Carnival, Yes!

My mom came up yesterday afternoon to stay with us for about 24 hours. Our local fire company had a carnival in a neighboring town all last week, and starting tomorrow the same carnival will be held in our town until Saturday. We had planned to go on Friday night, but it was a cold and rainy day, so we went yesterday evening instead with my mom. We enjoyed eating some traditional carnival food such as Paul & I shared a funnel cake - a treat neither of us had eaten in a few years. I also took Nadia on her first two rides. They had other kiddie rides, but they were the kind that only kids could ride, and obviously at 11 months old she's not old enough to go by herself! So I took her on a carousel and a "tea cup" type ride. Some of the food stands didn't open until 6pm so we were still eating at that time, and then after we finished eating dinner we went on the rides. Nadia usually goes to bed at 7pm so as you can see from the one carousel picture, she was about to fall asleep on the horse. At least we know she wasn't frightened! We'll take her once more this week.

My mom also gave me a little help with my rose bushes yesterday. I've never had a rose bush before, and she's had them for years. I do have a few pretty roses already! Now we can only hope that we sprayed our apple trees in time to save them from the gypsy moths. I'm really hoping to be able to eat apples from our trees!

The reason my mom came up this weekend was because my choir was singing 5 anthems this morning; we usually only sing one. It's our last time singing until the fall. After church we went out to eat. My mom was impressed that the restaurant seats 750 and typically has 20-30 waitresses per shift.

Nadia's first word was "hi;" she said that very purposefully when she was really little. She'd even shout it from her bedroom, but usually she said it to me when I came to get her from her crib. She stopped saying it several months ago. So of the words she's said the last couple of months, her first word was "dada," second was "mama," and her third is "yes." I am pleasantly surprised as usually "no" comes before "yes." I thought she'd learn to sign "yes" before she started saying it, but there's no need to sign it now that she can say it. It's quite helpful! This evening I asked her if she wanted some banana and she said "yes" and came over to me. It's so wonderful to start to communicate with spoken words!! She's very good at responding to simple commands like "go get your baby" or "go walk with your lion." She can be in the opposite part of the room where that toy is, and when I give that instruction she'll usually go over and get whatever I asked her to get. This has shown me she knows which toy is her baby, lion, giraffe, etc. as she's retrieved the correct toy when I've used those words. I think we underestimate her receptive vocabulary!

She also is now walking 99% of the time. Crawling is almost a thing of the past. My mom worked with her on getting her to drink water from a cup. I think I might need to give up on sippy cups and just train her on a regular cup. I bought yet one more sippy cup on Friday (one with a straw that had been recommended to me by a couple of moms), and that didn't work either. I know she needs to be weaned off the bottles in the next couple of weeks. I've been mixing her formula with 2% milk the past couple of weeks, and she likes cow's milk just as much as formula (as long as it's warm!) so at least that won't be a difficult transition. Another transition that will be happening soon is that we can turn her car seat around. YAY!