Oden Adventures

I confess, this was my weakest attempt at a monthiversary shoot yet...but a) I don't suppose I can keep this up forever and b) this was the last of three days that Patrick was gone at a conference, and I just didn't have the energy to wrestle her for photos.  Especially since we'd walked a 2.5 mile round trip to the park that morning.  So, I'm counting the park photos :-).

She still loves to dance and to sing.  Her favorite song is still Jesus Loves Me ("Jeez Me"), but she often requests "Mama's Songs" (the Homespun CD) and "Donald Farm Cow Song" (Old McDonald) and we've been enjoying the Slugs & Bugs CDs she got from Rebekah for Christmas. 

We are especially entertained by Vianne's ever-growing, ever-surprising vocabulary.  There are a lot of word pronunciations & phrases I will miss when her English improves.  She says "darburge" for garbage; a zipper is a "yipper"; Look! is "Yoot!" (double o sounds like look); remember is "memmer" and yawn is still "yarn"; and a personal favorite, a heartbeat is a "heartbeep".  She also often mixes up "heavy" and "hard" - so, for example, if she can't do something hard, she'll say, "It's heavy" and I try not to giggle.  She hasn't caught on to the subtle words "not" and "don't" or "shouldn't" in negative phrases, so she will say things like "It's working" if something's not working, or "You touch it"/"You have it" when she means "don't touch it" or "you don't have it".

We talk a lot about the baby ("Baby Awver" ;-) ) in Mama's tummy, who sometimes - according to Vianne - is in her tummy, too!  Sometimes he is sleeping, sometimes he is crying, sometimes he's silly. She enjoys watching a video from BabyCenter.com of an illustrated baby at 15 to 20 weeks, who we say is ours.

She loves playing "The Owl Game" and others on Daddy's tablet (since kids using technology is such a huge debate right now, let me stoke the fire...heh heh) to which we give much credit for her early grasp of numbers, letters, shapes and colors.

She's still into everything, definitely showing a new side of her strong will, and most days completely wears us out...but my goodness, we love her more than we can even fathom.