Hello Sunshine!

The sun has been shining (finally), the temperature has been warming up (slowly), and the snow is starting to melt (little by little).

It's about freaking time.

I brought Ayla outside this afternoon so she could roam around for a few minutes and try to remember what it's like to be outdoors. It is warming up but it's still not warm enough to play outside for too long. I can't wait until all of the snow is gone and the grass starts to turn green so we can throw a blanket on the lawn and enjoy the weather. She was pretty thrilled to be out of the house and was even happier to spot a couple of neighbor kids across the street.

She is 17 months today...I can't believe she'll be a year and a half next month. I've been blogging so often lately that I don't have too many new things to report--as you all know, we're currently working on some sleep issues (night #3 tonight...not looking forward to it); she's still not eating much of anything, but I have to come to accept that this will be the case for some time and I cannot seem to change it for now. The biggest thing lately is still her growing vocabulary. She tries to repeat everything we say, which can be good and bad. One of her favorite things to do is to sit and flip through her word books (the ones where there are just pages and pages of all different kinds of things) and point out and say the ones she knows. We try to pick out a couple new things every couple of days. It really doesn't take more than a few tries for her to learn a new word. Among my favorites are: broccoli, elephant, hammer, and cereal. Who would have thought she could learn these things? So much fun.