Sharing mulch… how kind.

And then scooping up handfuls of mulch to pile onto the bridge…

Ada was so funny talking to Jake yesterday. She’s been doing this new thing lately where she clearly wants to speak in sentences, but just makes it up as she goes. Her sentences begin with lots of random gibberish then end with a real word she knows… “blahdi blah bladi blah blah beep bop bow, Jake.” Some times the sentences sound really serious and other times they’re really excited… those excited sentences usually end with something like monkeys, cookie, Jew (George), Daddy or some other favorite thing. Ha!

So any way… fun birthday parties, Ada moving up to the big kid room at church, Krispy Kreme, and plenty of playing made for a great weekend. We didn’t accomplish much on Ada’s room project since we were on the go, but we’re taking that a little bit at time. Doug’s got the foot board to her bed finished, and so far, it’s looking great! Maybe in a few more weeks we’ll start the transition.

Now on with a funny story from tonight. The three of us went out for a quick dinner, then went to get some groceries afterwards. We’ve been talking about letting Ada push around one of those little kid carts at the grocery store for a while, but we knew we’d need BOTH of us to be there in order to accomplish any actual shopping. So I took the big cart and got all the stuff from the list, while Doug guided Ada as she pushed her tiny cart throughout store. Just seeing her push the cart in the first place was funny. And this was an whole new world for her, since she’s usually riding in the cart with no freedom. Needless to say, she was in heaven. She even paused a few times to jump up an down in excitement.

She quickly had the whole cart-pushing down, but she refused to put anything in her cart. We stuck a few items in her cart as we went along, but she would refuse to move on until we took the item OUT of the cart. We tried several different ways to get her to push an actual item around in her cart, but it wasn’t happening. Gonna be hard to be a productive grocery shopper when you won’t allow any thing in the cart. NOTHING was allowed in there. No Craisins. No bananas. No crackers. Forget it. She got mad every time we even asked if she wanted some thing in her cart. The only way she was pushing that cart was if it was empty. Until… we were finished with our shopping and headed for the check-out. Ada immediately spotted bottles of bubbles in the clearance bin. She wasted no time at all grabbing a pink bottle of bubbles and happily putting it in her cart. It was hilarious. So she may not be the best shopper in the world, but she knows what she likes.

There I said it. Harper… Harper… Harper. Yay! Can you believe she’ll be here in just a few months!? I know I can’t. This pregnancy is seriously flying by. And for those of you who’ve asked, Ada really has no clue what’s going on or that her world will be turned upside down in December. I have gotten her to say “baby” when I ask her “what’s in mommy’s belly?” And she can say “Harper” really cute… but when I say “Ada… what’s the baby’s name?,” she yells “NAAAAAAAME!” Like I said, she has no clue.

This is the Macaronisaurus that the characters made out of magic pasta on Abby’s Flying Fairy School (on Sesame Street). The dino comes to life, stomps around the room, and SCARES THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ADA!!! The first couple times she saw this episode (for some reason, this particular one comes on a lot), Ada was definitely concerned when the Macaronisaurus came to life. I could tell she was a little nervous, but it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. I mean he was growling and all, so maybe that was a tad scary. Well we put it on for a little while the other night when Doug was here, and I told him to watch to see if she looked concerned at all when the dino came to life. “Concerned” is an understatement. Ada was SO scared, popped that thumb right in her mouth, got as close as she could possibly get to us, and was literally SHAKING. It was the most pitiful thing, and definitely the first time we’ve seen her so afraid of some thing. Needless to say we hit “fast-forward” and moved on to Elmo.

We are completely amazed by all the new words that have been coming out of her mouth. It’s mostly simple words that she picks up on really quickly and repeats, but she does try out harder words some times… like blueberries, strawberries and octopus. She doesn’t say many phrases just yet, but this morning when I told her we were going to play with Jake, she did say “Pay….Jake!” And any time you tell her something is big, like a “big truck” or “big dog,” she says “BIG PIECE!” This is because when we started giving her bigger pieces of sandwiches and such for lunch, we’d say “Do you want a big piece?” It stuck, and now all sorts of things are big pieces. Ha!

So any way… other than Ada’s expanding vocabulary, I don’t have much else to report. I do, however, I have a couple cute shots of her from yesterday…

Today I wrote each letter on her Magna Doodle (in upper case, of course), and she was able to correctly identify all of these…

A, B, D, E, F, H, I, J, M, O, P, S, T, U (sometimes), X and Y

I’ve heard her say “C” before, but she’s never really been a fan for some reason. I think the ones she’s most enthusiastic about are B, P, and X right now. X is pronounced “eh-ts,” and P is always a very happy letter… “peeeeeeeeeee!” And when she doesn’t know a letter you’re pointing to, she’ll either look at you waiting to hear YOU say it, or she’ll just say “beeeeeeee” or “oooooooo” to make up for it. She doesn’t recognize any numbers just yet, but she has been doing really well at counting to nine (without the seven!), so it won’t be long. Here’s one of the alphabet photos I pulled up online the other day for her to look at. She loved it…

Then on Saturday Poppy and Gommy came to town for the day. When we told Ada who was coming she said “Laura!” Awww. Laura couldn’t come this time, but it sure was cute that Ada knew who she usually comes with. She was a total show off while they were here too… saying all sorts of things and counting to six. And as of today, she’s counting to nine. She leaves out seven, though, so we’ll have to work on that. Ha! And I think she believes nine is the end, because she says “niiiiiiiine” like it’s the end of the numbers, then claps for herself. The best, though, was when we were in Home Depot over the weekend (surprise surprise) and walked by the toilets in the bathroom section. Ada started yelling out “POPPY! POPPY! POPPY!” It was pretty funny.

So any way, on Saturday Gommy helped me knock out the painting in Ada’s new room. She did a great job cutting the line along the ceiling, and I did the rest. Since we were going from such a dark color to a light color, though, it did require two coats of paint. But we were able to knock it out, and by the time we were done Ada was up and ready to play again! I used just about every drop of that can of paint too. I’m debating on whether or not to post any progress photos or wait and reveal her room when it’s done. Hmm.

The guys came up with some more project plans for the house and did some serious power-washing out on the front steps, porch ,etc. We didn’t realize how gross it had gotten until it was washed and looking WAY better than before! Then yesterday Doug got all the wood and supplies for Ada’s new bed. I’m sure he’ll be busy with that this week while I work on some other goodies for her room. I can’t wait to see it all come together! So here’s the star, being cute in Daddy’s hat (which she does all the time now… gets his hats and wears them around the house)…

And another cute one just because..