15 months!

“In bathrooms, boardrooms, buses, bagel shops, and everywhere else, we all need to imagine a little girl following us around, repeating everything we say and everything we do. Think about all the things you want for yourself and your daughters, granddaughters, and girls everywhere- and teach them by living it yourself."

Nell Merlino, In Stepping Out of Line: Lessons for Women Who Want It Their Way in Life, in Love, and at Work (Broadway)

Just thought I would share a quote that I found in this month's O magazine! I really thought long and hard about it because Julia is really starting to be a little sponge and she mimics whatever we do. John and I say regularly how we need to be really careful about everything we say and do around Julia because it will come back to haunt us! This quote was a good reminder to pretend that she is beside me ALL the time and to only say and do the things that I would want her to see!

Some updates, mainly for my sake:

- Julia gets what she needs by pointing her little hand in the direction of what she wants and shaking her wrist (like waving bye-bye) and saying, "This." My cell phone and camera are each called, "Those," and a few other things are called "These," but mainly, its "This!"

-She STILL chooses not to walk as her main mode of transportation. She is a very fast crawler and it seems to work just fine for her. She CAN walk and is doing a little more every day.

- I would say that she knows about 75 words and even some phrases. She says, "Home, Sweet, Home" when we pull in the driveway because I say it EVERY time. She said, "There you go" today when I asked her to hand me a book. Her most used word, "Daddy." Least used word, "Momma."

- She really loves animals, both live ones and the ones in books. Some she knows and calls by name, others she calls by what sound they make. Example, a donkey is a donkey, but a horse is a neigh! Other animals she can recognize and say are chicken, donkey, monkey, meow, dog-woof woof (all one word), an elephant she identifies by a loud obnoxious blowing sound that her Dad taught her, goose, kk (duck) and she calls a lion a meow. Is it weird that she knows a donkey, but not a cow or a pig????

- We log a lot of hours reading books. She requests her favorites by name. One is called Princess Baby which she endearingly calls, "Baby." Another of her favorite books is called Ten Little Fairies. Another favorite is Pooh's nursery rhyme book. It has all the old timey nursery rhymes in it and its really long. She will sit still through the entire book! She likes 2 Bendon Bear books because they have pictures of real animals. She also likes picture books and has learned a lot of new words by looking at the pictures and us naming things.

- Our night time routine is to read 3 or 4 books and then I sing her 2 or 3 songs. She always requests "Row, Row" by name and I end every night by singing row row row your boat over and over again. All of this takes place in her rocking chair in her room.....a great investment because it is so comfy and we have literally spent hundreds of hours rocking in that chair! When she gets sleepy, she has a velour yellow and white blanket that is her favorite to cuddle with. I had really tried for her favorite to be a tiny square taggy, but she prefers this much larger blanket. She sucks her two fingers on her left hand and holds a corner of the blanket to her mouth. Another thing she does when gets sleepy is that she feels her eyelashes! Just another little quirky Julia-ism!

- She is not eating as much as she once did. I think she still eats relatively healthy, but she doesn't seem to love vegetables as much as she once did. I am not a strict about not giving her ANY sugar like I once was, but she doesn't seem to care about it too much when I do give it to her. Last night, I gave her a bite of chocolate cake at the PTA spaghetti supper that we went to and she ate it but didn't really care if she had another bite or not. She loves to drink juice, but I don't give it to her very often because she will fill up on it and skip everything else. She drinks a ton of milk and we are now buying 2 gallons of whole milk at a time for Julia and John.

Spaghetti faced Julia at the PTA spaghetti supper

The best free entertainment around happens at the Methodist Church when the young adult guys (and the occasional girl) play basketball on Thursday nights! We went just to hang out with Sol and Maggie Grace....oh yeah, and to see all of those boys play ball too.

This was probably the most complicated sewing project that I have ever successfully completed. The drapes are 109.5 inches long and are about 132 inches wide (each panel!). I spent a lot of time dreading and thinking about how I would pull this one off. I called Mrs. Linda, married to Mr. Richard, one night in the midst of my dread and discussed it with her. She is brilliant! Without her design help, I would never have known where to start. Many hours after we had our first conversation about these drapes, I finally went to hang them in there final resting place. I have to admit, they look beautiful! RIP drapes!

This is the graph paper illustratation that Mrs. Linda drew and sent me...

Here they are.....hung in a beautiful house for what I hope is AT LEAST ten years!