Last weekend I had a very fun visitor – my Cousin Donna came all the way from Chicago to visit me! (Technically, she is my Grandma’s cousin – so maybe that makes her my Grand Cousin? Not sure. Regardless, how fun that she came to visit me!) I took her up to my favorite restaurant, Street, and then she celebrated my birthday party with all my friends and I.
Of course, she didn’t come empty handed. One of the fun gifts she brought me was a book called “Kiss Kiss” – she said she saw how I was learning how to do “love, loves” and that I should learn how to throw a kiss into the mix. (Dad note: I’m not sure I 100% agree or that we should be encouraging this, but it is ridiculously cute.)
Daddy has read me the book a few times before bed and I think its safe to say, I’m “getting it” – check out the video below:
Now that I’m 1 year’s old, I made it very clear to mommy and daddy that I was tired of facing backwards in the car. Nobody puts Maile in the rear facing car seat! So last weekend, we stopped by the store and upgraded!
This. Is. Awesome. Seriously. So now that I'm forward facing, when do I get to take this puppy out for a spin?
Megan and Mommy have been hard at work with Maile teaching her some new signs. You might remember that Maile’s sign repertoire includes: “milk” (sometimes confused for Mommy), “please” and “all done”.
Maile has now added: “more”, “open” and most importantly, “food”! The food one is quite helpful and considering how often she is employing it apparently we haven’t been feeding Maile quite enough 😉
Hannah’s dad, Josh, takes MUCH better pictures than I do. He sent over his shots from the Three Amigas birthday party and I thought I’d share. See the slideshow below. (And yes, I ordered a book from Amazon so I can learn to take better pictures!)
On Saturday we celebrated Maile’s birthday on her home turf with two of her closest girlfriends, Allison and Hannah. Allison turned 1 back in June and Hannah turns 1 in August, so we decided to combine everything into one big fiesta. Literally, we made it a fiesta – check out the invitation we sent out:
Invitation to the 3 Amigas First Birthday Fiesta
It was a lot of fun celebrating with all of our San Francisco friends and the girls had a blast. It was the first time in awhile we got everyone together with all the little ones in one place – definitely a bit of a madhouse with ~10 kids under the age of 4!
The birthday girls: Hannah, Allison and Maile
And with the mommies!
"Daddy when you said there was going to be a pony, I had something slightly different in mind..."
Each girl had their own birthday cake (Thanks Grandma Gail and Grandpa Cal for Maile's!)
Maile had her own Maile-sized cake!
Proud parents and Maile Girl - we survived a year!
We typically don’t watch much TV while Maile is up and about. If there is a sporting event on, I might turn it on, but for the most part she ignores the TV (which is impressive considering it takes up about half of one of the walls in the living room).
That all changed when we introduced her to Yo Gabba Gabba! the other day. (More basic background here.) We were first introduced to Brobee and his pals when we went to visit friends in New York back in March. Maile’s friends Maggie and Jane LOVED Yo Gabba Gabba! and they were about a year and a half when we saw them. With Maile turning one, I thought I’d see if she’d also come under the spell of DJ Lance Rock.
Sure enough, as soon as I turned it on she was riveted. It was actually a little scary – they’ve tuned that show like a dog whistle that only toddlers can hear.
