♥ Happy Birthday Baby ♥

Happy Birthday to the love and light of our lives.  I feel so lucky to have such a special little girl to call my own.  She has brought happiness, understanding, and new meaning to everything.  She has changed our lives in so many ways that I could have never imagined and our love for her is on a level that can't even be measured.  I always and forever want to be here for her, protect her, keep her safe.  I know that's not possible, but a Mommy can dream, can't she?

On this cold morning I can't help but think that the season is not befitting my little girl.  She's so warm and full of life and love, it seems she should have been born on the the most beautiful, warmest and brightest day of the year.  But then again, she wouldn't be an Aquarius, which is befitting her ;o)

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!  We love you more than you'll ever know ♥

Our Date ♥

Me and my little monkey had a date yesterday.  We spend most days together, but we don't always have a "date".  It started off as running errands, but then I got the spontaneous urge to spend some fun time with her while going by the mall.  We walked and talked and sang (yes, we go around singing. what.) and got a bite to eat.  We window shopped and she struck up conversations with random people - "Hi!  My name is Mia.  What's your name?" - "Excuse me, Miss.  Do you know where the bathroom is?  I have to go pee-pee" - "Look, Girl!  That kitty-cat is wearing skates!  She's so silly!" 

She also had fun riding one of those crazy-fast animals on wheels in the middle of the mall....did I mention they were crazy-fast?  Holy cow.  But did Mia flinch?  Not-a-once.  She jumped on the back of that Panda as if she was ol' Hopalong Cassidy and never looked back.  The kid is a true Speed Demon, Evel Knievel, Steve McQueen - just a daredevil, period.  Come to think of it, she kept begging me to ride a motorcycle we parked next to on the way in until I told her we don't go around just riding random motorcycles, as it was somebody else's vehicle.  Perhaps I should have told her that motorcycles are bad and illegal and you should never, never ride them...ever.  Yeah...maybe that'll work.  But if her Daddy ever comes home with one one day, that argument isn't going to hold up very well...

We ended our date with a Slushie.  Out of the four colors to choose from, I secretly hoped Mia would not choose the blue, since it would make the most mess if when it was spilled.  So naturally, she chose the blue.  Little stinker :o)

My Little Dino-Girl

So we weren’t really going to have a birthday party for Mia this year because we just don’t think little ones need a big birthday party every year.  It seems like a little much to us.  But Mia knows that her birthday is coming up and her excitement has only been snowballing.  We told her we were just going to do cake and ice cream and call it good.  But she’s been asking when her “birthday party” is and if her friends are going to come.  With her friends and cousins’ parties around hers, why wouldn’t the kid ask?  We told her we weren’t going to do all of that this year since we did it last year and she looked at us like we were from Mars.  I don’t think she really remembers her party last year?  With all the screaming and fussiness going on, perhaps she blocked out the whole event all-together ;-p  So we decided to do cake and ice cream with close friends/family and have a few games and decorations and….yeah, so this sounds like it’s just turning into another party….

Another party minus the cost.  I'm making all the decorations and everything else is going to come from my good friend the dollar store.

And when Mia told me earlier this month what kind of party she "really, really" wanted, it was too darn cute to say no to...

My little girl wants a dinosaur party - dinosaur!  Lol - I love it!  That's very Mia of her.  But just because she wants a dinosaur party doesn't mean she's a full-on tomboy.  No.  She asked me to make her a pink tutu, so she's still on the path to little-girlhood.  But what can I say, the girl likes her dinosaurs.

So I began searching for all things dino.  And since we originally weren't planning on a party, that left me with just a month to get it all together.  I've found lots of good ideas for games and decorations online, so we'll see how it all turns out.  There's too many little unfinished things to post, but I'll say much of the inspiration came from this picture:

Yeah...that's a wand-wielding Princess Mia riding a T-Rex  :o)

The only way it could have been more perfect is if she were maybe wearing a crown and had a sword instead of a wand.  Then it would be like she's going into battle.  Yeah...that's more Mia.  But it's still pretty perfect.  Although..I don't think Mia has a Dorothy Hamill 'do, either?....but we get the idea.

New design/name

Time for a change to everything.  Mia’s grown and changed so much over the past year, so I thought the blog should follow suit.  I liked the first design, but was never completely set on the title and always meant to change it.  It was sort of an okay for now title until I could put my finger on what I was looking for.  And then, almost a year later, I was listening to a song and it hit me.  Thank you, Jason Mraz.
 
The design still isn't right, though, so it's temporary.  I just wanted to get the old one off already...cute, but I grew tired of it :o)

Kids say the darndest things

We were leaving the grocery store, just me and Mia.  It was still daylight going in, but by the time we left it was dark, moon and all.  Mia was ooh-ing at how beautiful everything was at night while I was packing in the groceries.  She then looked directly up and got excited to see her old friend, Mr. Moon:

“Hey!  Look, Mamma, it’s the Moon!”

“Yeah, it sure is.”

“Hi Moon!  You’re so beautiful.  We gotta go home now.  Have fun, Moon.  Be careful.  Don’t spill on the clouds.  Byyyyeee!”

Lol!  Don’t spill on the clouds?  I think she was talking about the moonlight that was reflecting on the edges of the clouds.   

Be careful?  That’s what we always tell Daddy before he goes to work.  And the moon's job is to be beautiful up in the sky at night...so there's a potential for a workplace accident, just like any other occupation...right?

Dear Daughter #2: Conan - er - Mia the Destroyer

Dear Daughter,

Thank you ever so much for de-wicking my side table candles.  The multiple scratches and wax crumbs everywhere, while overkill, was also a nice touch.  I never liked those things anyways.  So I guess in the end, they got theirs.  

Love,

Your Ever-Patient Mother

Animals for my animal

How adorable is this?  We’re always finding steals in the dollar section at Target.  This little felt barn was just $1.  And what’s the point of having a tiny barn if you have no tiny animals to go with it?   

These guys were just $1, also.  And they make animal noises.  Score.  Little things like this make Mia’s day – she was thrilled!  And now she won’t put the thing down.  It’s her new pet.  We seem to have forgotten about our much bigger Playschool barn and all of its coolness, but who can blame.  This thing is mini, it has a handle and it’s portable.  ‘Nuf said.   :o)

Super Magic Artist

I heard Mia in the living room today talking while she was coloring.  I peeked around the corner to see what she was doing.   She was feverishly standing up, leaning over her page coloring and then quickly walking back and forth from her Crayon box getting different colors to work with.  Her hands couldn't keep up with her thoughts.  From the looks of things, there was some very important work going on.  Then I heard what she was saying:

“I’m gonna color Gabriel Superman.  He goes ‘whoosh!’ up in the sky!”

“And I’m gonna color Leah a dollhouse.”

 “And I’m gonna color Marijane a super-magic spaceship.”

She continued coloring, totally unaware that I was listening to her.  But I noticed she forgot someone from the bunch, so I asked, “What are you going to color for John-John?”  She looked up at me and smiled a huge hammy grin.  She didn’t know I had been listening to her.   She thought about it a second, took a deep breath to speak and said:

“John-John likes dinosaurs.  I’m going to draw him a super-magic dinosaur!”

Super.Magic.Dinosaur.  Well, okay then  :o)

Practice makes perfect

Mia always asks for a pen when practicing her writing.  That's so funny.  As if it's far too important to just use Crayons or anything with fun colors.  We must get very serious with our pen and paper.

This is her latest version...

 Cute stuff.  The "i" is a kick, but that "a" is the funniest thing  :o)

She's come a long way.  This was her very first go at it a few months ago when we had to first write it and then she'd copy....

We're working on writing ABC's and 123's, but it's not coming out quite so sequenced lol.  She's still all over the place, but we're happy that she's so enthusiastic about it.  When she sees us writing, I can just see her so focused on it and taking it all in like it's the coolest thing ever to "write".  She wants so badly to write fast that she'll do the thing kids always do when they pretend they're writing and scribble real fast.  Then she looks at us so proudly like she actually just wrote something.  Kids are so funny!

Happy New Year!

Another year has just flown by, hasn't it?  And it's hard to recount everything that went on every single day, which is the main reason why I wanted to start blogging.  But we were absent for several months this past year for a few reasons:  I started this blog a little after the beginning of the year and then I didn't update for basically the whole summer (for that horrible reason).  

So I wanted to recap Mia's Year for 2010 :o)

 Had a big Dora Birthday Bash

Learned to ride her scooter

Got 5 stitches ( and lived to tell! )

Learned to play hopscotch

Got her Ziggy

Learned to doggy-paddle in the pool

 Fully potty-trained

Started school

Learned all of the hard shapes (pentagon, hexagon, etc.)

Can now count to 30

Went to the fair and rode the big girl rides

Learned to write her name

Went to her first rock/hip hop concert (Yo Gabba Gabba Live!)

Had an amazing visit with Santa again

It was a wonderful year.  There was good and bad, happy and sad, funny and scary.  That's life.  And, although tempted, I wouldn't trade any of it for total perfection.

I love our beautiful, messy life together.  It's home and it's where my heart and happiness is ♥