first true encounter with the snow today - in my sister Loren's backyard. Oh dear, that was not a happy little Aussie! The worst part was just getting dressed for it! Out in the snow itself, she was... well, see for yourself. I wouldn't say it was traumatic, but she was not exactly impressed! We will have to ease her into it and try some strategies to entice her better for the next time. I'll let you know how it goes!

"Mama. Seriously. Can we just go in and get all these ridiculous things off now?"

Ok, I just looked at all these shots again, and realized that they aren't the smilliest pics of Sophie that we've ever seen. It has been impossible so far to get a photo of her smiling! But I assure you, she is well and content, and often very happy. I just don't seem to be able to get much photographic evidence of it - the happiest shots of her moving about keep turning out so fuzzy.

Happy weekends to all. Watch this space for more stories, and hopefully some better photos, coming soon :)

Walking

It's finally happening! Sophia has taken her first independent steps. Well, she's taken one step several times, and two steps a couple of times. She stands up in the middle of the floor all by herself, and congratulates herself with huge smiles and clapping. Then she plops down and laughs. Thank goodness for all that padding- there's a lot of falling in this stage! She walks to daddy and then turns around and...well, by that time she's usually so excited, giggling and laughing clapping, that's it's more falling than walking back to mama. But it's just so much fun to see her starting to let go of that one finger that she usually pulls all around the place, and start taking a step or two by herself. Watch out world! Another toddler on the loose!

She's loving swimming lessons too. Today she took her first few paddles swimming from the teacher to mama, all by herself. She was so proud!

And climbing! One of the great things she's learning from swimming lessons is to climb. We teach her to climb out of the pool - elbow, elbow, tummy, knee, other knee...yay! (Yes, it does take quite a bit of time!) And she's using that skill in other places now too - playgyms and parks, slides, small chairs...she gets a bit grumpy that she can't quite climb up on our couch by herself yet.

All of you lovely people in Minnesota that we're going to visit - we can't wait to see you. Only 19 more days now...and I am counting down! Any tips or suggestions for travelling ( a REALLY long way) by myself with an energetic toddler just beginning to walk? Any tips for packing, entertaining, preparing, etc? please post! Now, if only I could be motivated to write all my report cards and do all my school paperwork...when all I really want to do is play with my daughter and plan and prepare for the holidays! Any suggestions for that?!

And when is Thanksgiving? I'm lazy and don't have it on any of my Aussie calendars here. Isn't it next Thursday? Or did I already miss it? Anyway, wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving - whenever it is/was.
Loveyou,
alicia

The lives of the busy...

...are too rarely documented. Ironically, when we are happiest and busiest, I seem to have the least amount of time to find something to say about it. Things have been good.
Here are some highlights.
Danny has changed careers. He has left the insurance industry and, after a long road of hard work, he is a full time pilot and flight instructor. He actually Likes his job! It's meant a few changes for us all - he now works every weekend, and pretty long hours. His days off are Wednesdays and Thursdays, which I don't work either, so we have ourselves a mid-week weekend.
Sophie has started swimming lessons - I take her there every Saturday morning for half an hour. she's learning to blow bubbles, paddle kick, and not freak out when she gets water splashed in her face. It's great fun - loads of laughs.
Dan's new schedule has led to other changes. We've started going to a new church - right across the road from the aeroclub where Danny works. He meets us there Sunday evening right after he gets off work, so we can still manage to go to Mass together as a family, which means a lot to us.
What else...
On our last "weekend," Danny and I went out and bought my Christmas present- a new camera. and then we took it for a test run with about 400 photos of Sophie in the backyard. You can see a few of them here. I think I'll put up a few more on Facebook. Umm... I might get just a little bit photo happy with this camera. I'm really liking it :)












Sophie is finally keen to walk. In the past month, she wants to be on her feet all the time. Now she pulls up on things, pushes around anything that will move, and climbs up on parents and walks them around wherever she chooses to go. She can walk with just one hand, and has just started letting go to stand for a few seconds before plopping. She's even tried lunging forward on her own a few times, but it's a quick and smiling crash. Still, at the moment, it's all about the wobbly walking everyday. :)

She likes to feed herself. She's quite good at it now, depending on what the food is. Some things are easier to actually get onto the spoon than others. She's quite an expert with yoghurt.




More events... We went to an airshow on a Saturday a few weeks back, and had a blast. A long, hot, tiring, wonderful day. I'm making a digital scrapbook of it. I just can't help myself.
Also we just got back from our first little trip away. We spent 2 days and one night on Moreton Island with Wayne & Kate and the girls. It's a little sand island just accross the bay from Brisbane. It took about an hour and a half to get there by boat. Sophie had her first boat ride, her first play on the beach, and her first night sleep away from home (since the hospital). It all went really well! A scrapblog and facebook photos of that coming soon too.
Today we're resting and enjoying being home. Next week I'm back to work, and yep, that's going well too. We're in the last term of the year - the busiest one. Just 8 weeks left of the school year, and then we're off North for Christmas!
Lots of love,
alicia and the happy little Smith family.

September Smiles - Sophie's of course!

The Trip is On!

Now that we have all of our tickets purchased and in possession, I guess it's time to make it official. Sophie and I are coming to Minnesota for a 3-week long visit, in December! She doesn't know how excited she should be yet for this one, but I do. I'm looking forward to spending hours and hours with family and friends...to snow...to Sophie playing with her nephews and all her adorable friends she hasn't met yet. To a winter Christmas. To pie for dessert and good old fashioned American Christmas cookies. To sledding with Sophie, and maybe ice skating with friends. I'm also just a little nervous about the whole travelling-alone-for-30-hours-with-a-one-and-a-half-year-old thing...but I'm sure that will work itself out just fine. It will be a great adventure!
So we're coming. If you want to see us between December 12 and 31, let me know. We'll be in touch. :)

ammendment

Ok, so I published the last post about words this morning before Sophie woke up. But 12 hours have passed now, and that post needs a little update.

Today, Sophie says Hello to both me and her dad, several times. She says shoe (although it means sock as well), and she says ouch - both when she falls down and when her daddy bangs his knee into the wall.

Danny thinks it's hilarious that one of his daughter's first words is shoe. She's got good taste... I'm so proud :)

Words (Part 1)

What are a baby's first words? How do you really know when she "has" a word? Is it the first time that she utters a series of sounds that perfectly matches the sounds we use to represent a word? What if that utterance mimics a word that Mamma just said? What if it's not in context? What if it is in context, but she only says it the one time and then never again? Or, is it actually when she uses a set of sounds that may not sound quite "right", but she uses it consistently to communicate a predictable meaning - is that a first word?

These are my musings of late... and I don't really have solid answers, but I've decided for now to count them all as steps along the journey to speech. (quite cute ones, too :)
Sophia is communicating. She is babbling up a storm and she has words. I don't know if I can actually say she is talking yet... I'm not sure where that fuzzy fine line is that says they have enough recognizable words for a stranger to say they can talk...but she is somewhere so close to that line. She surprises me every day with her new little grasps of language.

So, the first word that she really seemed to understand and use for meaning was Mama. That was back around 10 months. Of courses, that mostly still comes out when she's upset or can't figure out where I am. But these days she's using it interchangeably with Mum.
Then she got Dada, and still uses that occasionally though not as often as she did at first.
Since then, she seems to have two different kinds of words. There are the ones she has said perfectly, in context, completely un-promped, pointing at an object or grabbing it...but then has never said again (yet. To my knowledge.) :

bath (baf - ok, she didn't say the th)
balloon (she may have missed the l sound, but the word was very clear)
duck
shoe (she actually picked it up and was trying to put it on. She tries that most days, without usually saying the word.)
good (With this one she was repeating something I had just said. But she said it perfectly with a big smile. Made my day!)

The other kind of words that she has are the ones that a stranger might not be able to recognise, but she says consistently in context so that Dan and I can easily understand what she is saying. She has 2 of these now:
Maaa - more. Which pretty much means "Give me whatever it is I want right now please because I'm using a nice voice" It's usually used for food and drinks, but also occasionally for toys or anything else she wants you to get for her.
And then there's this kind of gutteral sound ukkk, accompanied by head-shaking which she uses to mean yucky or I shouldn't put that in my mouth cause my Mama would say it's yucky.

Oh, and she has one word that best crosses both categories - ello. She has said it a few times, in context, very clearly. Sometimes she picks up her toy mobile phone, puts it to the back of her head (she still can't quite find her ear - it's so cute!) and says ello!! Other times she waves at her favourite tv show - Playschool - and greets it. But I have yet to see her actually say Hello to a person. She waves.
She uses signs. We didn't think we were teaching her baby signs, we actually decided not too because we were just too lazy for that. But she uses signs anyway. I guess a lot of babies do. She waves for hello, and goodbye. She shakes her hands furiously in front of her body for no and reaches out one hand stretching in front of her for yes, I want that. You can't rely on her head for those signs - she shakes it back and forth for both :)
One of the absolutely cutest communication tools in her repetoire is the most recent sign she made up all by herself! She is absolutely fascinated with washing her hands lately. She loves when I put a little drop of liquid soap in her hands and let her rub them together and make bubbles, then splash it all off. That is one of her favourite parts of the day! And since we always wash her hands and face after eating, she started telling her silly parents when she didn't want them to give her anymore food (or drink or whatever else) by rubbing her hands together like she's washing them. That is her sign for finished - washing her hands. She taught it to us, and we use it happily (there's a lot less screaming at the end of mealtimes now :)

So I guess I can safely say she has at least 5 words, to possibly 10, (depending on how you count them), and 5 communication signs. Of course, she understands so much more than I can keep track of. She can do things when she hears verbal or non-verbals clues - touch her head if you ask her where it is, grab her her hair if you talk about combing it, clap her hands if she hears people on tv in the other room clapping. She can find belly buttons and give kisses upon request. She knows what her socks are and can find them. She will usually take her dummy out of her mouth and hand it to you quite happily if asked. She babbles in long sentence-like strings that are indecipherable, except that it's obvious if she is telling a story, asking a question, or being a bit bossy. Those are the things I can think of at the moment...but she probably understands more than I know at any given minute.

I probably don't need to tell you how excited I am to get to watch her first language develop, do I? And you know I had to label this post Part 1, because as soon as she starts sponge-ing up a whole heap of new words, you're going to get a Part 2 in the form of a long list of her first words. You know I have always been a language nerd. But I never loved it as much as this! This rocks my world :)

News Update

Changes happen so fast in Sophie's life. now. I guess I was supposed to know that, but somehow it still takes me by surprised.
I need to ammend some of the statements I made in the blog I posted about a week ago...it's quite outdated it seems.

Sophie crawls - well and everywhere. she crawls around the house, exploring it. She opens drawers and cupboards, pulls everything out and throws it all into a pile. Occasionally she stacks it into a neat pile - if it's something wide and flat like books or dvds, and if she's in the mood. We are quickly catching up to all the baby-proofing we'd put off, thanks to our somewhat lazy baby. Something has switched inside her, and suddenly she wants to move- to follow us, to climb up things and people...and to stand on her feet! she actually seems to enjoy it. I go to set her down in her favourite sitting position, and she chooses to stand instead. with something or someone to hold onto still, but she's happy. She will stand there and chat to me, sing with me and dance to the music. Is this my baby? the same one who just one month ago screamed at me for making her bare any weight on her feet at all? she is gaining confidence and leg muscles...and speed!

Also, she can stack a block on top of another. Just all of a sudden.
She stacks nesting blocks and cups inside each other.
She scribbles on paper with Jumbo Crayolas. Quite happily and confidently. Her first 2 scribble drawings are proudly displayed on the refrigerator. You should come by and have a look!
:)

11 months...and counting

She's so smiley these days. This was a stay-home-with mama day.
Enough hair now for a hairclip... such a big girl. she doesn't even pull it out...usually.
Sophie just adores her Nanna and Granddad!

We wanted her on her tummy for a cute baby shot with cousin Oskar, but She was determined to push herself back up into a sitting position. Thus, the face!

Wake up Sebastian! Time to play with me!

Cousins, clapping...cute.
My mothers' group had a birthday party for all the bubs, in the park about 2 weeks ago. Sophie got so excited being around all those people and other babies. She loved ripping up the wrapping paper. and she got her own mobile phone. she likes it, but it doesn't really stop her from trying to ring people from mine.

Some of us mums & bubs pose for a shot. Sophie tells us all a story, very noisily. I think it has something to do with the big tree.
Sophie and a couple of her girlfriends.

This video was from a couple of days ago in the backyard. We were thinking about calling family on the phone. Sophie shows off a few of her tricks.


It is a time for reflection...nearly a year. So far gone from that tiny premmie we brought home from hospital. So her own independent little person. Messy, needy, curious, smile-y little person.

Some of the things Sophie does these days...
She crawls! she does not Bottom shuffle. She crawls to get toys and then backs right back up to sitting to play with them. She tries to climb up mama's leg.
She feeds herself. and her hair. everything is finger food these days...even porrage and pasta.
She drinks from a cup without spilling (finally! for months her favourite game was to hold a massive mouthful of water in her cheeks, swallow the bit she wanted, and then shoot the rest out like a fountain. and laugh. ugg. and she needed a whole new outfit after every meal. We were just about to try wrapping her in a garbage bag before giving her a cup...but then she matured! ;)
She eats dinner with the family. It's a messier event than I ever imagined, but she's happy, so we're happy.
She plays lovely original compositions on her xylophone...and she beats out her own rythm on anything that could be a drum.
As you can see in the video of course, she claps. been doing that for months, loves it! She also waves hello and goodbye (sometimes upon request)... to people she likes...to the house, to the car, to the childcare centre... :)
She shakes her head no and possibly says "na." more and more she seems to be trying to use words...using phrases that sound purposeful and undeniably close to English... but whether or not she actually "has" these words, we're unsure. One of these phrases is "what's this?"
But she definately says Mama and dada.
She picks up several things with one hand and throws them behind her. she's trying to learn to throw, but throwing forward is still tricky. She mostly drops from as high as she can reach.
She is a champion lift-the-fapper.
She sings. nobody's sure what she's singing, but we're sure that she is :)
She makes me laugh.

Oh- a cute story: We were playing with paper towel on the floor. She wanted to rip it all up into tiny pieces...which was fine with me as long as I was with her, so that at the first sign of "I-wonder-what-this-tastes-like.." I was there to snatch it up and pull a face and say "Yucky Yucky!" She found that hilarious. It worked. She held up another piece and pulled the same face, saying "Kak-Kak" (or something like that.) So maybe that's a word too. not sure. she did the same thing the following day with handfulls of dirt & grass in the backyard. but those were the only times she said it.

But there are a few other people in this house besides her majesty! Her dad flies aeroplanes every day! (YEAY!) He loves it. He's got one more month of training left to be a flight instructor. It's very difficult work. He looks awesome in a pilot uniform!

I've been writing report cards as usual at this time of year. Doing the fine balancing act between demanding/rewarding job and demanding/rewarding motherhood. The last month or so the balance has felt a little askew... it usually does at the end of semester, but this year has been full on with new arrivals and heaps going on at school. Things seem to be coming back into balance a bit now though. And I have 2 weeks off for winter holidays next week.

Better go...never ending working and playing to be done :)

Rolling and chatting

Want to see our really cute 9-month old? :)

Shake, shake, shake!

Sophie loves her Maracas!

Thirty-One

So many nice people wished me a happy birthday yesterday. Thanks everyone!! So instead of writing them eacy some quippy little sentence summary of my day, I decided to be really self-centred and blog about it. Sophie's sleeping in late this morning, and I don't have to go to work, so it's a perfect opportunity to babble quietly in my computer room.

I did have a really nice day. I had to run errands in the morning, and Sophie and I visited my school early in the morning so I could be in the staff photo - she was an absolute hit at school. She was fascinated by the big kids, and she drew quite a crowd around her pram. But then we got to stay home together for the rest of the day, which was what I wanted. I've missed just hanging out with my daughter...so that was really nice. I got to chat to various family members via various technology and media...I felt very connected :) My mother-in-law brought over some yummy American chocolates (a new shop has opened up nearby that sells them, and they're bloody expensive, but a fun treat!)

Then Dan and I and Sophie all went out to dinner together for the first time. We went to a litte family-run Thai place that we like. (It's called Thai Ayathua...I think. It's got bright purple neon lights, and it's on gympie road in Chermside, for any of you Brisbane readers. Fantastic place, if you like Thai food!) The food and wine were just right, the atmosphere was exactly what we want a Thai restaurant to be - colourful, exotic, just a tiny bit overdecorated with authentic and maybe some tacky asian peices. Flute renditions of 80's movie hits playing in the background. A swarm of Smily Thai people all somehow related, and their babies and small children everywhere. So at 7:00 on the dot, when Sophie did predictably turn into a pumpkin, she wasn't the only little one making noise, so we weren't too embarrassed. At the start of the night she was terribly excited! Fascinated by the colours and food and wanted to see and hear and grab absolutely everything and everyone who walked by. She did seem to love it! But she fell apart at her bedtime when she wasn't asleep, so we probably won't take her out to dinner again anytime real soon, but it was a fun experiment.

Dan's perfect birthday gift to me this year is a morning at a spa - a massage, facial and pedicure. It's booked for the end of the month...so I've got a while to look forward to it, and believe me, I am! I know I've delt with stress before in life, and I'm quite used to it. But I'm sure this is the most worn out my body has ever felt. I didn't actually feel like I was getting old at all until after the baby. Wow...now I know why people say that children make you go grey. Did you know what they can do to your back? Oh, I'm very excited for a little pampering :)


Yep, it's shaping up to be a pretty good year.

OH- and I should tell you the latest Sophie news as a proud parent. She's growing sooo well. She's over 7 kilos now, and in less than 3 weeks she went from the 10th percentile for weight, to the 25th percentile. She's our giant big chubby girl now :)

Her latest interests are pushing every button she sees. Typing on the computer (well, beating it really), turning lights on and off (usually she needs help, but sometimes not!), dancing (she moves her little body to a rhythm while she's lying down or sitting in a seat...she bounces to a beat. It's adorable!), singing and blowing raspberries for as long as she can. And of course, she gets chattier by the day and has something to say about everything...but that was to be expected I guess.

Time for an abrupt ending. Busy little girl needs her breakfast. Hope you enjoy your March. I'm sure we will.

Sitting and other Sophie stories

Life with this seven-month old is ... Fun!!

As of early this week, Sopie's sitting up on her own. Sometimes she just gets so excited about it!

Other times it's the perfect position for seriously studying toys- new and old and different. Her favourite toys today: the tupperware mini ladel, a paper towel roll, and a big empty can of formula. It makes the most satisfying sounds when she wacks it with things! When she makes a really good noise, she looks at me with so much pride and glee...my heart literally melts.

We are all about the games these days. Suddenly, everything is a game! Among her favourites are dancing with Momma (especially when she gets dipped!) and playing peek-a-boo. We like to play it anytime, anwhere, but most often we play it with this little blanket. I take turns covering our faces ("Where'd Momma go?" etc) and lifting up the blanket and exclaiming the expected "Peek-a-boo!" (or just to mix things up a bit, sometimes "there she is!"). Well, Do you know what she did today??! It was the best!

She was lying on top of a wide blanket on her changemat (getting wiped). Suddenly, she grabbed the corner of the blanket and covered her face with it! I looked at her wondering, and tried "Where'd Sophie go?" and out she popped beaming. she giggled when I said peekaboo.

And here's another game she loves... raspberries upside down. She comes back down laughing :)

(ok, so it's kinda fun for me too!)

Life at 7 months is full of people. Lots of family and friends. Here she is with her cousins Nikita and Sebastian.
Turns out this is a pretty good time for Sophie to be left with new people while I go to work. As hard as it was for me to get used to at first, she adjusted really quickly. She's beginning to recognize more faces that she sees regularly, and gets excited to see people like Nanna and Grandad, Bec, Aunty Pam and her very fun cousin Nikita. But she's still pretty happy for strangers, provided that they give her really big smiles and plenty of food.


Life at 7 months is full of outings. I have the occasional quiet day at home (like today), and they are rare. which is nice, cause I get to really appreciate them. But for me, juggling a part-time career and home means running errands and doing shopping on many of my home days. Sophie's going to get her fill of the shopping centres (malls). But so far, she still seems to really like it. These photos were from last week sometime, hanging out with Ryan and Bec.

Life at 7 months is Messy! Ok, I'm sure it will be from here on out. But she has just started to show real interest in helping to feed herself. Usually that means grabbing for the spoon just before it's about to enter her mouth, and trying to stuff it along with her whole hand inside.then she usually drops the spoon. At the beginning of a feed, when she's very hungry, she gets quite grumpy if I try to give her the spoon (or even an extra one of her own.) She grumbles at me with her mouth open wide and her arms flung out to her sides. "It's about eficiency Momma, I'm not doing anything, you just shovel it in!) But later, after she's closer to full, she suddenly starts getting quite excited and animated. That's when she starts trying to help ... which is funny and makes me laugh...which makes her laugh...which she inevitably waits to do until just as soon as I've put the next bite into her mouth...and the laugh sends food out everywhere. It's a hilarous mess.

And yes, she is very proud of her self when she manages to get a bite to herself.

This photo? Yeah, this mess is nothing. This is just with yogurt...I thought she looked cute trying to feed herself. You should've seen her with the veggies she had today! She's was covered head to toes. (a cute look!)

And did I tell you she splashes? Kicks and splashes in the bath...and had her first dip in the Kroes's swimming pool one of these recent weekends - she loved it! kicked and splashed so hard that she slept for 11 hours straight that night. (Still a mythical sleep number in our house.)

Going back to work is hard- mostly because of the stress of balancing and organizing everything and still trying to do everything well. And I miss her. But it's better than I thought it would be too. I'm enjoying my work, Sophie seems to enjoy her days away from me (though I like to think they're not full of quite as much fun or learning as the Momma days), and we I still have plenty of timeto enjoy each other. So it's not actually so bad. I think I'm getting used to it.

Oh, just in case you were wondering, It's perfectly fine to call her little again to your heart's content. She is still dainty and petite and adorable and all those things, but she's growing so well that we're not worried about her weight anymore. She's really healthy, so it's ok that she's small.

That's all for now. Sophie and I are going out to weed some of the jungle in our front yard :)

Our big American girl

Sophie had a very big week. She's dealing surprisingly well with Mamma going back to work at the moment. (It's a bit harder for mamma, but I'm slowly getting used to it).

Some good newses this week...
Sophie's a real live American citizen now...for better or for worse! (naw, just kidding - we're really happy for her!) On Thursday we had an exciting excursion into the city. Sophie took the train for the first time, she loved staring at all the people. and by the end of the trip she was singing away loudly to all of them. Made plenty of people smile, which is always fun.
We went into the city to have a very important appointment with the visiting American Embassy people, which lasted about 5 minutes. But they were a very important 5 minutes, which allow to be officially a dual citizen, and the owner of her very own American passport! yay!

The other great news is that Sophie's weight gain is fantastic again. She gained 700 grams in less than 2 weeks. That means she's finally broken the 6 kilo mark (we celebrated with a bottle of bubbly!), and she's back at the 10th percentile - which is where she was at birth, so right where she should be. The Zantac and all the solids she's eating are making a big difference! She's a healthy happy babe.

Oh, the week I had to go back to work, guess who decided she wasn't taking a bottle anymore. yeah. great. now it's just a toy and she won't take anything from it at all - not EBM or formula or water...but she is fascinated with the cup. so we are teaching her to use a cup now. It is unbelievably messy and but she gets at least as much into her tummy as she does all over the rest of her, so it's a good start.

Visiting the Doms.... cousin Nikita


And newest cousin Oskar ...born 22 Feburary, 2008. Such a cutie!!

Rolling over...
Ta Da! Happy February!